6 ms·

>It is also surprising to me to see how far Intel has fallen from the process lead they had. First with HKMG by several years, first with FinFet by several year

by tormeh 9y ago

>It is also surprising to me to see how far Intel has fallen from the process lead they had. First with HKMG by several years, first with FinFet by several year, I suppose they are still first to do cobalt interconnect but in terms of process density the foundries have caught them and appear poised to take a substantial lead over the next several years. >With Intel offering foundry processes and GF, Samung and TSMC all offering leading edge processes the industry now has four viable leading edge process options. Exciting times.

tomalpha 9y ago
Indeed. Intel finally having some really competitive competitors (as it were) is great to see. I was going to mutter about this great competition coming from overseas and being an example of the Decline Of The West, but Global Foundries appears to be a mainly US+Europe based thing. (I know it span out of AMD a while back but had assumed until just now that it did all its manufacturing in China). Exciting times indeed.
- Spooky23 9y ago
  I think fabs are a business where capital rules vs labor cost. GlobalFoundies built a fab in New York, but got megabucks in aid to do so.
  - neuromantik8086 9y ago
    GlobalFoundries is getting massive incentives to expand in New York State. The initial Saratoga Springs is just the first fab Cuomo has built for them. Currently, they're building another fab in Utica that's intended to rehabilitate it after its Rust Belt woes. Similarly, Tesla/Solar City received a huge number of economic incentives to build a factory in Buffalo. Naturally, since this is NYS there's also been a fair bit of corruption: [1] http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Kaloyeros-in-fight-to-get-charges-tossed-11160539.php http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Kaloyeros-in-fight-t... I fully expect the state government to throw a bunch of incentives at Amazon as well for HQ2- there's a push in Rochester for someone to take over all of the Kodak/Xerox buildings after those two companies royally messed up.
- deepnotderp 9y ago
  GloFo is owned by a middle eastern oil fund btw.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  No international company will put a fab in china unless the equipment is 10 years out of date. Semi conducter production isn’t labor intensive anyways.
  - saas_co_de 9y ago
    False. GF has a JV to build a 300mm 22nm FD-SOI line in China https://www.globalfoundries.com/news-events/press-releases/globalfoundries-and-chengdu-partner-expand-fd-soi-ecosystem-china https://www.globalfoundries.com/news-events/press-releases/g...
    - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
      22 nm is about 10 years old.
      - saas_co_de 9y ago
        Not the same thing. 22 FD-SOI is current gen for FD-SOI. TSMC is also building a 16nm line https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1332704 https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1332704 While it is true that cutting edge lines are going to stay in established facilities with established R&D teams there is nothing stopping China from getting the tech. Everything is for sale. What China is missing is the expert workforce that can actually bring up a line for a next gen process themselves, which takes time to build, not just money.
        seanmcdirmid 9y ago
        There are two things china can’t buy because no country will sell it to them: a. Advanced semi conductor tech, b. Modern Jet turbine tech. Those two things China has to (and is) develop themselves. They definitely aren’t there yet, which is why they import those things in spades (most semiconductors are imported, and even china’s own jet fighters are mostly reliant on saturns). They will probably get there in the future.
saas_co_de 9y ago
Intel is delayed on their next-gen node and so that has given the others time to get Intel's last-gen node working but that in no way indicates that they will surpass Intel.
- tfha 9y ago
  Yeah. It's hard to tell how much we are seeing these reviews because people want to see Intel get passed vs. because Intel is actually getting passed. Are there any rest that chips released, actual chips, where the different foundries can say "look here's 1kb of sram on an actual chip, with this basic adder circuit, and this is how much area it takes and this is how much energy it consumes on our latest process"? Actual performance doesn't always match the spec sheet, it's hard to get a true comparison unless you've got circuits from each foundry.
ttul 9y ago
I studied all this stuff in university during the dark ages, and still have to do a double take whenever I see “nm” measurements. These things are atomic scale, and we use them all day long as if nothing happened.
- rb808 9y ago
  Yeah I can remember how amazing 1 micron widths were. getting to 100th of that is a miracle.
  - Vintila 9y ago
    Slightly off topic but, how do they create the lithography masks with such tiny and precise features?
    - detaro 9y ago
      Cut with lasers or electron beams as far as I know, and the masks are bigger by some multiple. Also have really weird patterns, since they have to correct for how the light-waves interact due to the small size.
ChuckMcM 9y ago
I see it as more confirmation that Moore's Law is probably dead for real this time. By many measures Intel has enjoyed a 2 - 5 year lead over the competition in terms of circuit design and they have lost that lead. What that says to me is that over the last 2 - 5 years everything they have tried in order to push past this node has not resulted in useful advances. And if they can't push this down the beach can anyone else?
- sounds 9y ago
  Intel has known their Dennard Scaling was petering out for a while now. I think Intel is more concerned with the loss of their instruction set architecture "monpoly." Despite their massive R&D investments, they aren't expecting process scaling to be the big win for much longer.
- ksec 9y ago
  I think it depends what you mean by moor's law, since everyone seems have a different view on it. If we are still talking about transistor density then it is not dead yet. Intel as shown the improvement from 14nm and 10nm is roughly in line. But i am pretty certain the next one wont fit the graph line any more. But if we are taking about the economics of transistor where it is getting cheaper 40-50% cheaper every two years then that has gone since 14nm.

by tormeh 9y ago

tomalpha 9y ago

Indeed. Intel finally having some really competitive competitors (as it were) is great to see. I was going to mutter about this great competition coming from overseas and being an example of the Decline Of The West, but Global Foundries appears to be a mainly US+Europe based thing. (I know it span out of AMD a while back but had assumed until just now that it did all its manufacturing in China). Exciting times indeed.

