UCSPMM

An ultra compact (silicon) processor manufacturing machine (abbreviated UCSPMM or UCPMM) was a device invented towards the close of the Century War that allowed for the manufacture of computer chips from raw silicon within a relatively small, lightweight, mobile machine.

Previously, chips were manufactured within vast, immobile factories staffed by hundreds of people and consuming enormous amounts of power. A UCSPMM, however, allowed for a processor to be 3D printed using raw silicon, with laser injection or quantum teleportation being used to dope the sample to make semiconductor transistors.

UCSPMMs were used in the aftermath of the Century War during the Dark Ages, when the ruling Averte Statum destroyed all large computer factories in an effort to eradicate communication technology in the name of cultural preservation and international security. During the latter part of the Little Dark Ages, UCSPMMs were replaced by UCCPMMs. Quantum computing was used in many applications in the century thereafter.

History and operation
UCSPMMs were initially invented by the Averte Statum in 60 BU as a way to mass manufacture silicon chips for droids, drones and other robotic entities used in the Century War. Due to their mobile nature and abundance, many UCSPMMs were stolen, especially after the Doom of Ahaggar, when the Averte Statum factory in the Ahaggar Mountains was destroyed by nuclear weapons, leaving many UCSPMMs unprotected.

UCSPMMs weighed many tons, and filled up entire rooms, but were far cry from the vast factories that preceeded them and were able to be moved using trucks, boats or aircraft. A UCSPMM was usually small enough to fit within a large garage, and so could be easily concealed.

In addition to this, all of the computer processors within device could in fact be manufactured by the device, and the instructions for the assembly of a UCSPMM could be found on the UCSPMM. The software needed to run a UCSPMM could also be freely copied from the device. As such, UCSPMMs were easier to replicate than the Averte Statum intended. The Australian Government created a UCSPMM in 24 BU, and the first non-government made device was created in 19 BU.

Initially UCSPMMs were used by opportunists to manufacture chips for computers in an environment where most computer factories had been destroyed by war. But after the Great Unification, when the Averte Statum forcibly destroyed every chip factory on Earth and confiscated millions of electronic devices, UCSPMMs and their carbon-chip analogues, UCCPMMs, became a valuable covert commodity kept in secret within homes where computers were manufactured illegally.

By the end of the Little Dark Ages, the importance of UCSPMMs faded, although during that time UCSPMMs had become so ubiquitous that there were over a 100 million of them in existence, one for every 30 people (the population then numbering 3 billion).