10 ms·

GlobalFoundries sues TSMC, wants U.S. import ban on some products

138 points by callwaiting 7y ago

throwaway2048 7y ago
I have a feeling that eventually we are going to be facing basically a completely paralyzed tech industry because of what basically amounts to a patent singularity. As more and more formerly innovating and profitable companies that invented and patented key technologies either start to struggle, get bought out, or go out of business, there will be more and more pressure to monetize their huge patent warchests, (and competing companies are even more driven to build up their own warchests as a result) we are going to see wave after wave of massive industry wide patent lawsuits like this that are going to completely disrupt things. We absolutely need massive patent reform in the USA before things reach this point and any incentive to bring new products to market is destroyed by the tidal wave of patent suits that it is virtually guaranteed to attract. This stuff has very extreme chilling effects, for instance a technology that has almost limitless potential (forward error correction) receives very little attention because of how crazy the patent situation surrounding it is.
- Fjolsvith 7y ago
  I'm sure a national emergency declaration would resolve an issue like this.
- ajsnigrutin 7y ago
  Since the technology moves on so fast, shortening the patent expiration to eg. 1year would solve most of the problems. Companies get 1 year head start (which is a lot), and after 1 year, we all benefit.
  - mstolpm 7y ago
    Wouldn't the slowness of the courts and the lengths of processing lead to virtually no protection at all? If going through the courts takes sometimes 3+ years but parents expire after 1 year, every final court ruling would be retroactive.
    - rapsey 7y ago
      So if you prevail you get payed retroactively for the damages. Whats wrong with that?
    - josaka 7y ago
      You can get six years back damages, and often you have a substantial portion of a patent's 20-year term in front of you. And frequently cases settle well before you are three years into a suit.
  - new299 7y ago
    If you're suggesting a 1 year patent period for all utility patents, you might as well just get rid of patents. In the industry I work in (Biotech - DNA sequencing) it takes maybe 5 years to mature an approach and get it to market. Once your patent is published, there isn't much to stop others developing the same method [1] (they just would run into trouble if they sold it commercially). So at the same time that the patent owner is developing their platform, a competitor can be developing theirs and launch at the same time or nearly the same time as you. Certain areas, like software patents, I'd possibly agree. I don't think software/algorithm patents are a good idea for a number of reasons however... [1] General consensus seems to be patents don't cover academic work. I've also heard that they don't cover commercial research, and that in any case it's hard to provide damages. http://softlib.rice.edu/ques.html#2 http://softlib.rice.edu/ques.html#2
    - rapsey 7y ago
      > If you're suggesting a 1 year patent period for all utility patents, you might as well just get rid of patents. In the industry I work in (Biotech - DNA sequencing) it takes maybe 5 years to mature an approach and get it to market. So have a two phase validity. Once it's in the market you have a year.
      - dkersten 7y ago
        You’d want some limitations on the first phase too, so that companies don’t hold onto their patents indefinitely while waiting for the perfect market conditions for their one-year monopoly.
        mcny 7y ago
        A real solution is don't apply for patent protection. The down side is if someone else also figured it out, you don't get anything. Makes sense to me.
        dkersten 7y ago
        Yes, I agree. I'm not a fan of patents. While I understand the desire to protect ones investment, it doesn't make sense to me that it should be done at the expense of someone else's investment, since multiple people coming up with similar ideas around the same time isn't particularly uncommon and unfortunately there's no easy way to differentiate those from plagiarism.
  - beefield 7y ago
    I would think that setting a fast increasing tax (say doubling each year) on patents would solve lots of issues. Once you do not want to pay the tax, the patent moves to public domain. Same tax should apply also to copyrighted work.
    - velox_io 7y ago
      Shortening patents (when it can take years to gain traction) or making them more expensive only plays into the hands of large companies
