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We are doing research into cost. This stuff gets massively cheaper every year. It's cheaper and easier than ever to build a 16nm fab. Profit oriented companies
by Taek 6y ago
We are doing research into cost. This stuff gets massively cheaper every year. It's cheaper and easier than ever to build a 16nm fab.
Profit oriented companies take those cost savings and choose to drive further down the technology stack (to more complex and expensive nodes), where there are fewer competitors that have enough profits to build competing production lines.
Moore's law is almost our friend here. Being at 3nm instead of 16nm is decreasingly important.
- gary_0 6y ago> It's cheaper and easier than ever to build a 16nm fab. Is anyone doing ~16nm microprocessors besides Samsung/TSMC/Intel/GloFo? I wouldn't call it "cheap and easy" if only they can do it. (After a quick Google, it seems that China's state-owned SMIC is also starting to do ~16nm, but that's all I could find, unless you mean memory and not processors).
- Can_Not 6y agoI wouldn't call it "cheap" if it's not cheap for a new player to enter the market, but instead only marginally cheap for established players.