> Z-Day + 15Yrs
> The “Internet” no longer exists as a single fabric. The privileged fall back to private peering or Sat links.
If you can't make CPUs and you can't keep the internet up, where are you going to get the equipment for enough "private peering or Sat links" for the privileged?
> Z-Day + 30Yrs
> Long-term storage has shifted completely to optical media. Only vintage compute survives at the consumer level.
You need CPUs to build optical media drives! If you can't build CPUs you're not using optical media in 30 years.
> The large node sizes of old hardware make them extremely resistant to electromigration, Motorola 68000s have modeled gate wear beyond 10k years! Gameboys, Macintosh SEs, Commodore 64s resist the no new silicon future the best.
Some quick Googling shows the first IC was created in 1960 and the 68000 was released in 1979. That's 19 years. The first transistor was created in 1947, that's a 32 year span to the 68k. If people have the capacity and need to jump through hoops to keep old computers running to maintain a semblance of current-day technology, they're definitely f-ing going to have been able to repeat all the R&D to build a 68k CPU in 30 years (and that's assuming you've destroy all the literature and mind-wiped everyone with any knowledge of semiconductor manufacturing).
Storage. You only need a few hundred working systems to keep a backbone alive. Electron migration doesn’t kill transistors if they are off and in a closet.
> You need CPUs to build optical media drives! If you can't build CPUs you're not using optical media in 30 years.
You don’t need to make new drives; there are already millions of DVD/Bluray devices available. The small microcontrollers on optical drives are on wide node sizes, which also make them more resilient to degradation.
> they're definitely f-ing going to have been able to repeat all the R&D to build a 68k CPU in 30 years (and that's assuming you've destroy all the literature and mind-wiped everyone with any knowledge of semiconductor manufacturing).
If you read the post, the scenario clearly states “no further silicon designs ever get manufactured”. It’s a thought experiment, nothing more.
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