  - mensetmanusman 7y ago
    As someone who researches at a western company, this would actually get rid of a lot of research, because business moves so slow to commercialize due to the highly regulated environment. Regulation and legal arbitrage, where companies (particularly in Asia) can take what is newly invented on a silver platter and sell to the global market due to lack of environmental protections etc. would be all that is left.
    - mcny 7y ago
      » As someone who researches at a western company, this would actually get rid of a lot of research, because business moves so slow to commercialize due to the highly regulated environment. I don't know about you but I'm perfectly ok with that.
      - mensetmanusman 7y ago
        I like technological progress, but I would also be okay digging ditches in case our economy crashed towards a commodities-only enterprise, so I’m strange in that regards :)
        phkahler 7y ago
        Some people think patents are required for innovation. They are mistaken. It is human nature to innovate.
        mensetmanusman 7y ago
        I agree, but it is not human nature to take their innovation to the world. Post WW2 the US govt had tens of thousands of technology patents but no one to bring it to the world. Patents are risk mitigation tools for funding entities to actually support commercialization. Innovation will happen always, but most of it stays on a dusty shelf a la an academic library. It’s not necessary that anything interesting and innovative (and sufficiently complex) gets sold.
        7y ago
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
varshithr 7y ago
GlobalFoundries(GF) was part of AMD and now AMD relies heavily on TSMC. If this ban they are seeking goes through, does it affect AMD? I think GF gave up on 7nm node a while ago, So maybe AMD is safe here.
- baybal2 7y ago
  Yes, and they still have AMD's orders going on for legacy products, auxiliary ICs, and interface logic. That's entirely them giving up on existing as a proper market player, and the "farewell gift" to the industry before they self-destruct. Having an idea of mentality of GlobalFoundries' new owners, I can say they care about having a return on their investment any way possible, and how they make that is of no importance to them. Unlike a tech player with stake in the well being of larger ecosystem, or genuine fear of being denied the market by retaliatory lawsuits, those guys have no problem "setting the house on fire" This is why they chose Germany out of all countries to file a patent lawsuit. Germany famously allows for instant summary injunctions in patent and other IP cases, which will be completely devastating for a company making actual physical products. Second to that, Germany controls the supply of few critical chemicals for semiconductor manufacturing, and they may opt to go for arm twisting with them too. I can say that this is what we will see for year and years to come, unless something dramatic will finally happen to the patent system.
- makomk 7y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if AMD kept some kind of patent license to GlobalFoundries patents when they spun them off.
  - varshithr 7y ago
    Makes sense to do so.
baybal2 7y ago
Well, what can I say. This is how the "nuclear option" with regards to tech patents looks like. That's what everybody talked about few years ago, when big tech companies were making big patent defence pools. An all out patent war in software looked scary enough for the industry, but the damage from patent war in semi, and particularly in the fab process, has a potential to surpass even that few times over. Now US and German legal system has a choice: follow on its current ideology into the dead end, or not to do so, and abandon their positions of grandstanding
vectorEQ 7y ago
is it hip now to try and ban competitors from doing business :/ . grow up. where are the days of trying to beat competitors with a better product?
- ivoras 7y ago
  That time never actually existed. Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Facebook... and practically every large business since Rockefeller and before, did everything in their power, including regulatory capture, to hobble their competition. It's the nature of doing business at scale.
  - Merrill 7y ago
    The invention of the telephone, for example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisha_Gray_and_Alexander_Bell_telephone_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisha_Gray_and_Alexander_Bell...
  - decoyworker 7y ago
    Microsoft and Apple do not make good products?
    - vectorEQ 7y ago
