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> New $17B Fab in the USA by Late 2023 Impossible. Leads times on fab hardware are on all time high. Not to say that construction, and setup itself would be
by baybal2 6y ago
> New $17B Fab in the USA by Late 2023
Impossible.
Leads times on fab hardware are on all time high.
Not to say that construction, and setup itself would be extremely challenging in such timeframe.
And not saying that US has no supply chain locally for modern fabs. Intel famously flies a lot of its consumables from abroad.
Samsung will have similarly to transport its consumables by air if they go with this plan.
- Beached 6y agodoesn't samsung have the capability to create its own fab hardware? if they are the supplier to themselves, wouldn't it be reasonable that they can prioritize delivering to themsleves
- kuschku 6y agoASML is the only supplier for EUV machines. Samsung can’t just create those easily themselves (or they would).
- Robotbeat 6y agoIs there any reason they couldn’t just start with multipatterning 193nm immersion? Maybe even ship that equipment out from a facility being upgraded. Also, ASML’s EUV light source division was fairly recently (2013) acquired from... California. Cymer, LLC.
- baybal2 6y agoRetooling of anymuch modern fabs is not economical. I don't see much retooling for anything below 45nm, if not 65nm.
- kokx 6y agoThe type of equipment ASML produces generally gets brought in at a specific time during the construction. They kinda build the cleanrooms around ASML's machines instead of bringing them in afterwards. Retooling for EUV (or any new generation of such equipment) is very hard. Most (if not all) foundries build new factories rather than retooling old ones.
- totalZero 6y ago> They kinda build the cleanrooms around ASML's machines instead of bringing them in afterwards. I know they're massive, but do you have a source for this? I was under the impression that construction and tool installation are two distinctly separate phases of construction due to the requirements for an immaculate environment. Also, my understanding is that companies like to bring the tools in as late as possible to shorten the delay between capex outlay (tools are expensive) and first production.
- kokx 6y agoMy source for this is my professors at the TU/e in Eindhoven and guest lecturers from ASML (TU/e is the closest university to the ASML campus in Veldhoven). Unfortunately I don't have a more reliable source on that though.
- adriancr 6y agomultipatterning DUV will get you up to a point if thats what you were asking. You cant reach 5nm with that. (if that were possible you wouldnt see everyone jumping on ASMLs euv bandwagon) As for lightsource, sure, that was/is a US company, but there's a lot more to a machine then just the light source.
- baybal2 6y ago> Is there any reason they couldn’t just start with multipatterning 193nm immersion? Time, yields, line size. Quadruple patterning quadrupples the lithography steps counts. And quadrupples thermal cycles. Which adds more than 4x impact on the number of bad wafers. 100% - 2% * 4 != 100% * 0.98⁴ You need 4x the equipment to complete the same volume of wafers in the same time, which means 4x the line length.
- avs733 6y agonot that I am aware of (read: no unless someone proves me dumb) Major supppliers include: Nikon ASML KLA-Tencor Applied Materials (AMAT) Lam Research the timeline they are suggesting isn't literally impossible as a matter of phyics but is, to me, laughably unrealistic and likely done to try and extract tax incentives. Unless they have already broken ground in Texas...and are just shopping for a better deal
- baybal2 6y ago> Major supppliers include: Add like 100 more companies to the list. A fab is not only a lithographic line, but a ton of other very unique, industry specific equipment. Air handling for fabs stuff is up to 24 months lead time, and has no use in any other industry. Ultra clean water plants — 9 to 18 months. Just two vendors on the planet. Gas plants — take few years to construct by themselves Chem plants — again years long lead time equipment from only one vendor in the world On site mask shops — equipment, and processes not much cheaper, or less scarce than the last gen chip making gear itself. Cleaning stations, degassing stations, industry specific SCADA hardware, AMHS... (https://youtu.be/XKXZT-BBUEE https://youtu.be/XKXZT-BBUEE) Post-backend stuff... The list will go on for a few screens.
- mhh__ 6y agoEven a Pencil (I, Pencil) takes thousands and thousands of people, I'm guessing it's on the order of millions for a big fab.
- avs733 6y agoI’m honestly surprised we have not seen a blank wafer shortage. I remember the craziness post 2011 earthquake...”well how many wafers do we have”
- nl 6y agoThere is a blank wafer shortage, but - strangely - for 200mm wafers (not the state-of-the-art 300mm ones) https://www.extremetech.com/computing/318554-a-massive-chip-shortage-is-hitting-the-entire-semiconductor-industry https://www.extremetech.com/computing/318554-a-massive-chip-...
- dmeeker 6y agoSamsung has a long-term capital and capacity planning process. Isn't it possible (if not likely) that they would pre-order equipment as part of capacity planning without having already decided where it's going to be deployed?
- avs733 6y agoit's possible but it's going to take at least a year to build the building, another year or so to install, and another year to qual (these are ballparks). Not to mention they have to staff the thing, train the staff, etc.
- babelfish 6y agoAll of those things can be parallelized. It's one thing to say "opening by the end of 2023 is unlikely", but to say it's impossible is unnecessarily dismissive.
