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GlobalFoundries Stops All 7nm Development
- deepnotderp 8y agoSo basically a monopoly for TSMC. Intel is in serious trouble. Samsung is still developing their photoresist. And TSMC is shipping.
- Tuna-Fish 8y agoThere was an interesting slide from a few years back that showed the net profit (less investment) of all the leading edge contract foundries since the founding of TSMC. It was very easy to see that since then, TSMC has earned more than the total net profit of the industry. Everyone else invests a lot of money to maybe stay somewhat competitive and still lose money, while TSMC is swimming in it. This is just situation normal. Sadly I could not find the slide online.
- tanilama 8y agoDoesn't surprise me a bit, TSMC is notoriously for overworking and their pay to the employees, while great by local standard, is like a bargain in US
- zeusk 8y ago"7nm" is very misleading, there isn't any feature of that size in either GloFo or TSMC's transistor libraries. Intel's fabs are still cutting edge, although the gap has almost closed up.
- baybal2 8y agoWhat unusual thing was happening as of recently, is that legacy processes up to 90nm began "coming back back from the dead," because the bleeding edge became so "congested" by very few behemoth consumers with exclusive deals with fabs: GPUs, top tier phone SoCs, and high end network switch chips. On my memory, 65nm was the last process on which a "cookie cutter SoC" was still a good business. But with more opportunities coming up in "niche microcontroller" market today, thanks to boom in "smart things," a generic cheap low power process might too become a viable business again. GloFo might have just noticed that, and are trying to capitalise by being first in the new niche: tier 1 fab service on cost optimised legacy process. They were already the biggest fab for companies to whom always getting the best process is not raison d'etre, who can't afford gigantic MOQs of last gen processes. So they were picking up whomever TSMC was losing due to MOQs, and lack of first class treatment. TSMC was too greedy putting so much focus on work with tier 1 superplayers. Question thought, what will this mean for their no. 1 customer...? Though they announced them moving to TSMC, their 7nm might still not materialise for quite some time, and they still have to make their low end chip tapeouts somewhere.
- noobermin 8y ago>Along with the cancellation of the 7LP, GlobalFoundries essentially canned all pathfinding and research operations for 5 nm and 3 nm nodes. Is it just me or does this seem like a drastically bad move for the long term?
- deepnotderp 8y agoNot necessarily, I actually think this is a smart move on their part, TSMC is ahead on 7nm and FD-SOI, RF, SiGe, etc. are big, profitable and rapidly growing markets in which GF has a differential advantage.
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- amirhirsch 8y agoAgree this a smart move. They should be targeting lower volume markets where the 30% decrease in per-die cost at 7nm isn't offset by the increased upfront costs. If they focus instead on decreasing fixed costs of lower volume ASICs, they will have competitive advantage in long-tail markets.
- snaky 8y agoAnd maybe, if they will push their resources really hard on decreasing costs of lower volume ASICs, that would be a big win over GF in long term. It depends on progress in hardware synthesis tools and software mainly. If the tools like auto-generating optimized RTL from Haskell code would became mainstream, and cost for production of custom, reasonably small ASICs on modern fab processes drop by an orders of magnitude - we would get something similar to what happened to PCB recently, when there is no point to made it by yourself even if you need a dozen, just send gerber files to OSH Park, and get your PCBs for $5 in two days.
- wmf 8y agoGloFo was never long-term sustainable, so they basically had a choice between going bankrupt in 1-2 years trying to do 7 nm or coasting on 14 nm and slowly withering away over 5-10 years.
- sliken 8y agoAndy Grove gave a keynote at hot chips, I think around 1999. Back then, almost everyone had a fab. Arm wasn't a big thing, the iphone didn't exist, smartphone generally didn't exist, and many companies had fabs. , He basically outlined how each process shrink would allow more transistors, but also get more expensive. His conclusion was that fewer fabs would use the leading process in each generation and that costs would almost double for each generation. It wasn't a particular opinion at the time. Generally it was thought if you were serious about making CPUs, that you would have your own fab. Impressive how true his predictions were.
- blattimwind 8y ago"I predict that within one-hundred years computers will be twice as powerful, ten-thousand times larger and so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe will own them."
- GenerocUsername 8y agoI assume 3 of the kings are Microsoft (Azure), Amazon (AWS) and Google (GCP)
- theyinwhy 8y agoComment can be improved by adding source.
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- eganist 8y agoThis explains the sudden correction AMD saw mid-rally today. https://www.google.com/search?q=NASDAQ:AMD https://www.google.com/search?q=NASDAQ:AMD The impact of the TSMC monopoly on 7nm might not have been fully priced in quite yet as I doubt everyone caught this bit of news.(Disclosure: I'm long AMD) Edit: Actually, this news broke embargo at 4pm eastern, no? The downswing took place mid-day...
