STEM education to strengthen Japanese manufacturing, including semiconductors! (Tsuda Kenji)-personal-Yahoo! Journalism

　Seeing the recent semiconductor boom, the leaping coalition of lawmakers is not about how important the semiconductor industry is, but because of the fact that US President Joe Biden has allocated 52 billion dollars to strengthen semiconductor manufacturing. That is, external pressure. The Congressman Union has done a lot in the past, and it is a common occurrence that has disappeared again and again. Only now there are five or even six MPs. Semiconductors are just one of them.

　However, there are also feelings of looking forward to the Congressional Union. Because the digitalization of the provincial organization of Xiaguan octopus lags behind, the vaccination lags behind, and the organization is rigid, so it is impossible to make a correct judgment. From the perspective of Taiwan and the United States, the government assistance of semiconductors provides more assistance to enterprises, such as multi-year tax concessions and R & D subsidies, rather than annual subsidies. However, the Ministry of economy, Trade and Industry has said publicly that it will not provide assistance to a company. Although the consortium has been supporting it, the approach of this country's project has failed.

　The Ministry of Industry decided to support a company called TSMC this time. However, tax breaks and R & D support are problems for the Ministry of Finance, which has not yet broken Antaghapur's attitude. Because of this, if you want to support semiconductor enterprises on the same sumo wrestling stage as the world, you can only change and let the provinces and offices join the horizontal. Only members of Parliament and the Cabinet are in a position where Hengosi can be added to various ministries and offices. Because the cabinet seems unlikely to expect it, it places some expectations on MPs. Even in the United States, President Biden was used because non-partisan lawmakers called for global changes in the semiconductor industry's supply chain, calling for semiconductor manufacturing to be of paramount importance to national security.

　Semiconductor is one of the three elements of IT (digitization). That is, computers, communications, and semiconductors are untenable no matter which one is missing. Although communications are now one of the IT infrastructure, so they are valued under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of General Affairs, computers and semiconductors under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of economy, Trade and Industry are unfortunately not taken seriously. IT and the elements that underpin it have recently been called digital, but its technology is electronic, and that hasn't changed. However, the current situation is that, as a language, the phrases semiconductor, electronic, electronic are considered old.

　Two or three years ago, the words IoT and CPS were very popular, and the IoT system itself was the technology of digital conversion (DX). Even if only the superficial language has changed, the inner technology has not changed for more than 70 years. More than 70 years ago, the three elements of IT came into being. The discovery of transistor action in 1947, the invention of electronic computers in 1946, and the suggestion of Claude Shannon's boundary theory of digital communication in 1948. Although these three elements are produced separately, they were ridiculed as toys when Intel invented microprocessors and memory in 1971, but with the improvement of Moore's Law and the increase of integration, semiconductor technology improved computer performance and reduced power consumption. Semiconductors are connected to computers. Moreover, the digital communication for transmitting data extends not only to the communication backbone system, but also to the mobile phone, whereby the communication between the semiconductor and the computer is connected.

　If we do not recognize such trends, we cannot understand the importance of semiconductors. Although there is a view that semiconductor courses should start in primary and secondary schools, the nature of technology cannot be achieved by this alone. On the contrary, it is said that STEM (Science,Technology,Engineering,Mathematics) education is very important, which has been approved by many university workers in Facebook and other places. Even if you only study semiconductor manufacturing, you can't go to the future. Rather, it is more accommodating to firmly grasp physics, chemistry, biology, medicine and so on, and to use mathematics to solve all kinds of problems. As long as you study physics, you can understand quantum computers, quantum annealing, and quantum cryptography. In addition, as long as you have a firm grasp of mathematics, you can understand AI (machine learning and deep learning). In STEM education, it is not difficult to understand semiconductors as long as they are firmly mastered.

　What are the expectations of the Union of Semiconductor councillors? what I think is that Finance Minister Aso, who serves as the top adviser, was made such a remark: what's the use of studying differential and integral at school? isn't it possible to quit? In the manufacturing industry that supports Japan, if there are cutting-edge enterprises that do not use calculus, I would like you to tell me. No matter where the manufacturing industry is, differential and integral are common sense. Even semiconductors, if they want to understand the actions of MOS transistors, must solve differential equations called Poisson's equation and current continuity. If you know the idea of differential and integral, it is also easy to understand DCT (discrete CoSine transform) and Fourier transform, or DSP (Digital signal processor), which are commonly used in compression and decompression in communication technology. On the contrary, if you do not know, it will be more and more technically abandoned by the world. Any good engineer in China, India and Southeast Asia understands the importance of STEM education. In other words, Japan is in danger of falling behind from these countries.

　In addition, principles and ideas such as differential, integral and matrix operations, laws of physics and laws of chemistry should be taught from primary, junior and senior high schools instead of reciting. As long as you firmly grasp the ideas, you will be able to understand their principles year after year, so no matter what kind of technology will be produced in the future, you will be able to fully understand them. Even if we only study semiconductor manufacturing, if we do not understand the nature of quantum mechanics, not only the quantum world, but also the quantum theory of solids, that is, the theory of semiconductor physics and physical property physics, cannot be mastered. What the Ministry of Education, Education, Science and Technology expects is to let us understand that STEM education is the basis for strengthening manufacturing in Japan.