21 ms·

Chipmaking Is Being Redesigned

165 points by klelatti 6y ago

adityar 6y ago
Non-paywall: https://outline.com/NTubwj https://outline.com/NTubwj
- nindalf 6y ago
  Strange. Copying all of the content - is what they're doing legal?
  - mmastrac 6y ago
    IANAL, obviously, but it's probably not.. I don't see this as being very transformative. You'd probably have a tough time convincing a judge.
    - curiousllama 6y ago
      "It's not a lockpick, your honor. All it does is interact with the pins inside of certain types of locks to grant entry. Just like a key. They basically left the door open"
      - worker767424 6y ago
        Like Elon Musk's definitely not a flamethrower. https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/19/elon-musk-said-it-was-not-a-flamethrower/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/19/elon-musk-said-it-was-not-...
  - throwaway09223 6y ago
    They haven't copied any content. Outline is a javascript app that changes the way your browser renders the website. It's your browser contacting economist.com and fetching the webpage. The javascript app then changes how it is rendered by removing stuff most people don't want to see. Outline is available as a browser extension, if you don't want to load it by visiting outline.com.
    - crazygringo 6y ago
      That's not true. It doesn't load the content through your browser, it loads it through its servers. They indeed copy content, and it's up to you to develop your own opinions as to the legality or ethicality of that. :)
      - throwaway09223 6y ago
        Huh, I stand corrected. I should've looked more closely before commenting.
    - trhway 6y ago
      >It's your browser contacting economist.com and fetching the webpage chrome devtools->network tells different story.
  - ThisIsTheWay 6y ago
    You could see the same with a quick Ctrl+U, Outline is just nicely formatted.
anigbrowl 6y ago
You don't need to put the name of the publication in the title, HN does it automatically.
- dang 6y ago
  Removed now. Thanks! Submitted title was 'Economist: Chipmaking Is Being Redesigned'. This is in the HN guidelines actually ("If the title includes the name of the site, please take it out, because the site name will be displayed after the link.") https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - klelatti 6y ago
    Thanks and apologies! If you submit once in a blue moon then it's easy to forget.
mywittyname 6y ago
> But the logical endpoint of the relentless rise in manufacturing costs is that, at some point, one company, in all likelihood TSMC, could be the last advanced fab standing. Most established, capital-intensive markets are winner-take-all, where a few big players control the bulk of the market. And they usually remain at the top of the market until some fundamental paradigm shift occurs that causes the market to shrink. TSMC will be top dog for a while, until something happens that causes the market for custom made silicon to collapse. Just like Intel was top dog until something came along to replace the market for x86. Or like Microsoft was King Dingaling until people moved to mobile computing.
- ianai 6y ago
  Or a third party decides to enter the market and go for position number 2. Apple could probably do it with the cash they roll - but they don't want to do so. A country could. It sure seems like chips are important enough to warrant a national supply - so international pressures can't weigh on you politically through chip supply.
  - na85 6y ago
    I've long held the opinion that chip making will eventually go the route of uranium refining and become national strategic capabilities that all great powers will pursue. I'm continually surprised that this doesn't seem to be taking place outside th defence sector.
    - ianai 6y ago
      Honestly I’d blame governments being staffed by people who make their money in more traditional areas. Aka we need a generational change.
    - bluGill 6y ago
      Chip making is still advancing too fast for that. If the current processes are about the limit of physics, then eventually yes. Right now it is better to hope your country just does the next leapfrog of technology.
Ericson2314 6y ago
How much of the cost is in the design of the fab factory vs its physical manufacture? My hunch is now that chip design and chip manufacturing are separate, the cost of chip design is going to be revealed as a lot lower because the opaque accounting of before allowed for stupid inefficiencies. But in this case, I have no idea whether funding the basic materials engineering, scaling it up, or building the scaled up design, is the hard part.
- hctaw 6y ago
  The two can't be separated at birth. Design is an iterative process that requires feedback loops with the manufacturing teams (including testing and packaging, which may or may not be a part of the fab). Just an example, the design has to be altered to maximize yields. You don't know what the yields are like or what to alter in the design until you make a few chips and test them, which means you need to design the test harnesses, tape out a prototype, and get both to where they need to be. And then try again. If the testing, fab, and design people/materials are in different places you have to move things and people around as a part of the process. It's just an expensive endeavor that's difficult conceptually and logistically, with a lot of institutional knowledge required.
  - Ericson2314 6y ago
    I'm not necessary agreeing with that. Chip fab, jet engine fab, etc. are all at the limits of what Capitalism can handle, as the geopolitics, protectionism, and cronyism attests. The solution is less than clear: - Because of the enormous costs of duplicated effort. I'm not sure anti-trust will work. - Nationalist duplication might, but I am not sure whether it will hinder or hasten WWIII. - Radical IP disembargo with institutional cross pollination works better for codified then opaque-institutional knowledge. What is nice about vertical disintegration is is forces the the institutional knowledge to by codified. So maybe things can work in tandem, too.
