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Good article, but very Japanese centered. This of course is understandable, as it is coming from Nikkei. There has been a lot of news about how the US is givin

Good article, but very Japanese centered. This of course is understandable, as it is coming from Nikkei. There has been a lot of news about how the US is giving up leadership in semiconductors to Asia, but the US has actually been holding our own in Silicon Carbide. A US company called Cree, through their division Wolfspeed is the leader in manufacturing silicon carbide wafers. AFAIK, they are still making the most wafers in the world. There is another little known US company, ON semiconductor, that is arguably the leader in auto grade silicon carbide chips. They were not the first to make the sic mosfet, but they were the first to make sic mosfets that are qualified for use in cars. On Semi had acquired the legendary Fairchild semiconductor which had a lot of expertise in high voltage high power applications for auto and industrial. This probably helped commercialize silicon carbide. This is arguable of course, but ON semiconductor insist that they make the highest performance automobile grade SiC chips on the market. To see how fast this technology is moving, you can watch this video [1] where sandy munro needs a helper to wrestle with the ford mach-e inverter on a table. And then you can see this video [2] where the CEO of ON semi, holds two inverters for a car and an suv in each hand effortlessly. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHVV52lPyIs&t=1086s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHVV52lPyIs&t=1086s, see around minute 15. [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfq0kDzyPZY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfq0kDzyPZY - see about minute 46.

CSSer 5y ago
I am far from a subject matter expert on this, but I have been doing my best to read up on this lately. It seems like we’re globally diverging on fabrication expertise at a process level i.e. nanometer scale [0]. The bulk of leading edge chip manufacturing (currently around 7nm or below) seems to indeed be slipping away to Southeast Asia, but as you said the U.S. is holding their own at larger process levels (Cree is mentioned in the article as well) and still producing at a volume that may be surprising to many doomsayers. It’s worth noting at this point that, according to the article I linked below, it is estimated that five larger process chips are required for every leading process chip produced. So this doesn’t seem to entirely be an accident on the part of U.S. companies. Sure, some companies like Intel have simply failed to innovate in the past few years, but others seem to have made a calculated decision to avoid massive R&D expenditures that may or may not pay off as we begin to approach the limits of Moore’s law. The reality is that leading edge chip fabs are extraordinarily expensive. I read a podcast transcript recently with a prominent professor who is an expert in this field [1]. He mentioned that he did some consulting for the U.S. Govt., and when they asked him for his estimate for how much it would cost in subsidies to catch up with or outpace the rest of the world in fabs his response made the guy who asked the question practically fall out of his chair. Have we reached a point where quantity (at an average level of quality) is now more important than having the fastest and the smallest IP? [0]: https://semiengineering.com/can-the-u-s-regain-its-edge-in-chip-manufacturing/ https://semiengineering.com/can-the-u-s-regain-its-edge-in-c... [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/31/22648372/willy-shih-chip-shortage-tsmc-samsung-ps5-decoder-interview https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/31/22648372/willy-shih-chip-...
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  > seems to indeed be slipping away to Southeast Asia Do you mean east Asia? Southeast Asia still doesn’t have much fab capacity, and most of what it has isn’t very sophisticated, unless I’m missing something?
  - RC_ITR 5y ago
    I think this is just some people's reflexive notion that 'China + sometimes Japan' = East Asia & 'Rest of Asia' = southeast Asia. It was mostly started by China companies like Alibaba treating any international expansion as 'Southeast Asia,' since they did it via HK or SG offices.
    - chrischen 5y ago
      The leading fabs are in Taiwan and South Korea.
      - RC_ITR 5y ago
        Yeah, South Korea is roughly at SF's latitude and Taipei is roughly Miami. Maybe Taiwan can be bucketed into SEA, but SK is definitely East Asia
  - CSSer 5y ago
    Yes, sorry. East Asia is what I meant. To be completely honest, I’m not sure if I read SE Asia somewhere or if I’ve always just thought of Taiwan as SE Asia for some reason. Mercator projections, maybe? Anyway, today I learned Taiwan is in East Asia, north of Southeast Asia.
    - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
      Taiwan is barely on the edge between Japan (East Asia) and the Philippines (SE Asia). But culturally is very East Asian.
- cma 5y ago
cptskippy 5y ago
> To see how fast this technology is moving, you can watch this video [1] where sandy munro needs a helper to wrestle with the ford mach-e inverter on a table. My take away from watching that clip wasn't him being confused with the function of the inverter but rather being puzzled by how every step of the assembly eschews the principles of Henry Ford and even the rules he said he wrote while at Ford. Maybe you linked to the wrong time?
- hristov 5y ago
  What I meant is he was wrestling with the inverter physically, not intellectually. I.e. the inverter (after they assembled the whole thing) was very large and heavy compared to the one presented by the on ceo. I guess I should have referred to the end of the video.
  - cptskippy 5y ago
    Ah... I completely misunderstood what you were saying. Is Tesla using silicon carbide chips in their inverters? While not as small as the ones the CEO is showing off, they're significantly smaller than what Ford and Nissan are using.
ksec 5y ago
>There is another little known US company, ON semiconductor, I chuckled. Only on a Software developer focused forum would ON being called a little known US company. They are really well respected in semiconductor industry. If I remember correctly, ON along with Freescale came from Motorola.
- neltnerb 5y ago
  Yup, to me they're known just a bit less than TI and Analog Devices (now that Atmel and ST Micro are gone) and more than Microchip or ST because they serve so, so many high power applications. I just think those high power applications are invisible, like tens of percent reductions in the power used in an application. You can see them if you measure closely but not if you're casually working with it.
- fomine3 5y ago
  Just introduce fun event: Nikkei Japan called Nvidia "A mysterious AI semiconductor manufacturer" in 2017.
ghostly_s 5y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't believe Cree manufactures any chips in the US?
- hristov 5y ago
  I don't think cree manufactures any chips period. They make wafers, which other companies use to make chips. They make their wafers in the US, in north carolina. They are building another large factory in upstate new york.