Spooky23 9y ago
I think fabs are a business where capital rules vs labor cost. GlobalFoundies built a fab in New York, but got megabucks in aid to do so.
- neuromantik8086 9y ago
  GlobalFoundries is getting massive incentives to expand in New York State. The initial Saratoga Springs is just the first fab Cuomo has built for them. Currently, they're building another fab in Utica that's intended to rehabilitate it after its Rust Belt woes. Similarly, Tesla/Solar City received a huge number of economic incentives to build a factory in Buffalo. Naturally, since this is NYS there's also been a fair bit of corruption: [1] http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Kaloyeros-in-fight-to-get-charges-tossed-11160539.php http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Kaloyeros-in-fight-t... I fully expect the state government to throw a bunch of incentives at Amazon as well for HQ2- there's a push in Rochester for someone to take over all of the Kodak/Xerox buildings after those two companies royally messed up.
deepnotderp 9y ago
GloFo is owned by a middle eastern oil fund btw.
seanmcdirmid 9y ago
No international company will put a fab in china unless the equipment is 10 years out of date. Semi conducter production isn’t labor intensive anyways.
- saas_co_de 9y ago
  False. GF has a JV to build a 300mm 22nm FD-SOI line in China https://www.globalfoundries.com/news-events/press-releases/globalfoundries-and-chengdu-partner-expand-fd-soi-ecosystem-china https://www.globalfoundries.com/news-events/press-releases/g...
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    22 nm is about 10 years old.
    - saas_co_de 9y ago
      Not the same thing. 22 FD-SOI is current gen for FD-SOI. TSMC is also building a 16nm line https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1332704 https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1332704 While it is true that cutting edge lines are going to stay in established facilities with established R&D teams there is nothing stopping China from getting the tech. Everything is for sale. What China is missing is the expert workforce that can actually bring up a line for a next gen process themselves, which takes time to build, not just money.
      - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
        There are two things china can’t buy because no country will sell it to them: a. Advanced semi conductor tech, b. Modern Jet turbine tech. Those two things China has to (and is) develop themselves. They definitely aren’t there yet, which is why they import those things in spades (most semiconductors are imported, and even china’s own jet fighters are mostly reliant on saturns). They will probably get there in the future.

saas_co_de 9y ago

Intel is delayed on their next-gen node and so that has given the others time to get Intel's last-gen node working but that in no way indicates that they will surpass Intel.

tfha 9y ago
Yeah. It's hard to tell how much we are seeing these reviews because people want to see Intel get passed vs. because Intel is actually getting passed. Are there any rest that chips released, actual chips, where the different foundries can say "look here's 1kb of sram on an actual chip, with this basic adder circuit, and this is how much area it takes and this is how much energy it consumes on our latest process"? Actual performance doesn't always match the spec sheet, it's hard to get a true comparison unless you've got circuits from each foundry.

ttul 9y ago

I studied all this stuff in university during the dark ages, and still have to do a double take whenever I see “nm” measurements. These things are atomic scale, and we use them all day long as if nothing happened.

rb808 9y ago
Yeah I can remember how amazing 1 micron widths were. getting to 100th of that is a miracle.
- Vintila 9y ago
  Slightly off topic but, how do they create the lithography masks with such tiny and precise features?
  - detaro 9y ago
    Cut with lasers or electron beams as far as I know, and the masks are bigger by some multiple. Also have really weird patterns, since they have to correct for how the light-waves interact due to the small size.

ChuckMcM 9y ago

I see it as more confirmation that Moore's Law is probably dead for real this time. By many measures Intel has enjoyed a 2 - 5 year lead over the competition in terms of circuit design and they have lost that lead. What that says to me is that over the last 2 - 5 years everything they have tried in order to push past this node has not resulted in useful advances. And if they can't push this down the beach can anyone else?

sounds 9y ago
Intel has known their Dennard Scaling was petering out for a while now. I think Intel is more concerned with the loss of their instruction set architecture "monpoly." Despite their massive R&D investments, they aren't expecting process scaling to be the big win for much longer.
ksec 9y ago
I think it depends what you mean by moor's law, since everyone seems have a different view on it. If we are still talking about transistor density then it is not dead yet. Intel as shown the improvement from 14nm and 10nm is roughly in line. But i am pretty certain the next one wont fit the graph line any more. But if we are taking about the economics of transistor where it is getting cheaper 40-50% cheaper every two years then that has gone since 14nm.