      always everyone only looks at few examples such as these companies. who actually do make decent products. (good luck making better OS than them for example... ) but look at things like ZOOM. they make product which has no new features. it just works better and that's why people use it. it does exist. just not in the minds of people who numb themselves with clickbait.
      - moomin 7y ago
        Of course, back in the day people did make better operating systems than Microsoft, and Microsoft deliberately broke their other offerings to put them out of business. And seriously, Apple’s no better. iTunes didn’t survive because it was the best way to put music on your iPod, but because they sued the competitors out of existence. Microsoft and Apple make good products, but most of the money comes from locking you into inferior products.
kryptiskt 7y ago
So the reason they abandoned their 7nm process was because they were going to make money patent trolling instead? Guess it doesn't require as much investment as building fabs. Actually producing stuff is just a liability for a patent troll, that leaves them open for counterattacks.
- perlgeek 7y ago
  I think it's more likely that they abandoned their 7nm process because they couldn't figure it out, and then resorted to patent trolling to still make some money, somehow.
skunkpocalypse 7y ago
As crazy as it sounds: this is GloFo trying to get TSMC to buy its remaining assets. Settling the patent litigation is part of what they're offering. Between cancelling post-14nm development and selling off their photomask shop (!) to Toppan late last year the writing has been on the wall for a while. I shed no tears for GloFo but I am very, very worried about the future of the VLSI industry. It won't be long before there are only two titans left, and then one of them kills the other.
TorKlingberg 7y ago
I predict this will work itself out by TSMC paying some money to GF. The amount will have some some vague connection to the validity of the case and the mood of a judge.
- sharpneli 7y ago
  GF licensed 14nm from Samsung. My hunch is that they’re trying to get their hands on TSMC 7nm with cheap terms.
  - jpmattia 7y ago
    > My hunch is that they’re trying to get their hands on TSMC 7nm with cheap terms. I can't imagine a less diplomatic strategy for negotiating cheap licensing terms. Good luck to them if that's the angle.
  - bazooka_penguin 7y ago
    Pretty sure IBM 7nm was functionally complete but they decided not to expand facilities to support it. Why would they do it for TSMC 7nm instead of, say, licensing something from samsung again?
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Gwypaas 7y ago
This take on it from the AMD subreddit makes at least for me more sense than the "evil patents" way of thinking. Though, nothing confirmed yet. It seems strange at first, but the selection of patents and the timeline lead me to think of a very particular plausible line of events that would absolutely merit a lawsuit and also explain the delay to implementing said lawsuit. AMD, IIRC, has access to Global Foundries' patent portfolio - enabling them to use those patents freely. Makes sense, they were once the same company and have a very tight agreement in effect for at least a few more years. AMD goes to TSMC for 28nm after GF's stumbles and takes GF's patents to TSMC to improve their process tech for AMD's needs. All legit, all legal. TSMC does not have permission to use those patents on non-AMD products, but does so anyway. Fast forward a couple years and investigating TSMC's process as it applies to shipping products by other vendors reveals patent infringements. Good-faith efforts are made to stop the infringement, but TSMC either doesn't acknowledge the infringement or simply claims compliance and then does nothing. Ergo, the lawsuit we see today. https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/cvqu5l/comment/ey6fje5 https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/cvqu5l/comment/ey6fje5
- baybal2 7y ago
  FinFET is a TSMC's invention as well as immersion lithography, and yet it is somebody else got the patent. How is that fair? How does it "encourage progress?"
  - dmix 7y ago
    Real world innovation and who runs to the patent office first are often two very different things. Yet many, often very rational, people defend the process as necessary for innovation. Much like minimum wage laws there's a lot of sub-industries where it legitimately helps (studies show fast food mega corps don't have lower employment rates after small bumps) and many where it hurts the very same people it claims to protect (unskilled youth and disabled people who just want to work in the summer/after school/part time for cash strapped small businesses for experience and pocket change, and don't benefit from a 'living wage' or nothing arrangements). I'm a big proponent of having these laws be specific to certain fields where it makes sense like biotech and not presented as a panacea that's pigeonholed onto every industry and easily exploited by companies who contribute little more than hiring good lawyers.
