Chip War Summary

1. 1945-1965

USA makes the first chips

Transistor gets invented, later replacing vacuum tubes
Fairchild Semiconductor and Texas Instruments starts using them, Bob Noyce and Jack Kilby invent the integrated circuit(chip).
Lithography gets invented.
Military capitalizes on the new technology(Apollo, guided missiles) and becomes the main customer of the mentioned firms.
Bob Noyce thinks the future of semiconductors is the civilian market.

2. 1950-1980

Soviets tryna catch up, USA offshoring production to Asia and sharing tech with Japan

Soviets try catching up by copying America's chips, they build Zelenograd, a techonology research city, but failed to accomplish any progress.
USA shares its technology with Japan, wanting it to grow economically. Akio Morita founds Sony.
American firms offshore production to Asia for cheap labor. Fairchild in Hong Kong, TI in Taiwan.
Noyce and Moore found Intel and are the first to produce DRAM.
Jerry Sanders founds AMD.
Pentagon needs new technology to combat Soviet quantitative advantage. So funds the industry even more.

3. 1980s

Japan

Japan starts producing higher-quality, cheaper DRAM. Taking most of its market share from USA companies.
This happened due to heavy state subsidies for tech firms, low rates from banks and a focus on mass production.
Japan(Nikon) also outperforms USA's lithography companies(GCA).
USA feels dependant on Japan, thus decreasing taxes for tech firms and pushing for coop.

4. 1980-2000

USA coming back

5. 1990-2010

USA wins Cold War

TSMC builds a big ol' foundry, forcing firms to ditch in-house production and focus on chip design.
China was set back technologically from Dao's regime, Richard Chang founds SMIC, a foundry.
Intel bets big on ASML('cause the only other rivals were Nikon and Canon and they're japanese) to develop extreme ultraviolet light lithography tools for smaller transistors.
Intel dominates PC and Server sphere with x86 architecture, tho ARM appears in the iPhone.

6. 2000-2020

Fabless firms, TSMC on top

Only AMD and Intel manufacture their own chips, most of the other going fabless.
Logic chips mostly made by Intel and AMD. Memory - Korea(Samsung and SK hynix) and USA(Micron, tho mostly offshored). Other chips in Japan, USA and Europe.
NVIDIA develops GPUs for graphics rendering, later find out that they're good for AI.
Apple designs their own chips meaning that devices in their ecosystem work well together.
The BIG GAMBLE on EUV and ASML paid off, new tools come out and fulfill yet another progression for Moore's law.
Now TSMC and Samsung have the biggest foundries.
Intel, tho still profitable, lacks on inovation and falls behind in both design and manufacturing.

7. 2000-2020

China

China is so behind, only contributing to the assembly of electronics, that it sets out to reduce its semiconductor imports from 80% to 30% by ~2030.
China starts buying up foreign chip firms, hoping to get some technology transfered.
Huawei in Shenzhen has become a leader of telecom and the biggest tech company in China. It has the best technology for integrating 5G, so future looks promising.
USA sees China as a threat and starts planning on how to prevent it getting ahead.

8. Today

Export controls & chokepoints

Jinhua, a company in Fujian, China, steals documents from Micron to implement the technology themselves. USA responds by blocking exports of essential chip manufacturing equipment to the company.
Trump also bans exports of advanced chips and tools to China, 'cause Huawei's looking like a real threat.
USA still controls a big chunk of the semiconductor industry, especially some essential chokepoints like litography tools and chip design software.
Today Taiwan produces 37% of the world's logic chips and 11% of memory chips. As China is getting pressured and blocked by the USA, it may be looking to put some pressure on Taiwan, as it is now in a far better position for war than ever before.