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The entire world has their eggs in one basket - Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. Say whatever about Intel, I am hoping that they get back on their fe

The entire world has their eggs in one basket - Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. Say whatever about Intel, I am hoping that they get back on their feet in next few years with 5nm manufacturing. Since when is competition and choice a bad thing? If you're a chip design firm and you have a 8-month backlog to get your masks made at TSMC, what do you do then? TSMC can be world's best fab but we need to address the SPOF condition that is so close to the political hot zone in the APEC region. Intel should spin off its Fab division as a separate company, hire some top executives to rejuvinate the workforce, make it the coolest Fab company in the world to work for and leap ahead. Intel TMG's Sohail was the biggest borderline criminal executive that was forced out a couple of years ago and was responsible for the 10nm delays. It is enormously difficult for any startup to get into this space - you need billions and years of expertise to start a Fab. Or may be YC folks can? I worked in the Fab but don't have a birds-eye view of what it takes for a startup to get into this space. It would be amazing to see startups trying to manufacture semiconductors... you know live up to the Silicon Valley's name. You could have billions of dollars of economy built on services - US, EU and most advanced economies are shifting towards services; but they all rely on semiconductors. Imagine something were to happen to that... It is a juicy problem. We don't need Uber/AirBnb unicorns out of SV, we need Fairchild of the modern world from SV. Edit: To see what kind of a beast EUV litho is, this is a good short documentary on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0gMdGrVteI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0gMdGrVteI

