Woe to the Bad Chip, and Woe to its Neighbor!

A brief background of my job description is necessary. At the time of writing this I worked as a technical writer for a company specializing in collecting data from machines that test chips. These machines (called "testers") test chips that go into your phones or computers. Because bad chips cause malfunctions, chip-producing companies want to avoid them as much as possible. The company I work for designed a software that helps identify issues with chips. The semiconductors collect volumes of chip-testing data, which is uploaded into the software. The software then displays this data as graphs and charts to make it very easy to interpret. In other words, if you've got a bad chip, you can see almost immediately what factors cause the problem.

Before chips are packaged, they are placed on a round disk often known as a wafer. When a bad chip is found, except for under extenuating circumstances, it is likely that other bad chips are also found in that region of the wafer. The following is a reworking of a description actually used in a training presentation:

The Cluster algorithm is similar to the concept of Good Die in Bad Neighborhood, and assumes that good chips within/close to a bad population are more likely to be outliers. A cluster is therefore defined as a contiguous region of bad chips.

Chips on a Wafer Being Tested

The people who engineered this algorithm certainly didn't intend to write a commentary on parshas Korach, but they might as well have! The description in the training material immediately brought to mind the first Rashi in parshas Korach (16:1). There, Rashi wrote, "Since the tribe of Reuben was settled in the south when they camped, thus being neighbors of Kohath and his children who were also camped in the south, they joined with Korah in his rebellion. Woe to the wicked, and woe to his neighbor!" Those people who became associated with Korach might have been good people, but they were "more likely to be outliers" because they were "within/close to a bad population." Ultimately, they formed a "contiguous region of bad chips."

The following image is from FromStevesWorkdesk.

 Woe to the bad chip, and woe to its neighbor!

What is equally, or even more (morbidly) funny, is that the industry uses the word "kill" to describe to destroying chips that are deemed bad. In some cases, if the majority of chips in a particular region of the wafer are bad, all of the chips in that region will be destroyed. In this case, however, we see a polar contrast between the algorithm that destroys chips and the point of Abraham's plea to God. Good chips are destroyed along with the bad, but Abraham plead the following:

And Abraham approached and said, 'Will You even destroy the righteous with the wicked? Perhaps there are fifty righteous men in the midst of the city; will You even destroy and not forgive the place for the sake of the fifty righteous men who are in its midst? Far be it from You to do a thing such as this, to put to death the righteous with the wicked so that the righteous should be like the wicked. Far be it from You! Will the Judge of the entire earth not perform justice?" And the Lord said, "If I find in Sodom fifty righteous men within the city, I will forgive the entire place for their sake.'" (Genesis 18:23 26)

Abraham certainly wouldn't have been very popular on the quality analysis team, refusing to kill good chips even though surrounded by bad ones. He relied on one of God's algorithms, which preserves bad chips as long as some good chips are found among them. The bad chips receive a chance of becoming good. When the user defines the algorithm to either kill or preserve chips in a certain region of the wafer, he can "select whether to kill all good chips within a particular closed shape."

Again, it seems that Abraham wouldn't have been very popular on the engineering team. I'm sure he would have gotten strange looks for being ever-so-slightly over-dramatic about saving individual chips. But alas, Abraham bargained in souls, not chips. A good thing too - I can just imagine his interviewer for such a position. "Umm, Abraham, it's clear that you're a very talented individual with a real drive for justice. It seems that you're a bit overqualified for this position? Have you tried applying for a more altruistic career?" Thank God his resume for being the father of the Jewish People was accepted instead!