nonbel 7y ago
I'm not complaining, but just wondering why there was zero interest in this when I submitted it yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20801761 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20801761
- dmix 7y ago
  This is such a common phenomenon with some very obvious answers...
  - nonbel 7y ago
    Well the general answer is that the HN algorithm didn't put it on the front page (or at least not for long enough). It is just that there is obviously interest on this site in this topic, yet it failed to gain any traction. So there is room for improvement in the algo.
    - tomhoward 7y ago
      As dang has explained [1], there's a lot of randomness around what makes it to the front page, but if it's a big, current story, it will be posted by enough different people that it will make it there soon enough. It sucks when you were first to submit it but miss out on the karma, of course, but such is life. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20randomness%20front&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20randomness%20front&s...
      - nonbel 7y ago
        "Randomness" doesn't explain anything. That is just the modern day version of "the gods willed it".
        tomhoward 7y ago
        Your original submission got one upvote. Which means that one person who happened to be looking at the "New" page when it was submitted thought the title was interesting enough to look at the article and then upvote it. Maybe it because it was a low-traffic time of day, or people were focused on other things, or ... who knows? If, instead of one person, it happened to be be two or three, it would have made it to the front page and you would've received all the karma from further upvotes. The thing that makes the difference between one upvote vs 2-3 is a whole lot of unknowable factors that is reasonable to put down to "randomness". That's how HackerNews has worked for all of the 10+ years I've been using it. What alternative explanation do you propose? Like I said, it sucks when you miss out on the karma, but if you strongly believe it's a solid article you can resubmit it or email the mods and ask them to put it in the second-chance pool, which they're always happy to do if it's good content.
jokoon 7y ago
I think it's weird that most of the IP is developed and owned by US companies, yet everything is being built overseas. Of course I'm talking about core chips, like CPUs, SoC, RAM, flash memory, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_industry#/media/File:Who_exported_Electronic_integrated_circuits_in_2016.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_industry#/media/... I don't really understand why Taiwan has so many of those chip factories. I can understand why developing countries like China have been assembling electronic devices for so long, because the labor is cheap, but I don't think that chip making follows the same rule. Those generally are high tech factories, and I don't see why Taiwan has so many of them.
- Kurtose 7y ago
  Why would Taiwan not have high tech factories? It has similar or higher level of development than - as a non-random example - France. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index
- rrss 7y ago
  Because Taiwan recruited Morris Chang to help promote Taiwan's economy, and Morris Chang decided to found the first foundry (i.e. fab-only) in the world. Ever since, TSMC has been more-or-less leading innovation in semiconductor manufacturing. Taiwan has a lot of high tech factories because it is a high tech country with smart people.
- gunnm 7y ago
  Taiwan started investing heavily in semiconductor industry since the late 70s. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hsinchu_Science_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hsinchu_Science_Park) I'm pretty sure that's decades before mainland China.
- epsilon_greedy 7y ago
  For CPUs specifically, many of Intel's chips are fabricated in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_manufacturing_sites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_manufacturing_si...
- 7y ago
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138 points by callwaiting 7y ago