regimeld 6y ago
Completely agree. The world's supply of semiconductors is dependent, in some ways, on the benevolence of the CCP. TSMC is like Arakkis. We need to diversify the supply chain.
- aaaxyz 6y ago
  Isn't TSMC building a fab in AZ? Anyway I'd say the "spice" in semiconductor production is rare earth elements, since the CCP controls most of their extraction (and has artificially lowered exports in the past)
  - hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
    > Anyway I'd say the "spice" in semiconductor production is rare earth elements, since the CCP controls most of their extraction That's really only because of other countries outsourcing to China and not supporting domestic mining. There is no shortage of rare earths in other countries.
    - hajile 6y ago
      That's very true. European countries "go green" by exporting their mining pollution to China. They can then blame China for all the pollution problems. Brilliant really. Get political points for "lowering emissions", then double dip getting more points for "being hard on China" while at the same time not hugely affecting the economy, jobs, or ticking off industrialists.
  - calcifer 6y ago
    > Isn't TSMC building a fab in AZ? Yes, but the planned chips are an older generation right now and they'll be even older when the fab actually starts production. TSMC would never move cutting edge production outside of Taiwan.
    - an_opabinia 6y ago
      It’s just such nincompoopery, people speculating about geopolitics. TSMC is owned by normal people who want to make money, if for some reason they aren’t able to trade, ownership will move out IP and put it on a USB key, and build elsewhere. Just think about it rationally. If TSMC isn’t allowed to meet demand, well of course someone will be incentivized to move the IP elsewhere where you are permitted to meet demand. It would be such a colossal opportunity. Indeed shutting off TSMC would be great for other people interested in getting into chip manufacturing, in the same way that reducing competition in anything benefits producers. The reason that doesn’t happen has nothing to do with geopolitics and everything to do with what every mainstream US politician has always been saying: subsidies, and the price of labor.
      - 6y ago
- ptx 6y ago
  TSMC is a Taiwanese company. The world can ensure the supply of its semiconductors by ensuring Taiwan has access to weapons and guarantees of military assistance in case the CCP's benevolence wavers.
  - tuatoru 6y ago
    China claims that Taiwan is a renegade province. When (not if) China acts on that, there will be trouble. China has strong infowar capability and is developing it quickly. Old-fashioned spy-vs-spy type warfare works, too, but is less visible.
  - kelnos 6y ago
    If China decides to take Taiwan by force, there is very little the rest of the world can do to stop them.
    - bgorman 6y ago
      Nazi Germany attempted to take tiny Malta from the Britsh for two years and failed. The Japanese held many untenable defensive positions in the Pacific for months. Unless China is willing to nuke Taiwan, (what would be the point?) a military offensive to take over Taiwan would be extremely unlikely to succeed within a few months - and assuming the US/Australia/UK/Japan/South Korea provide support - almost impossible. Doing any kind of amphibious landing offensive is incredibly costly and difficult. China's best hope would be that Joe Biden is under CCP control.
      - octoberfranklin 6y ago
        None of those other islands were even remotely close to the strategic value of Taiwan.
    - AgentOrange1234 6y ago
      Will do? Sure. But can do? Sanctions, war, ...
  - octoberfranklin 6y ago
hapless 6y ago
Fabrication is where Intel is falling down. They have fresh new chip designs that would be perfectly adequate, but they are still hobbled by 14nm. They have now released three? four? iterations of x86 design on the same 14 nm process, because 10nm is that troubled If you spun off the fabrication, as AMD did, you would have a much smaller, but more-competitive fabless business, and the fabricator would implode. (Which is pretty much what happened to Global Foundries, AMD's former fabrication house) In any case, much of the value for shareholders would be eradicated. Intel has historically done very well as a vertically integrated business. They would like to remain vertically integrated. We may see Intel resort to outside fabrication -- executives have already mentioned it in the business press -- but I very much doubt we will see them discard their internal fabrication capabilities.
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  I am afraid, they're going to be using US gov as their wheelchair to survive a few more decades: https://newsroom.intel.com/news/intel-wins-us-government-advanced-packaging-project/ https://newsroom.intel.com/news/intel-wins-us-government-adv...
  - raziel2701 6y ago
    So it's gonna be another too big to fail thing again.
    - Spivak 6y ago
      Less too big to fail, more a national security interest in ensuring the US can make chips during a hypothetical conflict. Great if you’re the company the gov’t blesses for this purpose (like Microsoft) but not so great for their competitors.
      - emodendroket 6y ago
        I'd probably be nervous about TSMC opening a fab in AZ then
mrtksn 6y ago
People root for anything-but-intel because competition is a good thing and intel had none for very long time. I don't know where the notion of "Intel is about to die and TMSC will make us suffer due to monopoly" comes from but before having people cheer for Intel again they probably need some time to have their execs cure some disease in some poor part of the world, do a few AMAs on reddit, open-source something, donate to some cool projects in tandem with actually improving their products before regaining the goodwill of the people. Can take some clues from Bill gates and Microsoft. The consumers are pissed. AMD's comeback is attracting a lot of fanfare because of people being sick of the not having an option beside "should I get i3, i5 or i7" for very long time.
- the8472 6y ago
  > I don't know where the notion of "Intel is about to die and TMSC will make us suffer due to monopoly" comes from Semiconductor R&D costs have been going up, companies consolidating or went into niches. There are jokes about having to buy from The Semiconductor Company® in the future. Intel is sitting on a lot of money, so they're not going to die soon. But they haven't been showing signs of improving the situation since 14nm was delayed in 2013. This saga didn't start with 10nm. Remember that the cadence used to be tick-tock every 18 months. We still can't get 10nm desktop chips. So there are some questions how they'll fare in the future.
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  Tech enthusiasm and criticism has become extremely cyclical in the past decade. It’s easy to forget that we were all cheering for Facebook and the Zuckerberg success story before it became uncool to be pro-Facebook. Intel is stumbling, but up until very recently they were still the fastest gaming CPUs available. That didn’t stop gamers from criticizing them endlessly and cheering their demise. Intel went from cool to uncool. Give it a few years and they might be able to leverage the underdog position into a comeback story.
  - formerly_proven 6y ago
    > It’s easy to forget that we were all cheering for Facebook and the Zuckerberg success story before it became uncool to be pro-Facebook. This is emphatically untrue. There was always a significant minority in "Hacker" and privacy circles that were intensely sceptical of Facebook in specific and "social media" in general.
wmf 6y ago
Samsung is not that bad. They just announced a 5nm chip; it's not as good as TSMC but it's not as far behind as Intel either.
- chorsestudios 6y ago
  Right, don't underestimate Samsung - they have top tier fabs and manufacture a lot of chips. If the world has all their eggs in the basket of one company that company is ASML.
  - T-A 6y ago
    Right, so our eggs are not all in one basket, but in two. One claimed as rebel territory by the CCP and one still technically at war with a nuclear-armed hermit kingdom.
    - dodobirdlord 6y ago
      Fortunately ASML is in the Netherlands.
      - T-A 6y ago
        I was obviously referring to Samsung. As for ASML, if it were the key to Intel's woes, the article we are all commenting would not have been written.
        Denvercoder9 6y ago
        > As for ASML, if it were the key to Intel's woes, the article we are all commenting would not have been written. It not being the issue discussed in the current article doesn't mean it isn't a critical issue.
        T-A 6y ago
        At risk of entering Rube Goldberg territory, I suppose we could speak of two baskets hanging by a common thread.
jaynetics 6y ago
I for one am very glad that TSMC amounts to a SPOF. I've been to Taiwan twice, and I'd much prefer to use an old chip a while longer than for this lovely, open nation to be invaded by a totalitarian regime. There is only a few things preventing an invasion, mainly that the US would like to keep this "unsinkable carrier", and TSMC. As Xinjiang shows, only international pain will do to make the world react to China's actions, and TSMC might be able to cause that.
ashtonkem 6y ago
> Since when is competition and choice a bad thing? Who is saying this? There is competition, and Intel is starting to lose. > If you're a chip design firm and you have a 8-month backlog to get your masks made at TSMC, what do you do then? Wait 8 months. This is a lot better than getting a "Lol, we don't do custom masks" from Intel. > Intel should spin off its Fab division as a separate company, hire some top executives to rejuvinate the workforce, make it the coolest Fab company in the world to work for and leap ahead. Yes, they absolutely should do that. The only question is if they have the guts to do it.
boznz 6y ago
China Invading Taiwan would be the IT worlds covid moment.
kyting 6y ago
Tick-Tock-Tick-Tock-Tock-Tock-Tock-Tock ....

