7 ms·

And 3nm planned for 2022 . They are moving at an incredible pace. They will definitely hit a wall soon at this speed

baybal2 7y ago
Which is their plan, as many people believe. They want to drive the few competitors they have out of business quickly before that happens. Hence them accelerating node transitions in spite of not being able to recover as much RnD money as they can. Only really high margin products contend for <14nm node capacity, and nothing else. For as long as they maintain such high pace, and wide lead over competition, competitors get nothing, while still having to spend the same astronomical sums on fab retooling.
- api 7y ago
  Where are they getting the money? Are they that profitable or state sponsored?
  - Arnt 7y ago
    Profitable. Would be very profitable, if they had the income from their advanced processes without the R+D expense for those processes.
  - AgloeDreams 7y ago
    They produce the entirety of Apple's Ax chips and AMD's lineup, plus the latest Snapdragons. They are shipping many units per each Intel CPU shipping and offer things nobody else can offer. I imagine that makes them really profitable.
  - ksec 7y ago
    > Are they that profitable or state sponsored? The world now ships ~1.2B Smartphone every year, most of them Fabbed on TSMC. That is Apple, Huawei, Qualcomm, Mediatek. These four along is likely 80%+ of the market. Along with Modem, WiFi and dozen of other smaller components. That is excluding BitCoin, ASIC, FPGA, Gaming GPU, GPGPU, Network Processors etc all these market have exploded in the past 10 years and requires leading edge Fab all coming from TSMC. ( Well at least most part of it ). The market is so much bigger than Intel's 200M+ PC market and Server Market in unit volume, TSMC has been able to benefit from it. And once you spread the R&D over a much larger volume of products, your unit cost economics drops. Hence benefiting everyone in the industry.
- mantap 7y ago
  Surely they know that USG would never let Intel go out of business? It's too important from defence perspective. And Samsung isn't going anywhere either.
  - baybal2 7y ago
    It only takes to blunt competition's resolve to make them drop from the race for the bleeding edge, and they will never close the gap again. They will have to throw staggering amount of cash to close the gap of multiple <14nm nodes, but there will be no Qualcomms, Apples and AMDs to pay them for that if they are few years late. In fact, even sub-40nm nodes are already a barren ground without much clients left. Those who still hang onto 22nm, 14nm only do legacy products, and they will inevitably move on, leaving 22 and 14 only fabs without much business. Both 22 and 14 still require extremely costly mask sets, high cycle times, and large MOQs. Need very different equipment from 40nm+. And they can't support analog, embedded flash, power, ulp devices as good as 40nm+, which makes them unattractive to microcontroller makers. For 99% of companies in semi industry, the scaling ended at 40nm. That's cold hard truth to it.
    - GregarianChild 7y ago
      I imagine that a Chinese manufacturer will eventually also play a role, since it's a strategic priority for the PRC to be self sufficient in terms of semi-conductor production. The PRC (most probably) has the 'advantage' of a vast spy network in Taiwan, and (likely) in TSMC. Not to mention that salaries in China tend to be higher, leading to a brain-drain TW -> CN.
      - bsder 7y ago
        Everybody in the business knows the secrets anyway. Institutional knowledge is the thing that is terribly difficult to transfer. Putting together a fab is money, money and more money combined with enough smart folks providing continuous effort to actually solve problems. It's the "solve problems" rather than "cover up problems" where China often breaks down. People forget that the US didn't just magically become a semiconductor powerhouse. It was thanks to VHSIC, the VLSI Project, and other initiatives--a multi-year concerted effort by all the US semiconductor industry and the US Federal Government--because they were terrified of (don't laugh now) the Japanese. DARPA gets all the press for the Internet, but the actual semiconductor technology that made the chips that powered the computers and equipment behind the Internet was probably far more important.