peter_d_sherman 6y ago
>"On january 13th Honda, a Japanese carmaker, said it had to shut its factory in Swindon, a town in southern England, for a while. Not because of Brexit, or workers sick with covid-19. The reason was a shortage of microchips. Other car firms are suffering, too. Volkswagen, which produces more vehicles than any other firm, has said it will make 100,000 fewer this quarter as a result. Like just about everything else these days—from banks to combine harvesters—cars cannot run without computers." https://www.auto123.com/en/news/the-devastating-effects-of-an-automotive-chip-shortage/9086/ https://www.auto123.com/en/news/the-devastating-effects-of-a... >"While car enthusiasts the world over are worried about assembly plant closures following the earthquake that ravaged Japan, many are still unaware of the significant role played by companies working at the start of the colossal logistical chain that results in the production of a vehicle. Did you know that a single vehicle uses from 30 to over 100 chips to control things like the parking brake, stereo, power steering and safety systems such as stability control? Development of these components is extremely complex, and only a handful of companies are able to meet the demands of the world’s automotive giants." PDS: The world's automobile manufacturers, that is, the world's carmakers -- would, or should have, a collective interest in IC/Chip fabrication -- especially in light of the most recent shortage...
- trhway 6y ago
  >Did you know that a single vehicle uses from 30 to over 100 chips trying to sell extended warranty the dealer made sure to repeat that again and again ( i still didn't buy and as of now, 5.5 years later, no chip nor anything else has failed so far :)
  - kaonwarb 6y ago
    Reminds me of the time a dealer tried to convince me with "math" that I was guaranteed to save money by buying the extended warranty. I asked if that meant they were guaranteed to lose money, and if so, why they were trying so hard to sell it to me. They moved on pretty quick from that.
    - jonathanlydall 6y ago
lwneal 6y ago
> Today’s state-of-the-art is five-nanometre chips (though “5nm” no longer refers to the actual size of transistors as earlier generations did). It's refreshing to see this mentioned. I'm no semiconductor expert, but it seems weird to me that although node size is measured in a physical unit, nanometers, it does not correspond to any real measurement that exists [1]. Each transistor in a 5nm chip is actually between 28 and 36 nanometers in width. It's called 5nm because of a theoretical calculation based on transistor density [2]. If Tesla advertised a new "200kWh" battery, I would be very disappointed if it turned out that the battery only held 95kWh, but the marketing department had decided that improvements in the charging network have made it "like 200kWh" compared to earlier models. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_nm_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_nm_process [2] https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/technology_node#Meaning_lost https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/technology_node#Meaning_lost
- xxpor 6y ago
  I feel that stuff like this has a long history in engineering. It's like how TVs are in the 55 in "class", or a 2x4 is actually something like 1.75x3.5 now.
  - joshualross 6y ago
    I don't think we should limit to just engineering; you see this stuff in media, politics, finances, statistics, etc. Anything that is not well understood by the public at large is ripe for misuse.
  - wfleming 6y ago
    2x4s are 2x4 before they're seasoned, though. The lumber is dried after dimensioning and shrinks as it loses moisture. But we still label it by the original dimensions because lumber is priced by the board foot (which is itself a weird archaic measure) of the lumber when it was cut. For comparison, sheet goods aren't priced this way. A 3/4" sheet of plywood really is 3/4", because the plywood was manufactured that way and as a manufactured product there is no seasoning. You're not being ripped off because a 2x4 is actually smaller. A sawmill had a tree, and they cut off a hunk of that tree, and they charge by how much wood they cut off. The dimensions of that piece of wood changed after they cut it (which in and of itself is a service they provide - it would be a hassle if you had to buy green lumber and dry it yourself).
kingosticks 6y ago
> And whereas designing your own chips once meant having to make them as well, that is no longer true. This hasn't been true for what, 15-20 years? Longer? If you had a digital design and enough cash you could have gone to one of many vendors, who in turn worked with an external fab such as TSMC (or in other cases, the fab division of the same company) to create your design. When working with a vendor like Broadcom, Agere, Toshiba, IBM, Intel, Marvel you can be entirely isolated from the physical aspects of making chips, if that's what you want. What has happened over the last few years is massive consolidation of these vendors so now the options are far more limited. It's basically just Broadcom or Marvel at the cutting edge. I don't think this goes anywhere to explain why more companies are designing their own chips but it's a more accurate description of reality.
- klelatti 6y ago
  35 years? The original ARM1 was manufactured under contract by VLSI.
gitowiec 6y ago
Yes, we put chips in everything, and if this occurs https://youtu.be/hESunUuFrzk https://youtu.be/hESunUuFrzk what then?
11thEarlOfMar 6y ago
I tried to find some numbers on the relative amount of chips in a standard ICE car vs. a BEV. I'd have to guess BEVs have perhaps even an order of magnitude more chips. Certainly, they have chips that are far more advanced, looking at the Tesla FSD computer[0]. The chip industry, and the chip equipment industry are still capacity limited due to demands of remote work and school. That may level off and revert somewhat towards the end of the year. BEV sales may take up the slack, but also may demand a somewhat different chip supply chain and drive demand for different segments in the industry. We may well see the typical crash in equipment sales in 2022 as those two market drivers transpire. [0] https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/tesla-fsd-computer-retrofit-model-s-owner/ https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/tesla-fsd-computer-retrof...
