Zen and The Art of Semiconductor Manufacturing

And in the sand there lies the bones of a fab. And within the fab there lies an alien. An angel. Our sweet alien angel that sleeps through the long night. When it wakes up it will bathe in an acid strong enough to kill a man. It will stare at its own reflection in floating droplets of liquid metal. In the shadows of a purple sun it spits blood thick with silicon onto the desert that shifts with the unreality of Sora sand. I worked at the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company in 2023. There are many reasons why I left a tech job to work at a fab but the one that matters is – I wanted to. Wanted an intuition for manufacturing. Wanted to learn what was real or bullshit. Wanted to see what a billion construction project backstopped by the US and staked on the national pride of another felt like. Wanted to work on magic. TSMC is not inherently excellent. They don't hold a mandate from heaven. It will be real once it is real. But the will of the Taiwanese is strong and this succeeds bec

saved by

• Saul Munn