regimeld 6y ago

Completely agree. The world's supply of semiconductors is dependent, in some ways, on the benevolence of the CCP. TSMC is like Arakkis. We need to diversify the supply chain.

aaaxyz 6y ago
Isn't TSMC building a fab in AZ? Anyway I'd say the "spice" in semiconductor production is rare earth elements, since the CCP controls most of their extraction (and has artificially lowered exports in the past)
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  > Anyway I'd say the "spice" in semiconductor production is rare earth elements, since the CCP controls most of their extraction That's really only because of other countries outsourcing to China and not supporting domestic mining. There is no shortage of rare earths in other countries.
  - hajile 6y ago
    That's very true. European countries "go green" by exporting their mining pollution to China. They can then blame China for all the pollution problems. Brilliant really. Get political points for "lowering emissions", then double dip getting more points for "being hard on China" while at the same time not hugely affecting the economy, jobs, or ticking off industrialists.
- calcifer 6y ago
  > Isn't TSMC building a fab in AZ? Yes, but the planned chips are an older generation right now and they'll be even older when the fab actually starts production. TSMC would never move cutting edge production outside of Taiwan.
  - an_opabinia 6y ago
    It’s just such nincompoopery, people speculating about geopolitics. TSMC is owned by normal people who want to make money, if for some reason they aren’t able to trade, ownership will move out IP and put it on a USB key, and build elsewhere. Just think about it rationally. If TSMC isn’t allowed to meet demand, well of course someone will be incentivized to move the IP elsewhere where you are permitted to meet demand. It would be such a colossal opportunity. Indeed shutting off TSMC would be great for other people interested in getting into chip manufacturing, in the same way that reducing competition in anything benefits producers. The reason that doesn’t happen has nothing to do with geopolitics and everything to do with what every mainstream US politician has always been saying: subsidies, and the price of labor.
    - 6y ago
ptx 6y ago
TSMC is a Taiwanese company. The world can ensure the supply of its semiconductors by ensuring Taiwan has access to weapons and guarantees of military assistance in case the CCP's benevolence wavers.
- tuatoru 6y ago
  China claims that Taiwan is a renegade province. When (not if) China acts on that, there will be trouble. China has strong infowar capability and is developing it quickly. Old-fashioned spy-vs-spy type warfare works, too, but is less visible.
- kelnos 6y ago
  If China decides to take Taiwan by force, there is very little the rest of the world can do to stop them.
  - bgorman 6y ago
    Nazi Germany attempted to take tiny Malta from the Britsh for two years and failed. The Japanese held many untenable defensive positions in the Pacific for months. Unless China is willing to nuke Taiwan, (what would be the point?) a military offensive to take over Taiwan would be extremely unlikely to succeed within a few months - and assuming the US/Australia/UK/Japan/South Korea provide support - almost impossible. Doing any kind of amphibious landing offensive is incredibly costly and difficult. China's best hope would be that Joe Biden is under CCP control.
    - octoberfranklin 6y ago
      None of those other islands were even remotely close to the strategic value of Taiwan.
  - AgentOrange1234 6y ago
    Will do? Sure. But can do? Sanctions, war, ...
- octoberfranklin 6y ago

hapless 6y ago

Fabrication is where Intel is falling down. They have fresh new chip designs that would be perfectly adequate, but they are still hobbled by 14nm. They have now released three? four? iterations of x86 design on the same 14 nm process, because 10nm is that troubled If you spun off the fabrication, as AMD did, you would have a much smaller, but more-competitive fabless business, and the fabricator would implode. (Which is pretty much what happened to Global Foundries, AMD's former fabrication house) In any case, much of the value for shareholders would be eradicated. Intel has historically done very well as a vertically integrated business. They would like to remain vertically integrated. We may see Intel resort to outside fabrication -- executives have already mentioned it in the business press -- but I very much doubt we will see them discard their internal fabrication capabilities.

