One time I was driving around, and I thought to myself "Boy, it sure is lucky we had all the products for asphalt laying around, or it would have been difficult to build all these roads."

Then I realized that if the products for building roads weren't around, then we wouldn't have had those roads in the first place, and I wouldn't have been reflecting on how lucky we were to have all this stuff.

The universe is such that the computers that do exist seem perfectly matched to its properties. How could it not be so? Other possible universes might have completely different computers and the kind we have here would be unimaginable there.

If silicon didn't exist, our computers wouldn't seem perfectly matched. It would be a struggle to make them and keep them working.

Not at all.

Gallium Arsenide works fine. So does Indium Phosphide. etc.

Silicon was much simpler to start and then path dependence kicked in. So, we poured R&D money at silicon because it was "better" than everything else. Then, because we poured R&D money at silicon, it was "better" than everything else. Lather, rinse, repeat.

For silicon not to exist, the universe would have to be quite different. Maybe making life possible and in some planet a life form might eventually find out how to build computers with whatever chemistry they'd end up with. And the chemistry of such a universe would seem uncannily suited for such computers.

Point being, you can't delete an element from the universe and expect everything else to be the same. Silicon exists because of the physics in this universe. So do silicon based computers.

It's as if someone created one element that is perfectly suited to build microelectronics. Sure, there are other materials that improve on one property or the other, but there is not a single other element which balances properties as well as silicon.

Not even mentioned yet:

- Excellent mechanical properties of the single crystal (think MEMS, or wafers that don't break all the time)

- Piezoresistive properties can be used to measure strain (also quite unique due to silicon band structure)

- Optical properties perfectly suited to detect visible light (think detectors, image sensors). Good combination of band gap and carrier lifetime to build solar cells.

It took ages from the theoretical invention of the MOS transistor to us being able to grow practically good enough oxides (which aren't riddled with interface traps)...

More like a decade, unless you refer to the Lilienfeld devices.

Yes, I was thinking of Lilienfeld. What starting point are you taking?

Bell labs tried to build a FET before the bipolar transistor. It's not so clear which theory the Lilienfeld devices are based on.

Imagine how long it would have taken if silicon wasn't this ideal.

A fully optical computer would be better still.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_computing

There is the flaw that they don’t build themselves, though.