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Why is TSMC so far ahead?
by 2muchcoffeeman 7y ago
Why is TSMC so far ahead?
- chx 7y agoTSMC was moving at a half node speed financed by the smartphone boom. Currently they offer 5nm, 6nm, 7nm, 10nm, 12nm, 16nm, 20nm, 22nm, 28nm and larger lithography. There was and still is ample competition, Samsung not the least. Intel tried to be aggressive in moving ahead with full nodes and has grown complacent because it had no competition on the CPU market. When their aggressive bet didn't work out they were caught pants down.
- rowanG077 7y agoWhat do nodes and half nodes mean in your comment?
- chx 7y agohttps://en.wikichip.org/wiki/technology_node https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/technology_node tl;dr: Mostly marketing term today. Nonetheless, the changes TSMC made are much more incremental, for example the 12nm is more of a variant of the 16nm than a full new node. Once again, this is very very expensive because the cost to equip a modern fab passed a billion dollars long ago and now runs into tens of billions. Mostly Apple is the reason TSMC could do this without going bankrupt. Also note a process node makes money for a long, long while even when the cutting edge companies have left: https://images.anandtech.com/doci/13873/TSMC%20Tech.png https://images.anandtech.com/doci/13873/TSMC%20Tech.png half of the revenue is from 28nm and larger -- 28nm (which is another half node) was introduced Q4 2011. So it's possible without Apple they could've done it but it would've required a much bigger debt load.
- NobodyNada 7y agoYou can’t directly compare node sizes between different companies; they’re not actually measuring anything so the numbers are just made up. IIRC TSMC’s 7nm process is approximately equal to Intel’s 10nm.