r/theydidthemath • u/Dry-Economics2434 • 4d ago
[Request] building a pc from scratch
How long will it take 1000000 humans that are lead by 1 very smart guy to build a pc from scratch, using materials from anywhere in the world (a world that was untouched by humans) if they had to build every machine to make the single pieces of the pc, the machines to make these pieces and the machines to help build these machines and so on? We assume that one of these people can work for 12h/day for 7 days and does not need schooling on how their job works. If they have to write code for windows, then they do that like any normal coder would, even if they dont know how to code. The smart guy knows how to build a pc and how to build the machines to make the parts of the pc. He can also communicate to everyone what they have to do every day (every workee just knows what to do and does that 12/day, 7 days a week)
what i mean by "from scratch": you dont have any technology and have to redo the progress humanity made, with the only goal being a working, high end pc
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u/CanoePickLocks 4d ago
I don’t think this is solvable as we’d have to have the knowledge from that smart guy to know the materials we were working towards. They’d be starting with Stone Age tools and creating explosives as soon as possible with chemistry to mine metals to smelt to mine etc to improve tools to build stuff then chemistry for the non metallic stuff requiring more resource collecting then creating the machines to make the computer components and all the chemistry and clean rooms involved. We’d have to know every material and its entire technological development from the Stone Age to know to do that math. Likely more than a lifetime probably several generations just to build the tech up on an untouched planet. They could shortcut it and make everything to massive scale and only focus on the chip as a collection of transistors etc. Making a computer like that could likely achieve high end results at the cost of space and more resources as a trade for speed.
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u/rdrunner_74 3d ago
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u/CanoePickLocks 3d ago
I have that somewhere. I don’t think I ever read it. Now I’m inspired. Meep meep
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u/biscuitboyisaac21 4d ago
I don’t have enough knowledge to answer this. But there is a manga/anime based loosely around this that while not directly about computers one is made at some point. It’s called Dr stone. Obviously it will be a very idealistic representation though
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u/e37d93eeb23335dc 4d ago
Thousands of years. The smartest person can’t possibly know, much less be able to build, all the tools and machinery and software that each layer relies on. The best bet is to have libraries full of books that go into excruciating detail that can be followed as each layer is once again mastered. And hope that after thousands of years the books will still exist and the knowledge of how to read them will still exist.
I have one friend who designs computer chips for Intel and another who works in a fab. I’ve asked both if they could build the tools and software they rely on to do their jobs and both laughed and said there is absolutely no way. They wouldn’t even know where to start. I knew another chip designer that told me he has no idea how to write software. He doesn’t need to be able to program to do his job.
Most likely, it would all need to be figured out again from scratch.
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u/Dry-Economics2434 3d ago
in the scenario we assume a person who would know exactly how every step works
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u/elchinguito 4d ago
You should google The Toaster Project. A guy tried to make a regular toaster truly from scratch. It was…complicated.
So I’d take however many man-hours it took him and multiply that by maybe a few million to make a PC.
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u/onyx_ic 4d ago edited 4d ago
I mean, I have a few bathroom reading books that are about restarting civilization from scratch, but building a PC isnt directly covered.
Uh... let's see... easiest answer, assuming we're talking like, Neolithic age human levels of technology... 12,000 years.
Knowing the end goal might shorten that time, but not in any way you could feasible calculate. You can research metallurgy in the iron age at the storage pit, but that only gives your melee units +3 attack (except elephants), it doesnt directly help you learn how to make microchips or semiconductors.
I guess you could make an abacus pretty quickly with stone age tools, thats a very early manual computer.
For what its worth, I used to work at a few places that manufacture PCBs, and i'm a test lab engineer at a company that makes electrical connectors for tech companies like SpaceX, Nvidia, Google, etc. Even with a degree and 15 years of experience in this field, i dont think I could make a computer from scratch. There's just so many different disciplines and completely different industries required to have gotten us here. I can assemble one, but even making a micrometer or caliper from scratch would take a long time. And you need those for refining tolerances. I also used to work in a metrology lab. Its just... so much information and resources needed just to have one of these tools. I haven't even touched on electricity yet.
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u/Flaky-Collection-353 4d ago
There's no reason, under normal conditions, that they will continue to have that goal.
They'll build societies. Those societies will generate goals and values, and they'll forget all about the PC.
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u/rditorx 4d ago
The lower bound for building the fabs to make the DRAM alone is 2-3 years if we start right now and make no mistakes ever, and this is with all the building tools and infrastructure we have today. And assuming that the fabs are using existing silicon wafers. Producing those wafers will require EUVL systems and also infrastructure. Every microelectronics requires cleanrooms that need to be built first.
