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Feels like we are quickly centralizing consumer chip fabrication into a single company. I guess the barrier for entry is so high and TSMC is just so far ahead.
by jcstryker 6y ago
Feels like we are quickly centralizing consumer chip fabrication into a single company. I guess the barrier for entry is so high and TSMC is just so far ahead.
- MrStonedOne 6y agoConsumer high end cpu fabrication* intel's fabs still work for printing just about anything besides high end current gen shit.
- moomin 6y agoIn the 90s, it was Intel that were so far ahead. And the barrier of entry was sky-high then. From that perspective this story is amazing.
- Symmetry 6y agoIn the 90s there were dozens of leading edge fabs. But while the barriers were high back then the capital investment needed to get into the next node has gone up exponentially, about 15% each node, since then doubling every 5 years. It took less than $1 billion to get in the game back then but over $20 billion now.
- segfaultbuserr 6y agoRock's law, the inverse of Moore's Law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_second_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_second_law
- qeternity 6y agoIt's not clear whether this is cause or effect. The insatiable demand for silicon fabbing has arguably made a $20B plant today more economical than a $1B plant 25 years ago.
- whalesalad 6y agoMakes you wonder what the hell they’ve been actually doing this whole time. Just pumping out more of the same and becoming obsolete.
- Avalaxy 6y agoWell, then same happened then with Pentium 4 vs Athlon 64.
- whalesalad 6y agoI had an Athlon 64 machine. The good old days of socket 754/939
- aaronharder 6y agoVia HN yesterday, some good thoughts on that question: https://stratechery.com/2021/intel-problems/ https://stratechery.com/2021/intel-problems/
- goldcd 6y agoHanding out dividends like clockwork. Makes me think of Boeing.. Big engineering company taken over by the accountants. (Now I don't mean that as a slight to accountants - just you need balance).
- mensetmanusman 6y agoNot likely, What’s tricky to understand is that once TSMC said, ‘we will build everything and design nothing’, everyone looked to them when there wasn’t another competitor willing to do the same. The massive order volume they received (with low margin) let them experiment on process development 10x that of Intel. Remember when Wall St. said America can outsource manufacturing because ‘other people’ aren’t smart enough to innovate? Looks like they were wrong :) The American middle class is going to be further decimated over the next decade. Wups
- brennanpeterson 6y agoTsmcs r&d spend has been equivalent to Intel's for the last decade. TSMC did a great job, most particularly on EUV introduction. I don't think wall street cares about outsourcing, except as a potential savings. The hollowing out is real, but it is fixable. It will take a really different approach, though.
- tomjen3 6y agoA single company in a small country 70 miles of mainland China, who considers themselves an international rival.
- kllrnohj 6y agoTSMC only just pulled out in front. Rewind the clock a mere 5 years and Intel was in front, with Samsung and GlobalFoundries basically tied for 2nd, and TSMC in dead last (they had the weakest 16nm/12nm of that generation - the only one who couldn't hit 30MTr/mm2 of the bunch) GloFlo then backed out entirely of the race and Intel slammed into a wall. Since then Samsung and TSMC were on "equal" ground at "10nm" (both ~52MTr/mm2, both released 2017) and again at "7nm" (both ~96MTr/mm2). It's not until 5nm that TSMC was actually clearly in-front of everyone else, with their 5nm being 173MTr/mm2 while Samsung's is only 127MTr/mm2. In terms of "TSMC is just so far ahead." Samsung's 3nm is supposed to use GAAFET while TSMC's 3nm will still be FinFET. So.. potentially Samsung re-claims the "crown" so to speak at 3nm. And Samsung does contract out their fabs - see Nvidia's RTX 3000 series. There's also no particular reason to believe that Intel is down for the count for good. They are a huge company with a huge amount of capital, they can fund a rough generation or two.
- mi_lk 6y ago> Samsung's 3nm is supposed to use GAAFET while TSMC's 3nm will still be FinFET. So.. potentially Samsung re-claims the "crown" so to speak at 3nm. Can you elaborate for us uninitiated? Why GAAFET might help Samsung win at 3nm?
- abfan1127 6y agoI assume its more density since its more vertical, but I only know whats in this quick article. https://eepower.com/market-insights/could-gaafets-replace-finfets/ https://eepower.com/market-insights/could-gaafets-replace-fi...
- jjoonathan 6y agoThe job of a gate is to "hold open" / "pinch closed" a channel with an electric field. The closer to the gate, the better the hold/pinch. In ye olde days, you'd slap a gate on the top of a channel and call it a day. Every part of the channel was close enough to the gate get a good pinch. Then everything shrunk and smaller channels wound up needing stronger pinches to completely shut them off. Instead of slapping a gate on top and calling it a day, they raised the channel into a fin and drizzled the gate over 3 sides so that it could pinch from the left and right, not just the top. Those are FinFETs. The next step is to have the gate on the bottom, too, so that it can pinch from all four sides. The channel literally goes through the gate, which surrounds it on all sides. Those are Gate-All-Around FETs, or GAAFETs.
- bob1029 6y ago99% of the barrier is feature size. Producing the feature size starts with photolithography. If you want to talk about centralizing concerns, look into the number of companies who can produce an EUV light source capable of supplying a photo tool with powerful & precise output 24/7/365.
- exhilaration 6y agoIs there more than one? ASML in the Netherlands is the only company I ever hear mentioned when it comes to photolithography.
- raj_khare 6y agoHow can I contact you? I've some doubts
- rusticpenn 6y agoThe main problem is that there is no profit in chip manufacturing ( relative to software development). Apparently it takes 5-6 years for a node to make any profit.
- lostmsu 6y agoThis can quickly change if demand stays high. TSMC have already increased prices. https://www.techspot.com/news/88006-tmsc-ending-discounts-increasing-wafer-prices.html https://www.techspot.com/news/88006-tmsc-ending-discounts-in...
- worker767424 6y agoI'd say it's weird because hardware like this is so much harder, but the benefit's also a lot more marginal. There was a time when you had to buy a new computer every 4 years or it would be cripplingly slow. These days, pretty good hardware that's 8 years old is good enough today if you have an SSD, 8GB of ram, and don't play AAA games.
- rusticpenn 6y agoThere are a lot of other innovations possible, but the business flow for hardware manufacturing does not have the right motivations. I personally think that Apple is doing the right things on several levels.
- heimatau 6y ago> The main problem is that there is no profit in chip manufacturing This isn't true. Check out the margins of TSMC, it tends to be 40% or so. But to maintain this lead in the industry, they need to massively reinvest for the next smaller process. With that said, profits are great but they don't endure (software development is somewhat more 'sticky' especially since everyone is doing SaaS which provides more incentives for competition and many companies are growing even with covid19 changing the market landscape).
- rusticpenn 6y ago