- astrange 6y ago
  > I tried to find some numbers on the relative amount of chips in a standard ICE car vs. a BEV. I'd have to guess BEVs have perhaps even an order of magnitude more chips. Certainly, they have chips that are far more advanced, looking at the Tesla FSD computer[0]. Well, you could have FSD in an ICE car just as easily. In fact, I'm going to guess an electric vehicle has fewer chips than an ICE car because it doesn't have an engine. Depends how many PMICs you need for the battery cells.
  - samus 6y ago
    It's also highly debatable whether you need chips made with the latest process nodes for these purposes. Few cars or trains have to be machine-learning monsters. Also, power electronics, used by all kinds of vehicles, is perfectly fine using larger, cheaper and more rugged nodes.
neonate 6y ago
https://archive.is/96uT2 https://archive.is/96uT2
intricatedetail 6y ago
How difficult is to recreate e.g. 100nm litography diy?
- Koshkin 6y ago
  Looks like we at a point right now at which we can make a vacuum tube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzyXMEpq4qw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzyXMEpq4qw
- namibj 6y ago
  Very. 350 nm is about the limit of what [0]'s DIY process should be scalable to with somewhat more precision outside of the photolithography itself, as well as clean room conditions. [0]: http://sam.zeloof.xyz/ http://sam.zeloof.xyz/
- abdullahkhalids 6y ago
  These guys are making headway https://libresilicon.com/ https://libresilicon.com/
  - samus 6y ago
    Could you find out which node size? I could find a reference to 1 micrometer. It's a good start, and probably more than enough for many purposes, but way to go...
lincpa 6y ago
Forecast(2021-01-19): I think Intel, AMD, ARM, supercomputing, etc. will adopt the "warehouse/workshop model" In the past, the performance of the CPU played a decisive role in the performance of the computer. There were few CPU cores and the number and types of peripherals. Therefore, the CPU became the center of the computer hardware architecture. Now, with more and more CPU and GPU cores, and the number and types of peripherals, the communication, coordination, and management of cores (or components, peripherals) have become more and more important, They become a key factor in computer performance. The core views of management science and computer science are the same: Use all available resources to complete the goal with the highest efficiency. It is the best field of management science to accomplish production goals through communication, coordination, and management of various available resources. The most effective, reliable, and absolutely mainstream way is the "warehouse/workshop model". So I think Intel, AMD, ARM, supercomputing, etc. will adopt the "warehouse/workshop model", which is an inevitable trend in the development of computer hardware. https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow
ivanstame 6y ago
This article is hidden behind a paywall.
- fumblebee 6y ago
  https://outline.com/NTubwj https://outline.com/NTubwj
  - ivanstame 6y ago
    I didn't know about this service. Thanks a lot.
gautamcgoel 6y ago
Suppose I had $100M to blow. Could I build a fab in the USA that produced chips at, say, 65nm? I understand that a cutting-edge node like 7nm would be out of reach at that price point, but I'm curious what exactly is in reach.
- meekrohprocess 6y ago
  Good question! I'd also be curious as to the answer. But I suspect that it is probably "no". Because it looks like ST was planning to pay ~$1.8B per 300nm fab in 2017. https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/st-build-two-new-300mm-fabs-2017-10/ https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/st-build-two... I assume that "mm" is a typo in the article, but that cost was for a >15-year-old process node. 65nm for $100M might be a stretch, if that is accurate.
  - patrickyeon 6y ago
    That 300mm is a different measurement. It's not a typo and they're refering to the size of the wafers, in this case 300mm diameter (very close to 12 inches).
    - dhdc 6y ago
      Yes. In addition, wafer size is another important metric of fab capabilities aside from process node, since it roughly translates into production rate.
    - gautamcgoel 6y ago
      So... Does that mean 65nm at $100M is possible after all?
      - patrickyeon 6y ago
        This is coming in late, but the short answer is "I have no idea". The slightly longer answer is "I don't know. But once you have the space and equipment and you're sure you can handle everything safely you still need to staff this and build up some institutional knowledge." If you're thinking this far, you should ask why 65nm? Because it's a process node you know a certain microprocessor was built on? It's just a benchmark that's useful for working out your sense of what it costs to do these from scratch? The cheapest way to get the equipment would be buying out a fab that's shutting down. When I was in undergrad, I got to play in a 5 micron (5000nm) fab on campus because the previous owner of all the equipment gifted it to the university instead of scrapping it. My gut sense is that there's nothing at 65nm that's unprofitable yet, so you're not getting cheap stuff. (a 6 micron node was commercialized in 1974, this university lab was opened in 1993. 65nm was commercialized in 2005. While Moore's Law held, more or less, through much of 1974-2005, I think we can say that the difficulties and necessary capital investments increased super-linearly over that time. And 20 year old manufacturing tech seems much more useful now than it did in '93. The STM32 family of microcontrollers, a very strong line, is spread over the 132-40nm range of process nodes.)