- jkabrg 8y agoCan someone explain how this works? We've got the following chip companies: Intel, AMD, Samsung. And we've got a bunch of "fab" companies: Intel, TSMC, Global Foundries, Samsung. What's the difference between the two sets of companies? Why can't Intel just buy a "7nm" processor from TSMC? And what exactly is "7nm"? The distance between the closest transistors in a chip? Just guessing. [edit] From browsing Wikipedia, I gather that: - A chip company designs a processor. The design is in the form of a circuit diagram(?) - A fab company turns that diagram into a physical product. So for example, ARM designs a chip, which then gets built by Samsung. ARM is strictly responsible for design, and Samsung provides a factory.
- baybal2 8y agoShort and to the point answers: >And what exactly is "7nm"? The size of pixel in an IC, or it used to be so. For convenience, just think that it still is. >Why can't Intel just buy a "7nm" processor from TSMC? Intel can dual source fab capacity, (they make part of Atom line at TSMC, part in house) and did so in the past. Besides technicalities, a lot has to do with pride.
- dbcurtis 8y agoAt my time at Intel, the company was fab-constrained. Intel ran some parts on outside fabs. The decision as to which ones was easily made by sorting projects in order of gross margin per wafer. Highest margin parts ran on Intel fab, when the fab was full, the project had to hunt down fab capacity elsewhere.
- CryoLogic 8y agoIt's not a concrete distance, but moreso a range. I think 7nm is the bottom of the range so the distance would be 7nm-14nm. 10nm chips have distance ranges of 10nm to 20nm. I think at that size it is very difficult to get exacts. Fab refers to a plant than manufactures the chips, versus designs them. I think Intel does both?
- btouellette 8y agoThe first set is doing chip design and layout (think of this like the circuit diagram for the CPU). The second set is doing the actual manufacturing after being delivered a complete layout. Intel can buy a "7nm" processor from TSMC and in fact for products that aren't their processors they actually do get other companies to manufacture their products occasionally. They don't want to release the complete design of their processor to external suppliers for IP reasons and have been leveraging their manufacturing advantage to sell more CPUs. Intel could build AMD chips in their fab but then Intel CPUs have to compete with AMD on architecture alone and lose any performance edge attributable to the manufacturing. Technically this is the gate length of the transistor (https://nptel.ac.in/courses/103106075/Courses/Lecture21.html https://nptel.ac.in/courses/103106075/Courses/Lecture21.html) but it's becoming mostly a marketing term to refer to the generation of manufacturing tech since the transistor density depends on enough other factors now that gate length alone isn't a good measure. Intel's 14nm ~= TSMC/GF 10nm and Intel's 10nm ~= TSMC/GF 7nm.
- lettergram 8y agoHmm that doesn't seem great for AMD, but I don't really know - anyone else?
- janoc 8y agoAMD has already announced they are moving all their CPUs and GPUs to TSMC. The big loser in that case will be Global Foundries.
- lettergram 8y agoI recognize that, but I'm assuming there was an assumption 7nm was coming up soon. As that is no longer the case, would they change their plans?
- wmf 8y agoIt's possible that AMD abandoned GloFo first (they've been coyly saying "a variety of fabs" for months) and then without a lead customer GloFo decided to cancel 7 nm.
- philjohn 8y agoIt's actually great news for AMD. Due to the terms of the spinoff of GloFo, AMD had minimum order volumes they HAD to send their way, and that caused issues when they were ramping up Ryzen, causing GloFo to have to license the Samsung process so they could keep their end of the bargain up. This frees AMD to go exclusively with TSMC, or split their fab needs between Samsung and TSMC.
- flyinglizard 8y agoWhat are the political implications of the entire world becoming so reliant on TSMC, with nearly all of its manufacturing concentrated in Taiwan? It's no secret China is eyeing semiconductor manufacturing as sort of a last frontier they need to cross before they become a vertically integrated powerhouse. If China took over Taiwan, and assumed influence over TSMC, wouldn't this be a major achievement? 1. Why aren't TSMC scattering their fabs across different continents - not only for political, but also to protect against natural disasters etc? 2. How much of the USA protection of Taiwan takes into account semiconductor manufacturing?
- baybal2 8y ago>If China took over Taiwan, and assumed influence over TSMC, wouldn't this be a major achievement? There are huge black armoured safes with code locks on many of older TSMC premises. The rumor is that inside are demolition charges.
- aphextron 8y agoSource?
- hak8or 8y agoI would love to hear more about this, even if it's an unfounded rumor.