- philjohn 7y ago
  GF already bowed out ... only really Samsung and Intel left now, no?
- ksec 7y ago
  >They want to drive the few competitors they have out of business quickly before that happens. Hence them accelerating node transitions in spite of not being able to recover as much RnD money as they can. That is lots of accusation with little to no evidence. If you have read any of their investor note, meetings, They have been extremely conservative, and executing to perfection . They are profitable, and does not mind competing. Every single leading node they are charging more to their customers to recoup their R&D. Hence the theory why Moore's law will stop working once their customers can no longer afford leading node. There is nothing high pace about it, they are having a new node every two year, exactly as you would have expected from Intel. The only difference is Intel messed it up since 2015 / 2016. And now they are in the lead. Compared to Samsung which is basically funding their Foundry with NAND and DRAM Profits. I dont see how TSMC can be blamed for anything.
  - baybal2 7y ago
    > There is nothing high pace about it, 16FFC - late 2016 12FF - Summer 2017 10FF - Late summer - autumn 2017 N7 - April 2018 N7+ (which is really like a standalone node) - Early 2019 N5 risk production - March-April 2019 N5 mass production - very likely first tapeouts were to take place in coming weeks if not for the virus. > If you have read any of their investor note, meetings, They have been extremely conservative, and executing to perfection Why do you privy somebody like investors to your most important strategies? While they were a company with reputation of squeezing out everything from a given node, they truly shifted focus to HPC and top of the cream orders now for sub-40nm market. Anything below 40nm other than the latest node is not getting anywhere near as much attention from them as when they were a "mainstream" fab. This is the most logical strategy now because there are very few companies in the whole world with money for sub-40nm tapeouts. It makes sense to keep these clients captive at all costs, to not to let competitors any part of this very small pie.
    - ksec 7y ago
      >16FFC - late 2016...... 2012 28nm 2014 20nm 2016 16nm 2018 7nm 2020 5nm 2022 3nm* ( Non-GAA ) Every node is full 2 year cadence in accordance to their customer ( Lately Apple ) iPhone releases. 10nm is Pre 7nm, 12nm is 16nm's optimisation node. Nothing High pace about it. As they have been doing this prior to becoming a "leading" node manufacture.
AntonStratiev 7y ago
Not only that, but the population of Taiwan itself is shrinking and aging rapidly. The fertility rate is only 1.13. Eventually, there just won't be enough Taiwanese engineers left to continue development. High IQ is linked to lower fertility around the world (dysgenics) and average IQ is already declining in some Western countries, so it makes sense to develop high-tech products now, and ride the advantage for the rest of human civilisation.* *Until we accept and carry out human genetic engineering on a widespread basis and target high-IQ traits in engineered offspring.
- exikyut 7y ago
  > High IQ is linked to lower fertility around the world (dysgenics) Idiocracy really had a lot of things figured out a decade ago :(
  - exikyut 7y ago
    (I'm not sure why, but the parent comment is currently at -3. I have decided to find this both ironically and non-ironically hilarious.)
- Arnt 7y ago
  Why don't you graph TMSC's historical node sizes and forecast what their size will be when Taiwan's population shrinks to, say, 10m. Will it be below the size of a single electron already? Then look up RAA in Wikipedia and consider whether there might be anything wrong with your initial argument.
- alkonaut 7y ago
  Guess: declining iq is measurement issues or simply globalization (people move around). Fertility rates seem to do ok where there is an ambition to keep them up e.g with long tax funded parental leave. Taiwan seems like it’s got the “Japan sickness”.

