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This is the first I've heard of EUV, so I don't have an informed opinion of it at all, but some quick googling shows that Intel will be using it for their 7nm p
by buu700 7y ago
This is the first I've heard of EUV, so I don't have an informed opinion of it at all, but some quick googling shows that Intel will be using it for their 7nm process.
Does this mean that Intel's "7nm" should be considered roughly equivalent with TSMC's "3nm"? And who's typically considered to have the lead on fab tech nowadays?
- ethbro 7y agoNo. And anyone but Intel.
- wmf 7y agoIntel 7 nm ~= TSMC 5 nm. TSMC is definitely in the lead; maybe Samsung is #2. https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/7_nm_lithography_process https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/7_nm_lithography_process
- tpurves 7y agoThe leadership has definitely shifted to Taiwan. TSMC 7nm is roughly equivalently to intel 10nm. At leastTSMC first version of 7nm. But TSMC is now well in to ramping their 2nd/3rd iterations of 7nm. And ramping 5nm soon-ish, now this news on 3nm.And Intel has stumbled badly on 10nm, they are now years behind where they wanted to be. Intel are still launching new high end skus on 14nm through 2020. They are shipping 10nm in some volume, but with evident problems still on frequency binning and yield.
- lawrenceyan 7y agoI would rank it probably as: 1) TSMC 2) Samsung 3) Intel AMD now divested into Global Foundries used to be on there as well, but they're pretty much dead in the water at this point. Both AMD and Nvidia use TSMC now actually. It's kind of funny that Intel is the only remaining foundry within the United States at this point except for maybe Texas Instruments, which lets be honest, doesn't really count.
- throwaway2048 7y agoGlobal foundries still does plenty of production, most chip production doesn't occur at cutting edge nodes.
- stjohnswarts 7y agoYou're exactly right. There's a lot of money to be made outside of 3/7/10nm. I'm not sure why geeks get hooked on having the smallest/biggest or nothing and assuming anything else is failure
- rowanG077 7y agoIt's because it's immensely cool what humanity can continue to achieve.
- jdietrich 7y ago>most chip production doesn't occur at cutting edge nodes Of course, but the margins are much better on cutting-edge nodes. Being second-to-market on a node doesn't save you much on capital costs, but you have to compete harder on wafer pricing. TSMC have about 5x the revenues of GF and the gap is widening.
- baybal2 7y ago> Of course, but the margins are much better on cutting-edge nodes. No, not anymore for at least a decade, and this is the very reason GloFo bailed out on the "Arms Race." Extreme capex with uncertain payback times looked very scary to their investors. TSMC 7FF will only break even next year.
- kingosticks 7y ago>TSMC 7FF will only break even next year. I've no idea if that's true but assuming it is, then from next year it's pure profit and they are the big fish in a pond of 2 (or 3?) fish with no new fish in sight. People will be using this process for years and years to come. With so little competition at 7nm and the high barriers to entry (even over time) they can surely maintain their margins for much longer than at previous nodes. I'm not saying bailing wasn't the right decision for Global Foundries and the risk might be higher now, but so the rewards.
- PeCaN 7y agoI don't think Texas Instruments deserves to be counted out. Their revenue last year was greater than Nvidia. Given that the margins on microcontrollers and DSPs are not nearly as large as on GPUs, they're shipping a lot of chips. Granted I have no idea what their process node is, which they don't advertise anywhere presumably because people buying microcontrollers and DSPs do not really care about an arbitrary silicon feature size number. It's probably not cutting edge, but they're a big foundry regardless. GlobalFoundaries is definitely not dead either. They even do 14nm which is hardly very outdated (and is probably the last practical node anyway).
- magicalhippo 7y agoON Semiconductor has 700nm down to 180nm for hire in the US. https://www.onsemi.com/PowerSolutions/content.do?id=18397 https://www.onsemi.com/PowerSolutions/content.do?id=18397 https://www.onsemi.com/PowerSolutions/content.do?id=16678 https://www.onsemi.com/PowerSolutions/content.do?id=16678 ST has been boasting about their new STM32G series as being their first 90nm product, though I doubt it'll start a nm race in the microcontroller world... https://blog.st.com/stm32g0-mainstream-90-nm-mcu/ https://blog.st.com/stm32g0-mainstream-90-nm-mcu/
- baybal2 7y agoThere are plenty of 40nm MCUs already
- magicalhippo 7y agoI see Renesas has some[1], got any pointers to some others? Would be interesting to compare specs. [1]: https://www.renesas.com/jp/en/about/press-center/news/2018/news20180327.html https://www.renesas.com/jp/en/about/press-center/news/2018/n...
- baybal2 7y agoESP32, gigadevices, some nuvotons Correction, gigadevices are still at 55
- evancox100 7y agoThe word "foundry" refers specifically to a company that manufactures others' chip designs for them, such as TSMC. Intel discontinued it's foundry business AFAIK. The more general word would be "fab", which is any semiconductor manufacturing facility.
- lawrenceyan 7y agoOh wow, I wasn't aware of that. Intel really has fallen quite low. I worry about it's future as AMD, Nvidia, and TSMC pull away at it from all sides.
- therealcamino 7y ago> It's kind of funny that Intel is the only remaining foundry within the United States at this point Samsung Austin is in Texas.
- BubRoss 7y agoThat sounds like saying two people will draw lines that have the same width because they use the same ink.
- xxxpupugo 7y agoIntel doesn't have anything 7nm yet, there is nothing to consider in the first place. They failed hard at their 10nm process, and are still struggling to recover from that. TSMC is the the indisputable leader on fab technology at the moment
- emn13 7y agoEUV is just one aspect of the process, and so far none of the lithographies are fully EUV anyhow (only using that on a few layers)... I'm not that well informed but I'd guess by 3nm it'd be fully EUV? Regardless; it's just one technique. Just because a bike has a few carbon fiber spokes doesn't mean it's the same as another bike with a few carbon fiber spokes. The rest matters too, not least of which the other spokes ;-) and there are probably differences between carbon fiber spokes too!
- atq2119 7y agoChips are built in layers, with the actual transistors being in the (lower) base layers and the wiring being the (upper) metal layers. The metal layers themselves form a stack with layers with thin wires at the bottom and layers with very wide wires at the top. These wide wires are used because they have less resistance and therefore allow faster and longer-range data transmission across the chip. They are wide enough that EUV won't be used there for a long time (if ever).
- emn13 7y agoBut even the base layers aren't all EUV yet, at least not in the first gen EUV-enabled processes, or is that a misunderstanding? At least I thought DUV was still in use in combination with (not entirely replaced by) EUV.
- atq2119 7y agoYes, that was precisely my point: a mix of EUV and DUV is used because the upper layers don't need EUV and DUV is cheaper and more mature. Furthermore, it seems likely that the uppermost layers will never use EUV and that therefore a mix of EUV and DUV will always be used, indefinitely. This seems likely unless EUV surprisingly becomes much cheaper so that unifying on a single technology becomes worth it, or unless both EUV and DUV are replaced by something else entirely.