At Nanotronics, we take pride in automating challenging quality control and process control issues by collaborating with our customers.
When we’re not busy automating these processes for the semiconductor industry, you can find some of us around a table playing board games with family or friends. One game in particular keeps our minds sharp and puts our relationships to the test, the familiar hexagonal board, Settlers of Catan.
If you’re not familiar with Settlers of Catan, also known as “Settlers” or simply “Catan,” it’s a strategic game where four players compete to build their settlements using resources from the board. The first player to reach 10 victory points wins the game. Each settlement is worth one point, and upgrading a settlement to a city doubles its value. Building numerous settlements is not an easy task, so players often resort to other strategies, such as developing the largest army or constructing the longest road. My personal favorite is the latter, similar to attempting to shoot the moon in a game of hearts. While other players may notice your progress towards this two-point score, it’s often too late to prevent you from securing the win.
Settlers of Catan serves as an excellent introduction to the Euro-style board games that have gained popularity in recent years. We thought it would be a fun way to celebrate the intersection of games, semiconductors, and AI and Machine Learning.
Here’s the World’s Smallest Settlers of Catan board, featuring hex pieces measuring less than a millimeter across. The board is incredibly thin, measuring just 50nm, which is 2000 times thinner than a strand of hair or 50 times slimmer than a red blood cell. It’s crafted from gold and placed on a glass substrate, with the gold etched using the same techniques employed by semiconductor manufacturers to fabricate microchips. Thanks to our friends at Gotham Silicon, a tiny startup (yes, you heard that right!), this exquisite little game board was brought to life right here in New York City.
Upon receiving the miniature Catan board, we subjected it to one of our nSpec tools to assess if our AI could identify and classify the Longest Road. The tool accurately identified and categorized each road piece, and then it recognized the contiguous pattern of the same-color road pieces as the World’s Smallest Longest Road.
As we celebrate this extraordinary achievement, we extend our warmest wishes to all fellow board game geeks on this auspicious April Fools’ Day.
And yes, we really did make the World's Smallest Settlers of Catan board.