Which is their plan, as many people believe. They want to drive the few competitors they have out of business quickly before that happens. Hence them accelerating node transitions in spite of not being able to recover as much RnD money as they can. Only really high margin products contend for <14nm node capacity, and nothing else. For as long as they maintain such high pace, and wide lead over competition, competitors get nothing, while still having to spend the same astronomical sums on fab retooling.

api 7y ago
Where are they getting the money? Are they that profitable or state sponsored?
- Arnt 7y ago
  Profitable. Would be very profitable, if they had the income from their advanced processes without the R+D expense for those processes.
- AgloeDreams 7y ago
  They produce the entirety of Apple's Ax chips and AMD's lineup, plus the latest Snapdragons. They are shipping many units per each Intel CPU shipping and offer things nobody else can offer. I imagine that makes them really profitable.
- ksec 7y ago
  > Are they that profitable or state sponsored? The world now ships ~1.2B Smartphone every year, most of them Fabbed on TSMC. That is Apple, Huawei, Qualcomm, Mediatek. These four along is likely 80%+ of the market. Along with Modem, WiFi and dozen of other smaller components. That is excluding BitCoin, ASIC, FPGA, Gaming GPU, GPGPU, Network Processors etc all these market have exploded in the past 10 years and requires leading edge Fab all coming from TSMC. ( Well at least most part of it ). The market is so much bigger than Intel's 200M+ PC market and Server Market in unit volume, TSMC has been able to benefit from it. And once you spread the R&D over a much larger volume of products, your unit cost economics drops. Hence benefiting everyone in the industry.
mantap 7y ago
Surely they know that USG would never let Intel go out of business? It's too important from defence perspective. And Samsung isn't going anywhere either.
- baybal2 7y ago
  It only takes to blunt competition's resolve to make them drop from the race for the bleeding edge, and they will never close the gap again. They will have to throw staggering amount of cash to close the gap of multiple <14nm nodes, but there will be no Qualcomms, Apples and AMDs to pay them for that if they are few years late. In fact, even sub-40nm nodes are already a barren ground without much clients left. Those who still hang onto 22nm, 14nm only do legacy products, and they will inevitably move on, leaving 22 and 14 only fabs without much business. Both 22 and 14 still require extremely costly mask sets, high cycle times, and large MOQs. Need very different equipment from 40nm+. And they can't support analog, embedded flash, power, ulp devices as good as 40nm+, which makes them unattractive to microcontroller makers. For 99% of companies in semi industry, the scaling ended at 40nm. That's cold hard truth to it.
  - GregarianChild 7y ago
    I imagine that a Chinese manufacturer will eventually also play a role, since it's a strategic priority for the PRC to be self sufficient in terms of semi-conductor production. The PRC (most probably) has the 'advantage' of a vast spy network in Taiwan, and (likely) in TSMC. Not to mention that salaries in China tend to be higher, leading to a brain-drain TW -> CN.
    - bsder 7y ago
      Everybody in the business knows the secrets anyway. Institutional knowledge is the thing that is terribly difficult to transfer. Putting together a fab is money, money and more money combined with enough smart folks providing continuous effort to actually solve problems. It's the "solve problems" rather than "cover up problems" where China often breaks down. People forget that the US didn't just magically become a semiconductor powerhouse. It was thanks to VHSIC, the VLSI Project, and other initiatives--a multi-year concerted effort by all the US semiconductor industry and the US Federal Government--because they were terrified of (don't laugh now) the Japanese. DARPA gets all the press for the Internet, but the actual semiconductor technology that made the chips that powered the computers and equipment behind the Internet was probably far more important.
philjohn 7y ago
GF already bowed out ... only really Samsung and Intel left now, no?
ksec 7y ago
>They want to drive the few competitors they have out of business quickly before that happens. Hence them accelerating node transitions in spite of not being able to recover as much RnD money as they can. That is lots of accusation with little to no evidence. If you have read any of their investor note, meetings, They have been extremely conservative, and executing to perfection . They are profitable, and does not mind competing. Every single leading node they are charging more to their customers to recoup their R&D. Hence the theory why Moore's law will stop working once their customers can no longer afford leading node. There is nothing high pace about it, they are having a new node every two year, exactly as you would have expected from Intel. The only difference is Intel messed it up since 2015 / 2016. And now they are in the lead. Compared to Samsung which is basically funding their Foundry with NAND and DRAM Profits. I dont see how TSMC can be blamed for anything.
- baybal2 7y ago
  > There is nothing high pace about it, 16FFC - late 2016 12FF - Summer 2017 10FF - Late summer - autumn 2017 N7 - April 2018 N7+ (which is really like a standalone node) - Early 2019 N5 risk production - March-April 2019 N5 mass production - very likely first tapeouts were to take place in coming weeks if not for the virus. > If you have read any of their investor note, meetings, They have been extremely conservative, and executing to perfection Why do you privy somebody like investors to your most important strategies? While they were a company with reputation of squeezing out everything from a given node, they truly shifted focus to HPC and top of the cream orders now for sub-40nm market. Anything below 40nm other than the latest node is not getting anywhere near as much attention from them as when they were a "mainstream" fab. This is the most logical strategy now because there are very few companies in the whole world with money for sub-40nm tapeouts. It makes sense to keep these clients captive at all costs, to not to let competitors any part of this very small pie.
  - ksec 7y ago
    >16FFC - late 2016...... 2012 28nm 2014 20nm 2016 16nm 2018 7nm 2020 5nm 2022 3nm* ( Non-GAA ) Every node is full 2 year cadence in accordance to their customer ( Lately Apple ) iPhone releases. 10nm is Pre 7nm, 12nm is 16nm's optimisation node. Nothing High pace about it. As they have been doing this prior to becoming a "leading" node manufacture.

AntonStratiev 7y ago

Not only that, but the population of Taiwan itself is shrinking and aging rapidly. The fertility rate is only 1.13. Eventually, there just won't be enough Taiwanese engineers left to continue development. High IQ is linked to lower fertility around the world (dysgenics) and average IQ is already declining in some Western countries, so it makes sense to develop high-tech products now, and ride the advantage for the rest of human civilisation.* *Until we accept and carry out human genetic engineering on a widespread basis and target high-IQ traits in engineered offspring.

exikyut 7y ago
> High IQ is linked to lower fertility around the world (dysgenics) Idiocracy really had a lot of things figured out a decade ago :(
- exikyut 7y ago
  (I'm not sure why, but the parent comment is currently at -3. I have decided to find this both ironically and non-ironically hilarious.)
Arnt 7y ago
Why don't you graph TMSC's historical node sizes and forecast what their size will be when Taiwan's population shrinks to, say, 10m. Will it be below the size of a single electron already? Then look up RAA in Wikipedia and consider whether there might be anything wrong with your initial argument.
alkonaut 7y ago
Guess: declining iq is measurement issues or simply globalization (people move around). Fertility rates seem to do ok where there is an ambition to keep them up e.g with long tax funded parental leave. Taiwan seems like it’s got the “Japan sickness”.