CSSer 5y ago

I am far from a subject matter expert on this, but I have been doing my best to read up on this lately. It seems like we’re globally diverging on fabrication expertise at a process level i.e. nanometer scale [0]. The bulk of leading edge chip manufacturing (currently around 7nm or below) seems to indeed be slipping away to Southeast Asia, but as you said the U.S. is holding their own at larger process levels (Cree is mentioned in the article as well) and still producing at a volume that may be surprising to many doomsayers. It’s worth noting at this point that, according to the article I linked below, it is estimated that five larger process chips are required for every leading process chip produced. So this doesn’t seem to entirely be an accident on the part of U.S. companies. Sure, some companies like Intel have simply failed to innovate in the past few years, but others seem to have made a calculated decision to avoid massive R&D expenditures that may or may not pay off as we begin to approach the limits of Moore’s law. The reality is that leading edge chip fabs are extraordinarily expensive. I read a podcast transcript recently with a prominent professor who is an expert in this field [1]. He mentioned that he did some consulting for the U.S. Govt., and when they asked him for his estimate for how much it would cost in subsidies to catch up with or outpace the rest of the world in fabs his response made the guy who asked the question practically fall out of his chair. Have we reached a point where quantity (at an average level of quality) is now more important than having the fastest and the smallest IP? [0]: https://semiengineering.com/can-the-u-s-regain-its-edge-in-chip-manufacturing/ https://semiengineering.com/can-the-u-s-regain-its-edge-in-c... [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/31/22648372/willy-shih-chip-shortage-tsmc-samsung-ps5-decoder-interview https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/31/22648372/willy-shih-chip-...

seanmcdirmid 5y ago
> seems to indeed be slipping away to Southeast Asia Do you mean east Asia? Southeast Asia still doesn’t have much fab capacity, and most of what it has isn’t very sophisticated, unless I’m missing something?
- RC_ITR 5y ago
  I think this is just some people's reflexive notion that 'China + sometimes Japan' = East Asia & 'Rest of Asia' = southeast Asia. It was mostly started by China companies like Alibaba treating any international expansion as 'Southeast Asia,' since they did it via HK or SG offices.
  - chrischen 5y ago
    The leading fabs are in Taiwan and South Korea.
    - RC_ITR 5y ago
      Yeah, South Korea is roughly at SF's latitude and Taipei is roughly Miami. Maybe Taiwan can be bucketed into SEA, but SK is definitely East Asia
- CSSer 5y ago
  Yes, sorry. East Asia is what I meant. To be completely honest, I’m not sure if I read SE Asia somewhere or if I’ve always just thought of Taiwan as SE Asia for some reason. Mercator projections, maybe? Anyway, today I learned Taiwan is in East Asia, north of Southeast Asia.
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    Taiwan is barely on the edge between Japan (East Asia) and the Philippines (SE Asia). But culturally is very East Asian.
cma 5y ago

cptskippy 5y ago

> To see how fast this technology is moving, you can watch this video [1] where sandy munro needs a helper to wrestle with the ford mach-e inverter on a table. My take away from watching that clip wasn't him being confused with the function of the inverter but rather being puzzled by how every step of the assembly eschews the principles of Henry Ford and even the rules he said he wrote while at Ford. Maybe you linked to the wrong time?

hristov 5y ago
What I meant is he was wrestling with the inverter physically, not intellectually. I.e. the inverter (after they assembled the whole thing) was very large and heavy compared to the one presented by the on ceo. I guess I should have referred to the end of the video.
- cptskippy 5y ago
  Ah... I completely misunderstood what you were saying. Is Tesla using silicon carbide chips in their inverters? While not as small as the ones the CEO is showing off, they're significantly smaller than what Ford and Nissan are using.

ksec 5y ago

>There is another little known US company, ON semiconductor, I chuckled. Only on a Software developer focused forum would ON being called a little known US company. They are really well respected in semiconductor industry. If I remember correctly, ON along with Freescale came from Motorola.

neltnerb 5y ago
Yup, to me they're known just a bit less than TI and Analog Devices (now that Atmel and ST Micro are gone) and more than Microchip or ST because they serve so, so many high power applications. I just think those high power applications are invisible, like tens of percent reductions in the power used in an application. You can see them if you measure closely but not if you're casually working with it.
fomine3 5y ago
Just introduce fun event: Nikkei Japan called Nvidia "A mysterious AI semiconductor manufacturer" in 2017.

ghostly_s 5y ago

Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't believe Cree manufactures any chips in the US?

hristov 5y ago
I don't think cree manufactures any chips period. They make wafers, which other companies use to make chips. They make their wafers in the US, in north carolina. They are building another large factory in upstate new york.