If humanity’s priorities were measured in building costs, then they would rank as: reverence for God, the future of physics and the production of computer chips.
The building complex surrounding the Grand Mosque of Mecca is reckoned to be the most expensive construction of modern times, although the cost of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor in France may exceed it upon completion.
But the third most costly building is almost certainly the giant semiconductor fabrication plant being built by TSMC in Taiwan for about $20bn. When operational next year, the facility will contain clean rooms the size of 22 football pitches in which silicon chips will be manufactured at dimensions that redefine the meaning of wafer-thin. At just 3 nanometres, TSMC’s wafers will be as thick as the length your fingernail grows in three seconds.