Apple and Samsung were the world's largest buyers of chips last year among device manufacturers with total revenues exceeding one billion dollars according to data collected by the company IHS. Apple took the first spot with a total consumption of the chips in the amount of 30.3 billion dollars, while Samsung took second place with $20.2 billion spent on chips.

Taiwan's TSMC has begun mass production of 20-nanometer chips before the previously scheduled time. According to the company's vice president C. C. Wei, TSMC began the production of large quantities of chips in the above production process a month earlier than it was originally planned.

Two more pieces of the puzzle are falling into place with the move away from silicon in microprocessors. Silicon has been the mainstay for creating processors for… well for a very long time. However, it has its limitations as the need to make the transistors smaller continues to increase. Even if you are not a believer in More’s Law you still cannot get around the fact that processors (GPU CPU and “other”) are all growing more complex. This means that the number of components continues to grow and we are faced with a couple of choices; either die in the vacuum of space or… no wait that is someone else. The choices are actually very clear; make the processor dies larger and larger or shrink the manufacturing process.

Intel is looking to the future even as their newest CPU, the 22nm Ivy Bridge, is taking something of a beating in the media. According to a few slides that have hit daylight Intel is already working on moving some of its FABs to 14nm in preparation for their next generation of CPUs. Of course this is not that big of a deal really, Intel has moved from one process to the next like clockwork (insert “Tick-Tock” joke here).

If you are a fan of the Douglas Adams book, the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (and others in the five book trilogy) then you are familiar with the great super computer Deep Though and the computer that it built to provide the question to The Ultimate Answer of Life the Universe and Everything. This was a gigantic computer that was so big it was often mistaken for a planet. It also incorporated organic life in it design (If I have lost you here don’t worry I promise I am getting to the point soon). Now in the real world researchers have found a way to use naturally occurring atomic particles to form the basis for microprocessors.