NTT's challenge to innovate the geopolitics of semiconductors by building optical information processing technology that will rewrite digital technology

As semiconductors dominate the world's industries, the geopolitics of semiconductors is changing (Photo, Graphs / FIFO).

In the midst of the global semiconductor shortage, there are several key points in the world that will become bottlenecks in the semiconductor value chain. TSMC in Taiwan, which holds advanced manufacturing technology, is the leading company, including ASML in the United Kingdom, which licenses basic circuits, and ASML in the Netherlands, which monopolizes manufacturing equipment for micromachining. The nations and regions that suppress these important points have the power to control the value chain and become powerful countries in cyberspace. Unfortunately, there are no companies in Japan that can be called a key point.See the photos in this article

However, the geopolitical map of semiconductors is repainted as new technologies emerge. The battle is not just about competing for existing key points. If you don't have a key point right now, you can build a new key point in your country. Japan's challenge has begun. A part of this is excerpted and reconstructed from the new book "2030 Semiconductor Geopolitics" by Mr. Yasuhiko Ota, editorial board member of the Nihon Keizai Shimbun. ■ Masaya Notomi of NTT Busseikagaku Kenkyusho, who creates optical transistors, had a strange feeling of accomplishment and surprise. He was when a young team member confirmed the operation of an "optical logic gate" that combines optical and electrical signals. It was an invention that many researchers could not reach so far.

"This may have been a tremendous amount of work ..." In March 2020, when the Notomi team announced the results of a series of studies, it shocked the world's academia. Takehiko Kawazoe, managing director of NTT's R & D department, says that this photoelectric fusion device was "the beginning of everything." The research team has developed optical transistors and switches that operate in the same way as electricity. Electronic circuits process signals with the flow of electricity, and this technology could be used to create ultra-fast semiconductor chips that run on light instead of electricity. It is the same principle that optical fiber is overwhelmingly faster than electric wire made of copper.

This is how NTT's IOWN (Innovative Optical and Wireless Network) concept was born. Build a world that processes information with light instead of electricity, and completely repaint digital technology. Under the command of President Jun Sawada, the giant ship of the former Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation has begun to move. If you think about it, we may have been tied to electricity so far. For example, when you email a large image, you compress the file because the amount of information you can send at one time is limited. The reason why a semiconductor chip is packed with fine circuits is to shorten the distance traveled by the current in the chip. These are, so to speak, the convenience of the electric side, and the human side had to narrow down the wisdom so that the computer could work well. If you think about it carefully, it might be a fall.

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