Elemental Business: Silicon Chips
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 31 July 2014
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Silicon chips have shrunk a million-fold since Gordon Moore made his famous forecast in 1965, but is Moore's Law - and the computer revolution it heralded - about to run up against fundamental laws of physics? In the first of two programmes investigating silicon - the latest in our series looking at the elements of the periodic table and their role in the global economy - we travel to Silicon Valley to the biggest chip company of them all, Intel, co-founded by Gordon Moore himself.
We visit the Intel museum with company spokesperson Chuck Mulloy and get up close to a giant ingot of the purest material on earth. We speak to Intel's chief chip architect Mark T Bohr about the future of computing. And, professor Andrea Sella of University College London explain's what micro-processing has to do with old Muscovite windows - with a trip to the beach.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to a dreamy business daily with me, Justin Rowland. |
| 0:10.9 | Mr Simon, bring me a dreamy because today we're exploring the technological dreams that have transformed our world. |
| 0:21.7 | Dreams written, or should that be etched, in the sand? |
| 0:29.7 | We're looking at how the main ingredient of sand, |
| 0:32.4 | silicon, has been the basis of the high-tech revolution. |
| 0:35.7 | But is that revolution now over? Find out on Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:41.8 | Mr Sandman, bring me a dream. |
| 0:46.0 | Yes, we'll be sifting the significance of silicon in this latest in our series exploring the role of the chemical elements in the world economy. |
| 0:53.8 | And who better to bring a bit of the chemical elements in the world economy. |
| 1:00.1 | And who better to bring a bit of granularity, a bit of detail to the business daily sandpit than the king of our elemental sandcastle, Professor Andrea Seller of University College London. |
| 1:14.8 | Andrea, you've brought me into one of the corridors here at University College London. |
| 1:15.9 | Where are you taking me? |
| 1:22.8 | Well, I've taken you to one of the most important places in a chemistry department where silicon is really incredibly important. |
| 1:25.9 | It's some kind of workshop. |
| 1:28.2 | Looks like there's a lathe here. |
| 1:32.7 | It's a workshop, and down to the end, there's John, whom we'll see in action. |
| 1:33.4 | Hello, John. |
| 1:35.2 | I think we're coming to you a bit later. |
| 1:36.2 | Okay, then? |
| 1:39.8 | Now, as always, Andrea, you've brought with you a box of tricks, |
| 1:41.3 | and I'm dying to see what you've got in here. |
| 1:46.7 | Well, the first thing I've got are actually two minerals that contain silicon. |
... |
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