- singhrac 6y agoWhile I'm also optimistic on Samsung's ability to execute some version of this plan, those things can't be parallelized. You can't set up a complex water delivery mechanism until after the building is completed and the cleanroom has been built to spec and tested, and you can't calibrate the gigantic ASML machines until after that.
- jedberg 6y agoBut you can train the staff in Korea (or at any other running fab) and have them ready to go the day it's qualified.
- avs733 6y agoYou can’t parallelism those... you need a building to install tools in it. You need the tools installed to qual them. You need the tools quaked to qual a process... From personal experience I would posit scaling semiconductor manufacturing as 10x to 50x harder than getting a process flow to work in a development fab. Ramps are absolutely killer.
- avs733 6y agocomparative data point: Intel's last fab build took 9 years to go from green field to producing wafers (note...faster is possible) https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intels-long-awaited-fab-42-is-fully-operational https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intels-long-awaited-fab-42... Some more realistic notes because I sound a little hyperbolic: 2011 - break ground 2013 - finish basic construction 2014 - stop progress 2017 - start install of tooling 2020 - production
- shard 6y agoIntel does not run at Korean speed. Samsung's Pyeongtaek Line 3 fab broke ground in 09/2020, construction expected to be complete by 2H/2021, mass production by 2023. This is not an unreasonable speed for Samsung. Of course, the slower rate of work by American construction companies could slow this down.
- avs733 6y agoI would bet money on this one. No first complete wafers in 2023.
- Nokinside 6y agoNew fab in 4 years is manageable. It may have been in plans for some time, they just chose a new location now. They build it in Arizona where Intel has several fabs and where TSMC is building their medium-sized 25K/month 5nm Megafab.
- TrainedMonkey 6y ago> There is an intrigue about the new fab though: Samsung hasn't stated which process node it will be designed for. Let's restate the question. Which node can they get up by 2023 and how much of security critical U.S. consumption can that cover?
- baybal2 6y ago> how much of security critical U.S. consumption can that cover? What US can't source for F-35 locally are Xilinx FPGAs at either 65nm, or 40nm nodes. The question is not in node size as such as having an FPGA process capability. FPGAs on generic CMOS don't work great. The ability to tweak, and optimize the process specifically for individual design is huge for FPGAs. Intel with their CPUs are very much in the same situation, but in reverse. They cannot move from "hand polished" proprietary processes they've been developing for decades to anything else.
- madengr 6y agoWhat process is Xilinx using; not CMOS?
- baybal2 6y agoCMOS, but likelly with much more differences from CMOS for mainstream logic.
- stjohnswarts 6y agoI doubt that. FPGA's are just digital circuits. They don't use any onboard "ROM" the vast majority load their programming from an external chip. Where are you getting they don't use standard CMOS tech?
- kevin_thibedeau 6y agoTypical SRAM FPGAs use a conventional process but there are architectures that use floating gates and OTP antifuses that need specialized processing.
- sdenton4 6y agoPrior art: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/08/wisconsin-foxconn-factory-residents-displaced https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/202... Foxconn promised a giant fab in exchange for massive tax breaks, and then just took the tax breaks and did nothing. Any reason to expect this is different?
- _jal 6y agoFoxconn was an obvious con from the start. If you go back and look at contemporaneous reporting, even the "MSM" reporting was a bit incredulous - it just was really obvious, with only certain politicians claiming otherwise. Which is not to say this won't become a cesspool, too. But at the very least, I don't see scummy pols waving wads of cash at Samsung right now.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- WillPostForFood 6y ago>then just took the tax breaks They didn't get the tax breaks because they didn't meet the targets. From your article: After Foxconn failed to meet its job creation targets, Wisconsin’s governor, Tony Evers, last month pulled a deal that would have handed the company nearly $4.5bn in incentives for completing its plans.
- tootie 6y agoI absolutely don't understand Foxconn's game there. Was this just a scam from the start? What was the upside for them? Or did they actually intend to follow through and just failed?
- helloworld653 6y agoPretend, delay, outlast.
- aeturnum 6y agoMy read on the situation is they saw the opportunity to get subsidies and so negotiated to maximize what they were given. I imagine it comes from some maximalist position that says that if you plan to do X, you need to say you'll do 10X so you never 'lose out' on subsidies you might have been able to take advantage of in the good years. A lot of the reporting at the time emphasized that Foxconn had a history of doing this in other countries. It seems like a negotiating tactic that evolved in an age of cynical political environments where everyone's proximate goal is to announce a 'deal' with the full expectation that they won't be in a position to take credit (or blame) for the quality of that deal.
- cgb223 6y agoSounds like a market opportunity to produce more of those consumables locally
- m3kw9 6y agoProbably not at 100% capacity.
- Spooky23 6y agoPretty sure that the Global Foundries fab in New York didn’t take much longer once funded.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- gok 6y agoIt's an expansion of an existing fab
- f430 6y agobaybal2's comment is incorrect. this is merely an expansion on top of their existing capacity in Texas.
- baybal2 6y agoIf it is, than it makes more sense. But still, if it was a greenfield project, than it would've been nonsense.
- nine_k 6y agoSince they are expanding an existing facility, many complex things might be already available on the site, and building the rest in 3 years may be realistic.