165 points by klelatti 6y ago

adityar 6y ago

Non-paywall: https://outline.com/NTubwj https://outline.com/NTubwj

nindalf 6y ago
Strange. Copying all of the content - is what they're doing legal?
- mmastrac 6y ago
  IANAL, obviously, but it's probably not.. I don't see this as being very transformative. You'd probably have a tough time convincing a judge.
  - curiousllama 6y ago
    "It's not a lockpick, your honor. All it does is interact with the pins inside of certain types of locks to grant entry. Just like a key. They basically left the door open"
    - worker767424 6y ago
      Like Elon Musk's definitely not a flamethrower. https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/19/elon-musk-said-it-was-not-a-flamethrower/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/19/elon-musk-said-it-was-not-...
- throwaway09223 6y ago
  They haven't copied any content. Outline is a javascript app that changes the way your browser renders the website. It's your browser contacting economist.com and fetching the webpage. The javascript app then changes how it is rendered by removing stuff most people don't want to see. Outline is available as a browser extension, if you don't want to load it by visiting outline.com.
  - crazygringo 6y ago
    That's not true. It doesn't load the content through your browser, it loads it through its servers. They indeed copy content, and it's up to you to develop your own opinions as to the legality or ethicality of that. :)
    - throwaway09223 6y ago
      Huh, I stand corrected. I should've looked more closely before commenting.
  - trhway 6y ago
    >It's your browser contacting economist.com and fetching the webpage chrome devtools->network tells different story.
- ThisIsTheWay 6y ago
  You could see the same with a quick Ctrl+U, Outline is just nicely formatted.

anigbrowl 6y ago

You don't need to put the name of the publication in the title, HN does it automatically.

dang 6y ago
Removed now. Thanks! Submitted title was 'Economist: Chipmaking Is Being Redesigned'. This is in the HN guidelines actually ("If the title includes the name of the site, please take it out, because the site name will be displayed after the link.") https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- klelatti 6y ago
  Thanks and apologies! If you submit once in a blue moon then it's easy to forget.

