Do you know more sources where I can read about IC manufacturing? Gwern's article [0] spurred my curiosity about the topic. EE senior here.
It covers in at least a little detail all the generations of semiconductors, e.g. there was a great table showing which companies were big in each. As I recall, back then TI was the only survivor, and, surprise, TI is still pretty strong as I understand it. It's discussions and illustraions of yield, what akiselev discusses here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10286735 were particularly useful.
I wouldn't recommend it today (and probably didn't return to it after the '80s) except that's it pretty cheap used and will cover lots of stuff that's not so generally well known now.