- baybal2 8y agoWell, I met a number of TSMC oldtimers in Singapore when I was there on an exchange program. And I had a talk with them once on this exact topic. Among them, "the black safe" is an euphemism for the worst case scenario for the company. Nobody they asked exactly knew what is inside, but some people were instructed decades ago that in "worst case scenario," men with military training should open them with code that will be provided, without anything specific said on what will happen next. They said that judging by construction, they look exactly like a something for explosives storage. I once had my dream of working in semi industry after being fascinated with electronics from early years. I studied physics and electronics engineering by myself like hell through my late teens, and had mentor who connected me with companies in Taiwan, and I almost got my leg in a Taiwanese fabless, though only in an "office bellboy" position. Despite all of that, and me having a letter of recommendation for NTU and preliminary approval in Nanyang, parents sent me "to study businessy things rich people do"
- moeadham 8y agoThis is the type of news that will be relevant in 20 years. There are only 3 foundries left: Intel, TSMC and Samsung. If (when) Intel gives up, none of them will have strong roots in the USA. One of the biggest shifts in technological expertise from West to East in history.
- sm64 8y agoYour comment is fake news.
- Kadin 8y agoDoesn't seem to be obvious that Intel will blink first, before Samsung. Intel might start making noises to try and get government subsidization though, and I would expect Samsung to do the same to the Korean government. Having a up-to-date fab is pretty clearly a national security asset, else you are at the mercy of whoever you are buying silicon from. Maybe in the 90s or early 00s when everyone was on the globalization train we would have just let things go, but it's hard to imagine that happening now that hardball realpolitik is back in fashion.
- moeadham 8y agoGovernment intervention obviously changes the dynamics, but Intel is seriously falling behind in low-power. Do you see any indication they will be able to take on a majority marketshare in mobile in the next decade?
- giobox 8y agoThe only chance of this happening realistically is if Intel decide to open their fabs to let others produce their own CPU designs in Intel factories. For example, instead of Apple going to TSMC for their next gen ARM design, Intel decide to do a deal to win that business and produce iPhone CPUs in their fabs. Intel I believe still holds an ARM license from the XScale days, so I suppose an in house design for Android devices could work too. Historically Intel has been hugely reluctant to do this, as part of the deal when buying Intel chips was that to get access to their advanced fabrication you have to buy their own high margin chip designs. Building other people's chips is traditionally a much smaller margin business, and would be an enormous change to Intel's business model. I could still see this happening, especially with the current outlook for Intel not looking as rosy as it once was, but it would be a major loss of face for the company that once ruled strong on x86. The fact that Intel effectively have no market share in the hottest consumer computing market in history (smartphones) is a major failing on Intel's part. Intel selling their ARM business (XScale) to Marvell the year before the first iPhone launched increasingly looks like a pretty terrible decision in hindsight.
- martinpw 8y agoI'm reminded of the chart in this article showing the number of leading edge foundries dropping with every generation: https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/240901-tsmc-announces-plans-new-16-billion-foundry-push-envelope-5nm-3nm-process-nodes https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/240901-tsmc-announces-pl... and now one more step down. (As explained in the article, GF is not in the righmost box because they were not yet on the leading process when the chart was made).
- kragen 8y agoAFAICT this means TSMC has no competition for 7nm for their fabless customers, which means they have no incentive to invest in getting to the next process node — their customers' BATNA is now "spend several billion dollars building your own <7nm fab." So I think this is the end of Moore's law for everyone except possibly Intel and Samsung.
- AgentOrange1234 8y agoThey need their customers to be competitive with their competitors, right? If Intel and Samsung by are still in the game, then AMD and Apple can only survive if TSMC remains competitive?
- kragen 8y agoThat's sort of AMD and Apple's problem, not TSMC's. You can't expect TSMC executives to risk TSMC's future by building a multibillion-dollar 5nm fab, which may fail, when there are plenty of other customers out there for their unique (?) 7nm process, on the theory that not moving to 5nm would be bad for the overall health of the semiconductor industry.
- st26 8y agoI thought Samsung was sort-of competition, not being a dedicated foundry like TSMC & GloFlo, but making some designs for other companies.
- shmerl 8y agoWhat does it mean for AMD?
- lower 8y agoThey've already announced that they're moving production to TSMC. https://www.anandtech.com/show/13279/amd-to-fab-7nm-cpus-gpus-at-tsmc https://www.anandtech.com/show/13279/amd-to-fab-7nm-cpus-gpu...
- JoachimS 8y agoSee also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17851278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17851278
- PoespasAR 8y agoThat does not seem like a future proof strategy to me.