mywittyname 6y ago

> But the logical endpoint of the relentless rise in manufacturing costs is that, at some point, one company, in all likelihood TSMC, could be the last advanced fab standing. Most established, capital-intensive markets are winner-take-all, where a few big players control the bulk of the market. And they usually remain at the top of the market until some fundamental paradigm shift occurs that causes the market to shrink. TSMC will be top dog for a while, until something happens that causes the market for custom made silicon to collapse. Just like Intel was top dog until something came along to replace the market for x86. Or like Microsoft was King Dingaling until people moved to mobile computing.

ianai 6y ago
Or a third party decides to enter the market and go for position number 2. Apple could probably do it with the cash they roll - but they don't want to do so. A country could. It sure seems like chips are important enough to warrant a national supply - so international pressures can't weigh on you politically through chip supply.
- na85 6y ago
  I've long held the opinion that chip making will eventually go the route of uranium refining and become national strategic capabilities that all great powers will pursue. I'm continually surprised that this doesn't seem to be taking place outside th defence sector.
  - ianai 6y ago
    Honestly I’d blame governments being staffed by people who make their money in more traditional areas. Aka we need a generational change.
  - bluGill 6y ago
    Chip making is still advancing too fast for that. If the current processes are about the limit of physics, then eventually yes. Right now it is better to hope your country just does the next leapfrog of technology.

Ericson2314 6y ago

How much of the cost is in the design of the fab factory vs its physical manufacture? My hunch is now that chip design and chip manufacturing are separate, the cost of chip design is going to be revealed as a lot lower because the opaque accounting of before allowed for stupid inefficiencies. But in this case, I have no idea whether funding the basic materials engineering, scaling it up, or building the scaled up design, is the hard part.

hctaw 6y ago
The two can't be separated at birth. Design is an iterative process that requires feedback loops with the manufacturing teams (including testing and packaging, which may or may not be a part of the fab). Just an example, the design has to be altered to maximize yields. You don't know what the yields are like or what to alter in the design until you make a few chips and test them, which means you need to design the test harnesses, tape out a prototype, and get both to where they need to be. And then try again. If the testing, fab, and design people/materials are in different places you have to move things and people around as a part of the process. It's just an expensive endeavor that's difficult conceptually and logistically, with a lot of institutional knowledge required.
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  I'm not necessary agreeing with that. Chip fab, jet engine fab, etc. are all at the limits of what Capitalism can handle, as the geopolitics, protectionism, and cronyism attests. The solution is less than clear: - Because of the enormous costs of duplicated effort. I'm not sure anti-trust will work. - Nationalist duplication might, but I am not sure whether it will hinder or hasten WWIII. - Radical IP disembargo with institutional cross pollination works better for codified then opaque-institutional knowledge. What is nice about vertical disintegration is is forces the the institutional knowledge to by codified. So maybe things can work in tandem, too.

peter_d_sherman 6y ago

>"On january 13th Honda, a Japanese carmaker, said it had to shut its factory in Swindon, a town in southern England, for a while. Not because of Brexit, or workers sick with covid-19. The reason was a shortage of microchips. Other car firms are suffering, too. Volkswagen, which produces more vehicles than any other firm, has said it will make 100,000 fewer this quarter as a result. Like just about everything else these days—from banks to combine harvesters—cars cannot run without computers." https://www.auto123.com/en/news/the-devastating-effects-of-an-automotive-chip-shortage/9086/ https://www.auto123.com/en/news/the-devastating-effects-of-a... >"While car enthusiasts the world over are worried about assembly plant closures following the earthquake that ravaged Japan, many are still unaware of the significant role played by companies working at the start of the colossal logistical chain that results in the production of a vehicle. Did you know that a single vehicle uses from 30 to over 100 chips to control things like the parking brake, stereo, power steering and safety systems such as stability control? Development of these components is extremely complex, and only a handful of companies are able to meet the demands of the world’s automotive giants." PDS: The world's automobile manufacturers, that is, the world's carmakers -- would, or should have, a collective interest in IC/Chip fabrication -- especially in light of the most recent shortage...

