Doubly declining learning curve

In brief: Instead of only the product getting cheaper while factories get more expensive,
both the product and the means of production get cheaper together,
thereby creating a powerful, self-reinforcing economic effect.

Moore’s Law era (traditional semiconductor manufacturing):

• Transistor cost: Exponentially decreasing.
• Factory (fab) cost: Exponentially increasing.

Atomically Precise Manufacturing - bootstrapping era:

• Nanoscale component cost: Exponentially decreasing.
• Factory cost: Exponentially decreasing.
  Factories built from the increasingly cheaper getting, precise nanoscale parts they produce.

What to expect

Development / bootstrapping of capabilities in atomically precise manufacturing can
(and most certainly eventually will) get on a "doubly declining learning curve" or "Moores law on steroids".
As of 2025 it is just still so early that we are still not in a quantitative scaling phase.
We still need qualitative breakthroughs first. Like e.g. getting SPM technology ready to
demonstrate early primitive mechanosysthesis capabilities (direct path side).
And advanced termination control for stiffer foldamer assemblies (incremental path side).

Transcript excerpt from a talk given by Jim Von Ehr in 2012

2012 – What's New With Nanotech: A Presentation by Zyvex CEO Jim Von Ehr (link to section in video at the bottom)

"We have to build the factory itself out of the same technology that it is manufacturing,
so the breakdown in the semiconductor industry is happening right now because the cost of the wafer fab is becoming astronomical.
It is three or four billion dollars (dollars of 2015 worth) to build a new manufacturing facility now
because they are not profiting by making smaller parts.
The technology is to make the chips are not scaling at/in the same way the transistors are
but if we have an atomically precise manufacturing, it is making small precise parts,
those are exactly what we need in the factory to make cheaper factories.
So now we have a doubly declining learning curve
as we get better making the parts
we make more precise parts more cheaply.
We put those together in the factory
the factory itself gets cheaper as the parts get cheaper
now we are on a doubly declining learning curve
the economics of that are stunning.
Maybe just see what happened with the cost of transistors, the cost of electronic functionality
where only one dimension is changing, the part (where)
the cost per transistor is going down (but) the cost of the factory is going up exponentially.
Imagine if both of those were going down.
We now have manufacturing that is basically making/trending towards infinitely complex objects at zero cost.
Sort of the economics of nature, and how much does it cost to make an acorn.
So that's the exciting thing to me about nanotechnology – is what that does to the cost of manufacturing."

Then he goes a bit more into the philosophical/political: "I used to worry about what does that mean for jobs? What does that mean for human well-being?
Then the more I started free market economics the ore I realized that's not a question that really matters.
It is going to make so much wealth in society,
we could well see a world where only one percent of the people actually do productive creative things
and the rest of them are able to live off that one percent. We will figure out a way to adept.
I think those of us who like to work will continue to work,
those who don't hopefully will allow us who do to continue to do our thing.
And there will be enough wealth to go around."

Related

• Moores law
• Also a sort of exponentially accelerating effect atop:
  The number and scope of economically viable application cases "exponentially" growing with growing capabilities of early APM.
  See page: Application case growth with APM capability growth

External links

• Youtube ReasonTV: 2012 – What's New With Nanotech: A Presentation by Zyvex CEO Jim Von Ehr (@23m04s)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_fabrication_plant
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_device_fabrication
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_scale_examples
  Note that node size is now a marketing term, not a physical measurement as e.g. gains in going 3D have been factored into these numbers.