Microchips..?
Answer:
Manufacturing microchips requires the “economies of scale” to make them cost effective.
The raw material is abundant and cheep, but the processing is extremely precise and requires very expensive machines. It is not uncommon for a microchip foundry to cost 3 to 4 billion to set up.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/foundry_%28...
In the early days of microchip manufacturing only the government could afford to buy them (for the early Apollo missions). Microchips went into mass production for use in the flight control and navigation computer built for the minuteman II intercontinental ballistic missiles. This brought the cost down from $1000 per SSI (small scale integration) chip to $3 per chip.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/embedded_co...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/semiconduct...
The alternative to making your own chips (which is not really feasible) is to use microchips that are programmable. If the requirements are not too demanding one can use a microcontroller that is programmed either in assembly language or often in C.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/microcontro...
http://www3.telus.net/danpeirce/c_18/...
When requirements cannot be satisfied with a microcontroller one can use a programmable logic microchip like a FPGA (field programmable gate array) or CPLD (complex programmable logic Device).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/fpga...
One method to "program" these programmable logic devices is to draw a schematic using software set up for this purpose.
The software translates the schematic into the code used to program the device. While that sounds good it is often better to use a "hardware description language" because it is much easier to make changes to text files.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/hardware_de...
Did you mean to ask " how come regular people are not able to make microchips?"
The process of fabricating integrated circuits is a very complicated and highly precise procedure. I think that I heard that the latest Intel fabrication facility cost about 3 billion dollars.
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