throwaway2048 7y ago

I have a feeling that eventually we are going to be facing basically a completely paralyzed tech industry because of what basically amounts to a patent singularity. As more and more formerly innovating and profitable companies that invented and patented key technologies either start to struggle, get bought out, or go out of business, there will be more and more pressure to monetize their huge patent warchests, (and competing companies are even more driven to build up their own warchests as a result) we are going to see wave after wave of massive industry wide patent lawsuits like this that are going to completely disrupt things. We absolutely need massive patent reform in the USA before things reach this point and any incentive to bring new products to market is destroyed by the tidal wave of patent suits that it is virtually guaranteed to attract. This stuff has very extreme chilling effects, for instance a technology that has almost limitless potential (forward error correction) receives very little attention because of how crazy the patent situation surrounding it is.

Fjolsvith 7y ago
I'm sure a national emergency declaration would resolve an issue like this.
ajsnigrutin 7y ago
Since the technology moves on so fast, shortening the patent expiration to eg. 1year would solve most of the problems. Companies get 1 year head start (which is a lot), and after 1 year, we all benefit.
- mstolpm 7y ago
  Wouldn't the slowness of the courts and the lengths of processing lead to virtually no protection at all? If going through the courts takes sometimes 3+ years but parents expire after 1 year, every final court ruling would be retroactive.
  - rapsey 7y ago
    So if you prevail you get payed retroactively for the damages. Whats wrong with that?
  - josaka 7y ago
    You can get six years back damages, and often you have a substantial portion of a patent's 20-year term in front of you. And frequently cases settle well before you are three years into a suit.
- new299 7y ago
  If you're suggesting a 1 year patent period for all utility patents, you might as well just get rid of patents. In the industry I work in (Biotech - DNA sequencing) it takes maybe 5 years to mature an approach and get it to market. Once your patent is published, there isn't much to stop others developing the same method [1] (they just would run into trouble if they sold it commercially). So at the same time that the patent owner is developing their platform, a competitor can be developing theirs and launch at the same time or nearly the same time as you. Certain areas, like software patents, I'd possibly agree. I don't think software/algorithm patents are a good idea for a number of reasons however... [1] General consensus seems to be patents don't cover academic work. I've also heard that they don't cover commercial research, and that in any case it's hard to provide damages. http://softlib.rice.edu/ques.html#2 http://softlib.rice.edu/ques.html#2
  - rapsey 7y ago
    > If you're suggesting a 1 year patent period for all utility patents, you might as well just get rid of patents. In the industry I work in (Biotech - DNA sequencing) it takes maybe 5 years to mature an approach and get it to market. So have a two phase validity. Once it's in the market you have a year.
    - dkersten 7y ago
      You’d want some limitations on the first phase too, so that companies don’t hold onto their patents indefinitely while waiting for the perfect market conditions for their one-year monopoly.
      - mcny 7y ago
        A real solution is don't apply for patent protection. The down side is if someone else also figured it out, you don't get anything. Makes sense to me.
        dkersten 7y ago
        Yes, I agree. I'm not a fan of patents. While I understand the desire to protect ones investment, it doesn't make sense to me that it should be done at the expense of someone else's investment, since multiple people coming up with similar ideas around the same time isn't particularly uncommon and unfortunately there's no easy way to differentiate those from plagiarism.
- beefield 7y ago
  I would think that setting a fast increasing tax (say doubling each year) on patents would solve lots of issues. Once you do not want to pay the tax, the patent moves to public domain. Same tax should apply also to copyrighted work.
  - velox_io 7y ago
    Shortening patents (when it can take years to gain traction) or making them more expensive only plays into the hands of large companies
- mensetmanusman 7y ago
  As someone who researches at a western company, this would actually get rid of a lot of research, because business moves so slow to commercialize due to the highly regulated environment. Regulation and legal arbitrage, where companies (particularly in Asia) can take what is newly invented on a silver platter and sell to the global market due to lack of environmental protections etc. would be all that is left.
  - mcny 7y ago
    » As someone who researches at a western company, this would actually get rid of a lot of research, because business moves so slow to commercialize due to the highly regulated environment. I don't know about you but I'm perfectly ok with that.
    - mensetmanusman 7y ago
      I like technological progress, but I would also be okay digging ditches in case our economy crashed towards a commodities-only enterprise, so I’m strange in that regards :)
      - phkahler 7y ago
        Some people think patents are required for innovation. They are mistaken. It is human nature to innovate.
        mensetmanusman 7y ago
        I agree, but it is not human nature to take their innovation to the world. Post WW2 the US govt had tens of thousands of technology patents but no one to bring it to the world. Patents are risk mitigation tools for funding entities to actually support commercialization. Innovation will happen always, but most of it stays on a dusty shelf a la an academic library. It’s not necessary that anything interesting and innovative (and sufficiently complex) gets sold.
        7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

varshithr 7y ago

GlobalFoundries(GF) was part of AMD and now AMD relies heavily on TSMC. If this ban they are seeking goes through, does it affect AMD? I think GF gave up on 7nm node a while ago, So maybe AMD is safe here.

baybal2 7y ago
Yes, and they still have AMD's orders going on for legacy products, auxiliary ICs, and interface logic. That's entirely them giving up on existing as a proper market player, and the "farewell gift" to the industry before they self-destruct. Having an idea of mentality of GlobalFoundries' new owners, I can say they care about having a return on their investment any way possible, and how they make that is of no importance to them. Unlike a tech player with stake in the well being of larger ecosystem, or genuine fear of being denied the market by retaliatory lawsuits, those guys have no problem "setting the house on fire" This is why they chose Germany out of all countries to file a patent lawsuit. Germany famously allows for instant summary injunctions in patent and other IP cases, which will be completely devastating for a company making actual physical products. Second to that, Germany controls the supply of few critical chemicals for semiconductor manufacturing, and they may opt to go for arm twisting with them too. I can say that this is what we will see for year and years to come, unless something dramatic will finally happen to the patent system.
makomk 7y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if AMD kept some kind of patent license to GlobalFoundries patents when they spun them off.
- varshithr 7y ago
  Makes sense to do so.