trhway 6y ago
>Did you know that a single vehicle uses from 30 to over 100 chips trying to sell extended warranty the dealer made sure to repeat that again and again ( i still didn't buy and as of now, 5.5 years later, no chip nor anything else has failed so far :)
- kaonwarb 6y ago
  Reminds me of the time a dealer tried to convince me with "math" that I was guaranteed to save money by buying the extended warranty. I asked if that meant they were guaranteed to lose money, and if so, why they were trying so hard to sell it to me. They moved on pretty quick from that.
  - jonathanlydall 6y ago

lwneal 6y ago

> Today’s state-of-the-art is five-nanometre chips (though “5nm” no longer refers to the actual size of transistors as earlier generations did). It's refreshing to see this mentioned. I'm no semiconductor expert, but it seems weird to me that although node size is measured in a physical unit, nanometers, it does not correspond to any real measurement that exists [1]. Each transistor in a 5nm chip is actually between 28 and 36 nanometers in width. It's called 5nm because of a theoretical calculation based on transistor density [2]. If Tesla advertised a new "200kWh" battery, I would be very disappointed if it turned out that the battery only held 95kWh, but the marketing department had decided that improvements in the charging network have made it "like 200kWh" compared to earlier models. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_nm_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_nm_process [2] https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/technology_node#Meaning_lost https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/technology_node#Meaning_lost

xxpor 6y ago
I feel that stuff like this has a long history in engineering. It's like how TVs are in the 55 in "class", or a 2x4 is actually something like 1.75x3.5 now.
- joshualross 6y ago
  I don't think we should limit to just engineering; you see this stuff in media, politics, finances, statistics, etc. Anything that is not well understood by the public at large is ripe for misuse.
- wfleming 6y ago
  2x4s are 2x4 before they're seasoned, though. The lumber is dried after dimensioning and shrinks as it loses moisture. But we still label it by the original dimensions because lumber is priced by the board foot (which is itself a weird archaic measure) of the lumber when it was cut. For comparison, sheet goods aren't priced this way. A 3/4" sheet of plywood really is 3/4", because the plywood was manufactured that way and as a manufactured product there is no seasoning. You're not being ripped off because a 2x4 is actually smaller. A sawmill had a tree, and they cut off a hunk of that tree, and they charge by how much wood they cut off. The dimensions of that piece of wood changed after they cut it (which in and of itself is a service they provide - it would be a hassle if you had to buy green lumber and dry it yourself).

kingosticks 6y ago

> And whereas designing your own chips once meant having to make them as well, that is no longer true. This hasn't been true for what, 15-20 years? Longer? If you had a digital design and enough cash you could have gone to one of many vendors, who in turn worked with an external fab such as TSMC (or in other cases, the fab division of the same company) to create your design. When working with a vendor like Broadcom, Agere, Toshiba, IBM, Intel, Marvel you can be entirely isolated from the physical aspects of making chips, if that's what you want. What has happened over the last few years is massive consolidation of these vendors so now the options are far more limited. It's basically just Broadcom or Marvel at the cutting edge. I don't think this goes anywhere to explain why more companies are designing their own chips but it's a more accurate description of reality.

klelatti 6y ago
35 years? The original ARM1 was manufactured under contract by VLSI.

gitowiec 6y ago

Yes, we put chips in everything, and if this occurs https://youtu.be/hESunUuFrzk https://youtu.be/hESunUuFrzk what then?

11thEarlOfMar 6y ago

I tried to find some numbers on the relative amount of chips in a standard ICE car vs. a BEV. I'd have to guess BEVs have perhaps even an order of magnitude more chips. Certainly, they have chips that are far more advanced, looking at the Tesla FSD computer[0]. The chip industry, and the chip equipment industry are still capacity limited due to demands of remote work and school. That may level off and revert somewhat towards the end of the year. BEV sales may take up the slack, but also may demand a somewhat different chip supply chain and drive demand for different segments in the industry. We may well see the typical crash in equipment sales in 2022 as those two market drivers transpire. [0] https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/tesla-fsd-computer-retrofit-model-s-owner/ https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/tesla-fsd-computer-retrof...

astrange 6y ago
> I tried to find some numbers on the relative amount of chips in a standard ICE car vs. a BEV. I'd have to guess BEVs have perhaps even an order of magnitude more chips. Certainly, they have chips that are far more advanced, looking at the Tesla FSD computer[0]. Well, you could have FSD in an ICE car just as easily. In fact, I'm going to guess an electric vehicle has fewer chips than an ICE car because it doesn't have an engine. Depends how many PMICs you need for the battery cells.
- samus 6y ago
  It's also highly debatable whether you need chips made with the latest process nodes for these purposes. Few cars or trains have to be machine-learning monsters. Also, power electronics, used by all kinds of vehicles, is perfectly fine using larger, cheaper and more rugged nodes.

neonate 6y ago

https://archive.is/96uT2 https://archive.is/96uT2

intricatedetail 6y ago

How difficult is to recreate e.g. 100nm litography diy?

