I've read this and it gives a pretty good overview of the history as well as current events surrounding the semiconductor industry. I think it gives a good high-level overview so you'll have the foundation to dig deeper. I don't think that this book by itself would be enough to understand the semiconductor business, but it's a great place to start to get acclimated.

I'm about 90% through this book that I picked up based on some other HN comment I had read. I would highly recommend it

After reading Chip War I read Conquering the Electron by Eric Brach and Derek Cheung. Very good book that goes into a bit more detail than Chip War. Chip War focuses more on the geopolitics than the science.

Came here to say this. It's a fabulous history and easily one of the best and most informative books I read last year. It's not necessarily going to teach you much about the current "business" per se, but it's a must-read for the history and has quite a bit about the current global state of affairs, especially re PRC/ROC, and state of the technology.

+1 on this; one of the best books to intro one on the subject

+1. I have only finished around ~20% of the book - but it's been really informative covering a wide range of topics from early technical innovations, to to the companies involved like Fairchild, TI, Intel, Sony, TSMC etc (and by extension the nations involved US, Japan, Russia, Taiwan etc)

-1: dude was wrong about everything, missed the role of software and computer engineering.

1. China rapidly catching up

2. Companies can produce competitive offerings with old manufacturing processes

He took a manufacturing heavy view, but actually open archs like RISC-V or ARM's china division defecting provided avenues to make competitive offerings with last generation technology.

fastest chip today runs on 4 year old silicon: https://www.eetimes.com/groq-demos-fast-llms-on-4-year-old-s...