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TSMC Hikes Price of Chip Production: CPU and GPU Costs Set to Rise

36 points by T-A 5y ago

dragontamer 5y ago
Even without the chip shortage, this was probably inevitable as long as TSMC doesn't have much competition. Intel Xe is even being produced on TSMC's process now. They're in a league of their own.
- brundolf 5y ago
  It's so bizarre to me that they still have no real competition All the superpowers, all the megacorps, totally dependent on this one company in Taiwan. The market is bigger than they can even serve. And between all of these vested parties, with all their trillions of dollars, nobody can put together an alternative. It's crazy.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    Correct me if I'm wrong, but military supply chains are dead-set on using older parts that are American-built. (Besides, no one wants to keep upgrading military equipment every time a new generation of stuff comes out). Most car manufacturers are similarly, using 60nm or 28nm components that are largely locally sourced and built on much more primitive (and therefore much cheaper) lines. The only people who "care" are the high-tech industry for desktops and/or servers, and smartphones. ------- The only real failure here is Intel, who has repeatedly failed to scale down to 7nm. Apple, ARM, AMD, NVidia, Qualcomm are fabless by design. AMD used to own fabs, but sold them away to become fabless (see GloFo). These companies chose to become dependent on TSMC. And why? Because when Apple invests a $billion into TSMC 7nm production, its beneficial for AMD / NVidia to reap the benefits a few months later. ------ From this perspective, we see that a "shared fab" is far more efficient. TSMC can take money from Apple to create 7nm or 5nm. And then Qualcomm / AMD / NVidia (and other "lesser" companies) reap the benefits without having to make anywhere as close to the investments needed.
    - ibeckermayer 5y ago
      More “efficient” isn’t necessarily wise. Sure it’s cheaper now, but what about if China decides to take Taiwan over militarily? Or a natural disaster takes out TMSC manufacturing? Or some other black swan event that I can’t even imagine? All these short sighted geniuses increasing “efficiency” are creating hyper centralized systems ripe for control and/or collapse.
      - dragontamer 5y ago
        That's why TSMC is building a fab-lab in Arizona. Lets see China try to attack Arizona.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
- ksec 5y ago
  >this was probably inevitable.... It is not in the interest of TSMC to milk everything out of their customer. TSMC has always worked to keep their customer in their ecosystem for the long term. Not the short term. So rising Wafer price is something that is not very TSMC at all.

36 points by T-A 5y ago

Even without the chip shortage, this was probably inevitable as long as TSMC doesn't have much competition. Intel Xe is even being produced on TSMC's process now. They're in a league of their own.

brundolf 5y ago
It's so bizarre to me that they still have no real competition All the superpowers, all the megacorps, totally dependent on this one company in Taiwan. The market is bigger than they can even serve. And between all of these vested parties, with all their trillions of dollars, nobody can put together an alternative. It's crazy.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong, but military supply chains are dead-set on using older parts that are American-built. (Besides, no one wants to keep upgrading military equipment every time a new generation of stuff comes out). Most car manufacturers are similarly, using 60nm or 28nm components that are largely locally sourced and built on much more primitive (and therefore much cheaper) lines. The only people who "care" are the high-tech industry for desktops and/or servers, and smartphones. ------- The only real failure here is Intel, who has repeatedly failed to scale down to 7nm. Apple, ARM, AMD, NVidia, Qualcomm are fabless by design. AMD used to own fabs, but sold them away to become fabless (see GloFo). These companies chose to become dependent on TSMC. And why? Because when Apple invests a $billion into TSMC 7nm production, its beneficial for AMD / NVidia to reap the benefits a few months later. ------ From this perspective, we see that a "shared fab" is far more efficient. TSMC can take money from Apple to create 7nm or 5nm. And then Qualcomm / AMD / NVidia (and other "lesser" companies) reap the benefits without having to make anywhere as close to the investments needed.
  - ibeckermayer 5y ago
    More “efficient” isn’t necessarily wise. Sure it’s cheaper now, but what about if China decides to take Taiwan over militarily? Or a natural disaster takes out TMSC manufacturing? Or some other black swan event that I can’t even imagine? All these short sighted geniuses increasing “efficiency” are creating hyper centralized systems ripe for control and/or collapse.
    - dragontamer 5y ago
      That's why TSMC is building a fab-lab in Arizona. Lets see China try to attack Arizona.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
ksec 5y ago
>this was probably inevitable.... It is not in the interest of TSMC to milk everything out of their customer. TSMC has always worked to keep their customer in their ecosystem for the long term. Not the short term. So rising Wafer price is something that is not very TSMC at all.