systemvoltage 6y ago
I am afraid, they're going to be using US gov as their wheelchair to survive a few more decades: https://newsroom.intel.com/news/intel-wins-us-government-advanced-packaging-project/ https://newsroom.intel.com/news/intel-wins-us-government-adv...
- raziel2701 6y ago
  So it's gonna be another too big to fail thing again.
  - Spivak 6y ago
    Less too big to fail, more a national security interest in ensuring the US can make chips during a hypothetical conflict. Great if you’re the company the gov’t blesses for this purpose (like Microsoft) but not so great for their competitors.
    - emodendroket 6y ago
      I'd probably be nervous about TSMC opening a fab in AZ then

mrtksn 6y ago

People root for anything-but-intel because competition is a good thing and intel had none for very long time. I don't know where the notion of "Intel is about to die and TMSC will make us suffer due to monopoly" comes from but before having people cheer for Intel again they probably need some time to have their execs cure some disease in some poor part of the world, do a few AMAs on reddit, open-source something, donate to some cool projects in tandem with actually improving their products before regaining the goodwill of the people. Can take some clues from Bill gates and Microsoft. The consumers are pissed. AMD's comeback is attracting a lot of fanfare because of people being sick of the not having an option beside "should I get i3, i5 or i7" for very long time.

the8472 6y ago
> I don't know where the notion of "Intel is about to die and TMSC will make us suffer due to monopoly" comes from Semiconductor R&D costs have been going up, companies consolidating or went into niches. There are jokes about having to buy from The Semiconductor Company® in the future. Intel is sitting on a lot of money, so they're not going to die soon. But they haven't been showing signs of improving the situation since 14nm was delayed in 2013. This saga didn't start with 10nm. Remember that the cadence used to be tick-tock every 18 months. We still can't get 10nm desktop chips. So there are some questions how they'll fare in the future.
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
Tech enthusiasm and criticism has become extremely cyclical in the past decade. It’s easy to forget that we were all cheering for Facebook and the Zuckerberg success story before it became uncool to be pro-Facebook. Intel is stumbling, but up until very recently they were still the fastest gaming CPUs available. That didn’t stop gamers from criticizing them endlessly and cheering their demise. Intel went from cool to uncool. Give it a few years and they might be able to leverage the underdog position into a comeback story.
- formerly_proven 6y ago
  > It’s easy to forget that we were all cheering for Facebook and the Zuckerberg success story before it became uncool to be pro-Facebook. This is emphatically untrue. There was always a significant minority in "Hacker" and privacy circles that were intensely sceptical of Facebook in specific and "social media" in general.

wmf 6y ago

Samsung is not that bad. They just announced a 5nm chip; it's not as good as TSMC but it's not as far behind as Intel either.

chorsestudios 6y ago
Right, don't underestimate Samsung - they have top tier fabs and manufacture a lot of chips. If the world has all their eggs in the basket of one company that company is ASML.
- T-A 6y ago
  Right, so our eggs are not all in one basket, but in two. One claimed as rebel territory by the CCP and one still technically at war with a nuclear-armed hermit kingdom.
  - dodobirdlord 6y ago
    Fortunately ASML is in the Netherlands.
    - T-A 6y ago
      I was obviously referring to Samsung. As for ASML, if it were the key to Intel's woes, the article we are all commenting would not have been written.
      - Denvercoder9 6y ago
        > As for ASML, if it were the key to Intel's woes, the article we are all commenting would not have been written. It not being the issue discussed in the current article doesn't mean it isn't a critical issue.
        T-A 6y ago
        At risk of entering Rube Goldberg territory, I suppose we could speak of two baskets hanging by a common thread.

jaynetics 6y ago

I for one am very glad that TSMC amounts to a SPOF. I've been to Taiwan twice, and I'd much prefer to use an old chip a while longer than for this lovely, open nation to be invaded by a totalitarian regime. There is only a few things preventing an invasion, mainly that the US would like to keep this "unsinkable carrier", and TSMC. As Xinjiang shows, only international pain will do to make the world react to China's actions, and TSMC might be able to cause that.

ashtonkem 6y ago

> Since when is competition and choice a bad thing? Who is saying this? There is competition, and Intel is starting to lose. > If you're a chip design firm and you have a 8-month backlog to get your masks made at TSMC, what do you do then? Wait 8 months. This is a lot better than getting a "Lol, we don't do custom masks" from Intel. > Intel should spin off its Fab division as a separate company, hire some top executives to rejuvinate the workforce, make it the coolest Fab company in the world to work for and leap ahead. Yes, they absolutely should do that. The only question is if they have the guts to do it.

boznz 6y ago

China Invading Taiwan would be the IT worlds covid moment.

kyting 6y ago

Tick-Tock-Tick-Tock-Tock-Tock-Tock-Tock ....