baybal2 7y ago

Well, what can I say. This is how the "nuclear option" with regards to tech patents looks like. That's what everybody talked about few years ago, when big tech companies were making big patent defence pools. An all out patent war in software looked scary enough for the industry, but the damage from patent war in semi, and particularly in the fab process, has a potential to surpass even that few times over. Now US and German legal system has a choice: follow on its current ideology into the dead end, or not to do so, and abandon their positions of grandstanding

vectorEQ 7y ago

is it hip now to try and ban competitors from doing business :/ . grow up. where are the days of trying to beat competitors with a better product?

ivoras 7y ago
That time never actually existed. Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Facebook... and practically every large business since Rockefeller and before, did everything in their power, including regulatory capture, to hobble their competition. It's the nature of doing business at scale.
- Merrill 7y ago
  The invention of the telephone, for example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisha_Gray_and_Alexander_Bell_telephone_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisha_Gray_and_Alexander_Bell...
- decoyworker 7y ago
  Microsoft and Apple do not make good products?
  - vectorEQ 7y ago
    always everyone only looks at few examples such as these companies. who actually do make decent products. (good luck making better OS than them for example... ) but look at things like ZOOM. they make product which has no new features. it just works better and that's why people use it. it does exist. just not in the minds of people who numb themselves with clickbait.
    - moomin 7y ago
      Of course, back in the day people did make better operating systems than Microsoft, and Microsoft deliberately broke their other offerings to put them out of business. And seriously, Apple’s no better. iTunes didn’t survive because it was the best way to put music on your iPod, but because they sued the competitors out of existence. Microsoft and Apple make good products, but most of the money comes from locking you into inferior products.

kryptiskt 7y ago

So the reason they abandoned their 7nm process was because they were going to make money patent trolling instead? Guess it doesn't require as much investment as building fabs. Actually producing stuff is just a liability for a patent troll, that leaves them open for counterattacks.

perlgeek 7y ago
I think it's more likely that they abandoned their 7nm process because they couldn't figure it out, and then resorted to patent trolling to still make some money, somehow.

skunkpocalypse 7y ago

As crazy as it sounds: this is GloFo trying to get TSMC to buy its remaining assets. Settling the patent litigation is part of what they're offering. Between cancelling post-14nm development and selling off their photomask shop (!) to Toppan late last year the writing has been on the wall for a while. I shed no tears for GloFo but I am very, very worried about the future of the VLSI industry. It won't be long before there are only two titans left, and then one of them kills the other.

TorKlingberg 7y ago

I predict this will work itself out by TSMC paying some money to GF. The amount will have some some vague connection to the validity of the case and the mood of a judge.

sharpneli 7y ago
GF licensed 14nm from Samsung. My hunch is that they’re trying to get their hands on TSMC 7nm with cheap terms.
- jpmattia 7y ago
  > My hunch is that they’re trying to get their hands on TSMC 7nm with cheap terms. I can't imagine a less diplomatic strategy for negotiating cheap licensing terms. Good luck to them if that's the angle.
- bazooka_penguin 7y ago
  Pretty sure IBM 7nm was functionally complete but they decided not to expand facilities to support it. Why would they do it for TSMC 7nm instead of, say, licensing something from samsung again?

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Gwypaas 7y ago

This take on it from the AMD subreddit makes at least for me more sense than the "evil patents" way of thinking. Though, nothing confirmed yet. It seems strange at first, but the selection of patents and the timeline lead me to think of a very particular plausible line of events that would absolutely merit a lawsuit and also explain the delay to implementing said lawsuit. AMD, IIRC, has access to Global Foundries' patent portfolio - enabling them to use those patents freely. Makes sense, they were once the same company and have a very tight agreement in effect for at least a few more years. AMD goes to TSMC for 28nm after GF's stumbles and takes GF's patents to TSMC to improve their process tech for AMD's needs. All legit, all legal. TSMC does not have permission to use those patents on non-AMD products, but does so anyway. Fast forward a couple years and investigating TSMC's process as it applies to shipping products by other vendors reveals patent infringements. Good-faith efforts are made to stop the infringement, but TSMC either doesn't acknowledge the infringement or simply claims compliance and then does nothing. Ergo, the lawsuit we see today. https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/cvqu5l/comment/ey6fje5 https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/cvqu5l/comment/ey6fje5

