Tiny tech, big impact: How chips power digital life

Tiny tech, big impact: How chips power our digital life

The coffee machine brewing a perfect cuppa. Face ID unlocking your smartphone. Starting up your Electric Vehicle (EV).

Much of our everyday lives are powered by chips, which can be found virtually in every modern appliance, gadget, and system that surrounds us.

And they are produced right here. Singapore plays a big role in the global semiconductor industry that produces these “tiny brains” behind many of our smart, essential, and favourite products.

What's in a chip, actually?

Chip

A set of electronic circuits assembled on a tiny piece of silicon.

Wafer

A thin circular slice of semiconductor material that forms the base of a chip.

Semiconductor

A material that acts as both a conductor and insulator of electricity. Silicon is the most widely used semiconductor material.

Know your chips

There are generally five categories of chips defined by their functions.

How chips are made

While the materials that make up a singular chip seem simple, it takes a lot of technological innovation and human ingenuity to manufacture a specific chip that an end-application or product needs. Here’s a quick breakdown of the process:

Design

Engineers design the chip’s blueprint – what it needs to do, how it’ll work, how fast it should be. The resulting blueprint is a pattern of electrical circuits.

Fabrication

The pattern is built on the wafer through a series of complex and high-precision processes in a cleanroom.

Dicing

The wafer is cut into thousands of tiny individual chips called dies.

Packaging

Each working die is mounted and packaged to protect it.

Final Testing

The chips are tested to make sure they work as designed.

As the process involved in making a chip in the specific shape and form for an electronic device can be very complex, some companies may only specialise in one or several of the steps. Integrated Device Manufacturers (IDMs), however, have the capabilities to do the whole process.

The tiny nation powering big possibilities

Just like chips, Singapore may be small in size, but its significance in the global semiconductor industry is undeniable. In fact, Singapore accounts for one in ten chips and one in five semiconductor equipment produced globally!

This is enabled by the well-established local semiconductor ecosystem in Singapore that puts us in a good position to participate in this fast-growing industry globally. Notable global companies across the semiconductor value chain have built up a significant presence in Singapore – from chip design companies like AMD and Qualcomm, to pure-play foundries like GlobalFoundries (GF) and integrated device manufacturers (IDMs) like STMicroelectronics.

Singapore is also the regional hub for advanced semiconductor R&D topics such as advanced packaging and silicon photonics. We have invested significantly in our public research infrastructure and world-class research institutions to stay at the cutting edge of semiconductor technology development.

So the next time you check your fitness tracker, set your home to a personalised mood, or use a camera to park your car – there's a good chance that chips designed or manufactured in Singapore played a part in making it possible.

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