Koshkin 6y ago
Looks like we at a point right now at which we can make a vacuum tube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzyXMEpq4qw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzyXMEpq4qw
namibj 6y ago
Very. 350 nm is about the limit of what [0]'s DIY process should be scalable to with somewhat more precision outside of the photolithography itself, as well as clean room conditions. [0]: http://sam.zeloof.xyz/ http://sam.zeloof.xyz/
abdullahkhalids 6y ago
These guys are making headway https://libresilicon.com/ https://libresilicon.com/
- samus 6y ago
  Could you find out which node size? I could find a reference to 1 micrometer. It's a good start, and probably more than enough for many purposes, but way to go...

lincpa 6y ago

Forecast(2021-01-19): I think Intel, AMD, ARM, supercomputing, etc. will adopt the "warehouse/workshop model" In the past, the performance of the CPU played a decisive role in the performance of the computer. There were few CPU cores and the number and types of peripherals. Therefore, the CPU became the center of the computer hardware architecture. Now, with more and more CPU and GPU cores, and the number and types of peripherals, the communication, coordination, and management of cores (or components, peripherals) have become more and more important, They become a key factor in computer performance. The core views of management science and computer science are the same: Use all available resources to complete the goal with the highest efficiency. It is the best field of management science to accomplish production goals through communication, coordination, and management of various available resources. The most effective, reliable, and absolutely mainstream way is the "warehouse/workshop model". So I think Intel, AMD, ARM, supercomputing, etc. will adopt the "warehouse/workshop model", which is an inevitable trend in the development of computer hardware. https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow

ivanstame 6y ago

This article is hidden behind a paywall.

fumblebee 6y ago
https://outline.com/NTubwj https://outline.com/NTubwj
- ivanstame 6y ago
  I didn't know about this service. Thanks a lot.

gautamcgoel 6y ago

Suppose I had $100M to blow. Could I build a fab in the USA that produced chips at, say, 65nm? I understand that a cutting-edge node like 7nm would be out of reach at that price point, but I'm curious what exactly is in reach.

meekrohprocess 6y ago
Good question! I'd also be curious as to the answer. But I suspect that it is probably "no". Because it looks like ST was planning to pay ~$1.8B per 300nm fab in 2017. https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/st-build-two-new-300mm-fabs-2017-10/ https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/st-build-two... I assume that "mm" is a typo in the article, but that cost was for a >15-year-old process node. 65nm for $100M might be a stretch, if that is accurate.
- patrickyeon 6y ago
  That 300mm is a different measurement. It's not a typo and they're refering to the size of the wafers, in this case 300mm diameter (very close to 12 inches).
  - dhdc 6y ago
    Yes. In addition, wafer size is another important metric of fab capabilities aside from process node, since it roughly translates into production rate.
  - gautamcgoel 6y ago
    So... Does that mean 65nm at $100M is possible after all?
    - patrickyeon 6y ago
      This is coming in late, but the short answer is "I have no idea". The slightly longer answer is "I don't know. But once you have the space and equipment and you're sure you can handle everything safely you still need to staff this and build up some institutional knowledge." If you're thinking this far, you should ask why 65nm? Because it's a process node you know a certain microprocessor was built on? It's just a benchmark that's useful for working out your sense of what it costs to do these from scratch? The cheapest way to get the equipment would be buying out a fab that's shutting down. When I was in undergrad, I got to play in a 5 micron (5000nm) fab on campus because the previous owner of all the equipment gifted it to the university instead of scrapping it. My gut sense is that there's nothing at 65nm that's unprofitable yet, so you're not getting cheap stuff. (a 6 micron node was commercialized in 1974, this university lab was opened in 1993. 65nm was commercialized in 2005. While Moore's Law held, more or less, through much of 1974-2005, I think we can say that the difficulties and necessary capital investments increased super-linearly over that time. And 20 year old manufacturing tech seems much more useful now than it did in '93. The STM32 family of microcontrollers, a very strong line, is spread over the 132-40nm range of process nodes.)