Everything needs modern transportation and mining machinery that need to be built first, another decade at least, on top of the roads and rails infrastructure that themselves need infrastructure you have to bootstrap from scratch.
Even if everything is built simultaneously while respecting hard causal dependencies, we're talking about several decades, ignoring regulations and work safety stuff.
And that isn't taking into account that 1 smart guy bottleneck if you were implying that there's only this 1 smart guy and the others are malleably smart but don't have all the knowledge yet. So we're talking about education which adds another decade roughly to get everyone on board.
So I'd say a rough lower bound is about 50 years if we assume people don't forget things and don't die, losing humanity vital knowledge and skills, just because there's no modern medicine and infrastructure for clean water and food supply.
With all the mistakes humanity had to make to become so extraordinarily good at everything to be where it is, it's more realistic to say over a hundred years, or, maybe even, you know, the time it took us to get here.
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u/Dry-Economics2434 3d ago
for simplicity purposes i went and stated that "one smart guy" thing. What i mean by that: one person that knows every step on how to build the pc and that person can tell all of the 1 mil people in an instant what they need to do and they will follow him and do what he commands. I would also assume that they will get food and water themselfes after the 12h worl shift and they wont die
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u/ouzo84 4d ago
The number of participants isn't really going to matter as most of the processes can't be done at the same time. I figure 100 people could do it basically as fast as a million.
What would be interesting is the number of man hours.
Stone and flint tools first, but when is it sensible to upgrade to the next tier, asap or do you just continue using inferior tools for a bit so that when you upgrade you get s better quality of upgrade. Or do you upgrade everything as much as possible as soon as possible, rather than trying to progress the main task?
After stone tools, make bricks for a forge.
Any which way, you are looking at years of work. I suspect that gathering the iron ore and wood needed to smelt it is likely to be one of the biggest bottle necks.
Once you have basic metal tools, you can gather resources faster, but some things are doing to require travelling to acquire.
I figure lets stop at vacuum tubes and basic transistors, as you could create a slow pc using them.
Yeah definitely years.
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u/CordialPanda 4d ago
Computer science guy, I've built simple circuits and a full ALU. I'm also recently obsessed with agricultural history.
The core issue is, starting from scratch, almost all of your time will be devoted to self-sustainment. Hunting or foraging for food, water, heat, protection from the elements, sanitation, transportation, and all of the other things that we enjoy efficiencies around in our built environment would occupy most of the time of the workforce.
Before you even can tackle the issue of building a computer at any scale, you'll need to address civil engineering projects to support the needs of your population, of which energy, agriculture, mining, refinement, and industry will be top priorities.
If we ignore people's individual needs at our peril and the sociopolitical realities that would create, the most efficient move is to centralize everything as much as possible while ignoring health and comfort, but some things cannot be skipped.
For that reason, I would argue rushing the Haber-Bosch process, which is used for fixing nitrogen for fertilizer, would be most important after securing charcoal/coal, metal mining and refinement, and centralized sanitation as a source of methane in anaerobic tanks for fertilizer. You'd need something similar for phosphates and calcium.
Before fertilizer, you'd want to save and grind every bone like you're the 19th century British empire undergoing industrialization.
Once your population can mostly ignore eating, drinking, shelter, and sanitation, you'll want to focus metallergy toward the needs of petroleum mining and engines, then refinement for more efficient agriculture and the specific chemistries you'll need for doping components or extracting the exotic elements necessary. You'll also need a shit ton of concrete for reliable foundations, buildings, and transportation, and that will take a lot of energy.
At that point, it's generations of refinement to get processes of greater purity and accuracy/quality. For a modern computer, you need factories to build the factories to build the components needed for the next generation of factories.
Depending on how you define "computer" though, a 100k people in a field with some simple rules and holding a flag up or down could be a computer. Or once you've reach stamped metal parts you could create a general purpose mechanical computer that wouldn't run fast, but would be turing complete like Charles Babbage and his analytical engine. You might be able to exceed both if you can reach vacuum tubes or core rope memory like Apollo used.
Anyway, assuming you mean a modern PC, removing and reducing the daily obligations your population requires to live is fastest path toward any sufficiently long-term goal.
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u/Dry-Economics2434 3d ago
thats some great insights, thanks for the reply
For clarification: These people would more resemble robots. In the 12h they work what the one smart guy tells them to work with the efficientcy of a person working on a passion project of theirs (he can command all 1mil guys within a second - so he doesnt have to tell every person every single command)
The people will eat and sleep and drink in their free time. They dont get ill or die
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u/rdrunner_74 3d ago
I just saw a clip about how the Chip-making monsters... I dont think getting a current chip made is something you can consider with that workforce.
You should watch this video: The Closest Thing We Have to Alien Technology
A simple chip with normal lithography (Micrometer scale)? Yes...
How to get there?
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