This section is about companies that design semiconductors.
For companies that manufature semiconductors, see also: company with a semiconductor fabrication plant.
As mentioned at youtu.be/16BzIG0lrEs?t=397 from Video "Applied Materials by Asianometry (2021)", originally the companies fabs would make their own equipment. But eventually things got so complicated that it became worth it for separate companies to focus on equipment, which then then sell to the fabs.
A set of software programs that compile high level register transfer level languages such as Verilog into something that a fab can actually produce. One is reminded of a compiler toolchain but on a lower level.
The most important steps of that include:
- logic synthesis: mapping the Verilog to a standard cell library
- place and route: mapping the synthesis output into the 2D surface of the chip
This software feels amazing. You can really start composing very quickly, lots of features, good keyboard shortcuts.
Ubuntu 20.04: sound preview worked, first hat that trailing Contra-like sound artifacts (like
spd-say), but then it went away?And by artificial intelligence, read of course (non-human-identical) artificial general intelligence.
Today-2022, this is placed under the science fiction film category. But maybe this might change during Ciro Santilli's own lifetime?
The basic criteria of "is a film about artificial intelligence good or not" to Ciro Santilli is: does the AI inhabit humanoid, or fully human looking, bodies? Bodies is a bad sign due to:
- the best science fiction works deeply explore the consequences of one single technology: efficient humanoid bodies are a second technological breakthrough besides AI itself. The first AI will obviously be a supercomputer without a body
- it is hard to imagine that the AI wouldn't organize itself as one huge central computer and R&D/command center. Perhaps there will be need for a few separate ones to optimize usage of natural resources, and to have some redundance in case a nuke blows the region, but there would be very very few of the think tanks. But having big centers is fundamental, because you centralize all the flow of ideas and their combination leading to new better outcomes for the AI. The mobile robot actors controlled by this center, if any exist, would then be slaves with some degree of autonomy and infinitely less computational powerful than the think tank.
Theoretical framework on which quantum field theories are based, theories based on framework include:so basically the entire Standard Model
The basic idea is that there is a field for each particle particle type.
E.g. in QED, one for the electron and one for the photon: physics.stackexchange.com/questions/166709/are-electron-fields-and-photon-fields-part-of-the-same-field-in-qed.
And then those fields interact with some Lagrangian.
One way to look at QFT is to split it into two parts:Then interwined with those two is the part "OK, how to solve the equations, if they are solvable at all", which is an open problem: Yang-Mills existence and mass gap.
- deriving the Lagrangians of the Standard Model: S. This is the easier part, since the lagrangians themselves can be understood with not very advanced mathematics, and derived beautifully from symmetry constraints
- the qantization of fields. This is the hard part Ciro Santilli is unable to understand, TODO mathematical formulation of quantum field theory.
There appear to be two main equivalent formulations of quantum field theory:
Quantum Field Theory visualized by ScienceClic English (2020)
Source. Gives one piece of possibly OK intuition: quantum theories kind of model all possible evolutions of the system at the same time, but with different probabilities. QFT is no different in that aspect.- youtu.be/MmG2ah5Df4g?t=209 describes how the spin number of a field is directly related to how much you have to rotate an element to reach the original position
- youtu.be/MmG2ah5Df4g?t=480 explains which particles are modelled by which spin number
Quantum Fields: The Real Building Blocks of the Universe by David Tong (2017)
Source. Boring, does not give anything except the usual blabla everyone knows from Googling:Quantum Field Theory: What is a particle? by Physics Explained (2021)
Source. Gives some high level analogies between high level principles of non-relativistic quantum mechanics and special relativity in to suggest that there is a minimum quanta of a relativistic quantum field.Quantum version of the Hall effect.
As you increase the magnetic field, you can see the Hall resistance increase, but it does so in discrete steps.
Gotta understand this because the name sounds cool. Maybe also because it is used to define the fucking ampere in the 2019 redefinition of the SI base units.
At least the experiment description itself is easy to understand. The hard part is the physical theory behind.
The effect can be separated into two modes:
- Integer quantum Hall effect: easier to explain from first principles
- Fractional quantum Hall effect: harder to explain from first principles
- Fractional quantum Hall effect for : 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics
- Fractional quantum Hall effect for : one of the most important unsolved physics problems as of 2023
Applications of Quantum Mechanics by David Tong (2017) by 
Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-11 +Created 1970-01-01
Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-11 +Created 1970-01-01Summary:
- Chapter 2 "Band Structure" covers electronic band theory
There are unlisted articles, also show them or only show them.