baybal2 7y ago
FinFET is a TSMC's invention as well as immersion lithography, and yet it is somebody else got the patent. How is that fair? How does it "encourage progress?"
- dmix 7y ago
  Real world innovation and who runs to the patent office first are often two very different things. Yet many, often very rational, people defend the process as necessary for innovation. Much like minimum wage laws there's a lot of sub-industries where it legitimately helps (studies show fast food mega corps don't have lower employment rates after small bumps) and many where it hurts the very same people it claims to protect (unskilled youth and disabled people who just want to work in the summer/after school/part time for cash strapped small businesses for experience and pocket change, and don't benefit from a 'living wage' or nothing arrangements). I'm a big proponent of having these laws be specific to certain fields where it makes sense like biotech and not presented as a panacea that's pigeonholed onto every industry and easily exploited by companies who contribute little more than hiring good lawyers.

nonbel 7y ago

I'm not complaining, but just wondering why there was zero interest in this when I submitted it yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20801761 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20801761

dmix 7y ago
This is such a common phenomenon with some very obvious answers...
- nonbel 7y ago
  Well the general answer is that the HN algorithm didn't put it on the front page (or at least not for long enough). It is just that there is obviously interest on this site in this topic, yet it failed to gain any traction. So there is room for improvement in the algo.
  - tomhoward 7y ago
    As dang has explained [1], there's a lot of randomness around what makes it to the front page, but if it's a big, current story, it will be posted by enough different people that it will make it there soon enough. It sucks when you were first to submit it but miss out on the karma, of course, but such is life. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20randomness%20front&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20randomness%20front&s...
    - nonbel 7y ago
      "Randomness" doesn't explain anything. That is just the modern day version of "the gods willed it".
      - tomhoward 7y ago
        Your original submission got one upvote. Which means that one person who happened to be looking at the "New" page when it was submitted thought the title was interesting enough to look at the article and then upvote it. Maybe it because it was a low-traffic time of day, or people were focused on other things, or ... who knows? If, instead of one person, it happened to be be two or three, it would have made it to the front page and you would've received all the karma from further upvotes. The thing that makes the difference between one upvote vs 2-3 is a whole lot of unknowable factors that is reasonable to put down to "randomness". That's how HackerNews has worked for all of the 10+ years I've been using it. What alternative explanation do you propose? Like I said, it sucks when you miss out on the karma, but if you strongly believe it's a solid article you can resubmit it or email the mods and ask them to put it in the second-chance pool, which they're always happy to do if it's good content.

jokoon 7y ago

I think it's weird that most of the IP is developed and owned by US companies, yet everything is being built overseas. Of course I'm talking about core chips, like CPUs, SoC, RAM, flash memory, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_industry#/media/File:Who_exported_Electronic_integrated_circuits_in_2016.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_industry#/media/... I don't really understand why Taiwan has so many of those chip factories. I can understand why developing countries like China have been assembling electronic devices for so long, because the labor is cheap, but I don't think that chip making follows the same rule. Those generally are high tech factories, and I don't see why Taiwan has so many of them.

Kurtose 7y ago
Why would Taiwan not have high tech factories? It has similar or higher level of development than - as a non-random example - France. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index
rrss 7y ago
Because Taiwan recruited Morris Chang to help promote Taiwan's economy, and Morris Chang decided to found the first foundry (i.e. fab-only) in the world. Ever since, TSMC has been more-or-less leading innovation in semiconductor manufacturing. Taiwan has a lot of high tech factories because it is a high tech country with smart people.
gunnm 7y ago
Taiwan started investing heavily in semiconductor industry since the late 70s. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hsinchu_Science_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hsinchu_Science_Park) I'm pretty sure that's decades before mainland China.
epsilon_greedy 7y ago
For CPUs specifically, many of Intel's chips are fabricated in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_manufacturing_sites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_manufacturing_si...
7y ago

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