Hey single quartz factory in North Carolina that the "world's" semiconductor industry hinges on, how's it going?
Hey single quartz factory in North Carolina that the "world's" semiconductor industry hinges on, how's it going?
The deposits formed 380 million years ago when Africa collided with North America.
Quick google search shows that China has its own Quartz mines, so I'm not sure if those are unsuitable for certain semiconductors or if the use of "world" here just means 
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i am like baby when it comes to tech manufacturing but i do happen to be aware that quartz is an exceedingly common rock, so what on earth is this about
like do semiconductors need literal tons of quartz? very specific kinds of quartz? this is genuinely baffling
It is very pure. You can use any quartz, but then you have to purify it first, and it is expensive.
really? you have to do that for like, everything you mine. does this NC one just have such an amazing deposit that it makes other options uneconomical?
Kinda? Western NC has been a mining hub for forever and they aren't short on quartz at all. You could do it other places but I imagine the startup costs and the relatively poor margins on that kind of manufacturing make it unattractive, at least in America.
From the article, seems like it was due to unique geological properties.
Geologically speaking, the uniquely pure minerals at Spruce Mine were created about 380 million years ago when Africa collided with North America. This momentous collision, however slow, caused intense friction and heat miles below the Earth’s surface. According to Sibelco, the Spruce Mine minerals were created by a rich mineral-forming liquid that cooled and crystallized over time. A standout feature of these minerals is that they were made in their purest forms due to a lack of water, which caused all the friction.
It does later say that similarly high purity can be reached with synthetic quartz but that it would take time to scale up that industry.
Quartz is pretty common as a digital oscillator but it's possible to use other methods. Certain iPhones used a different oscillator that are sensitive to atmospheric Helium.
Not sure where else in the supply chain it's needed, and how easily it is to swap quartz oscillators for other components in existing designs.
digital oscillator
i have no idea what an oscillator gizmo entails
Your computer's chips all have a clock rate, which controls how fast these circuits switches from positive to negative voltages. These clock rates are synchronised using an oscillator, often made of quartz.
By driving the clock rates from a single oscillator, multiple components can have different speeds but can stay in sync with each other, which is how we can transfer data from different components seamlessly.
An oscillator's output goes up and down. They can be sine waves (called harmonic oscillators), or any kind of wave. The ones used in digital circuitry make square waves.
MEMS are also made of silicon. quartz oscillators were basically the first MEMS. cool fact: the reason helium kills MEMS is because the atoms are so small that they can diffuse their way through the wall of the device, filling it up with helium and the air resistance then stops it from working!
High purity quartz has been identified as a strategic resource so a number of countries have started exploring sites or subsiding quartz mining - Russia, China, Australia and a few others