The news from the world of microchips is enough to make a classicist weep. IBM, that ageing titan of American computing, has unveiled what it calls a ‘block of flats’ chip, a 3D-stacked monstrosity that is less a refinement of silicon architecture and more a gaudy high-rise built on the ruins of miniaturisation. Meanwhile, British firm Arm is leading the charge in EU patent filings, a testament to the strange afterlife of empire: we no longer build things, but we own the ideas.
It is a tale of two strategies, both revealing the intellectual decadence of our age. First, consider IBM’s offering. In the old days, progress meant making things smaller, faster, more elegant.
Now, when the laws of physics have slammed the door on Moore’s Law, what do our engineers do? They stack chips vertically, like office workers in a corporate tower block. The term ‘block of flats’ is apt: it is a cramped, ugly, but pragmatic solution to a crisis.
It works, but it is not beautiful. It reminds me of the late Roman apartment blocks, the *insulae*, where the poor were stacked precariously into the sky, a monument not to ambition but to desperation. So too with this chip: it is a desperate lunge for performance, a sign that the easy gains are behind us.
Then there is Arm. This British firm – though now owned by a Japanese conglomerate – is filing more patents in the EU than any other chip designer. Patents!
The currency of a decadent age, where lawyers matter more than engineers. Arm does not manufacture anything. It designs architectures that others license.
It is a rentier economy, extracting fees from the productive world. Britain, once the workshop of the world, now sells ideas. That is not necessarily shameful: the Greeks sold philosophy, the Romans sold law.
But when the patent becomes the primary output, one must ask: who is left to do the dirty work? The EU patent filings show that the future is not in foundries or fabrication plants but in intellectual property, a realm as abstract and bloodless as a ledger. And yet, this is the path we have chosen.
We celebrate the ‘block of flats’ chip as innovation, but it is merely a stopgap. We celebrate Arm’s patents as British ingenuity, but they represent a retreat from making things. The Victorians, who built the first integrated circuits in their heads, would be bewildered.
They understood that true power came from steam and steel, not from licensing fees. So here we are: IBM stacking silicon like bricks, Arm fencing off ideas like medieval lords. It is an elegant allegory, really.
The chip industry, the engine of modernity, is now concerned with housing estates and boundary disputes. We have become the very thing we mocked: a world of clerks and landlords, not pioneers. And as I write this, I feel the chill of a new Dark Age creeping in, one where the barbarians are not at the gates but inside the silicon itself.
