11 ms·

TSMC R&D chief: There’s light at the end of the chip shortage

177 points by t23 5y ago

WithinReason 5y ago
"In his personal opinion—not necessarily that of TSMC—it is going to take two to three years to bring new fabs online to resolve the situation."
- jaywalk 5y ago
  Given his position within the company, I'd say that his personal opinion holds quite a bit of weight.
  - nickff 5y ago
    My understanding is that presenting 'official positions' outside of shareholder meetings and disclosures can cause legal issues. He may be stating that it's a personal opinion to avoid that issue. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/regulationfd.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/regulationfd.asp
- shmerl 5y ago
  That's from now or from the beginning of that construction?
  - WithinReason 5y ago
    From now: https://www.techpowerup.com/292492/tsmc-r-d-svp-expects-chip-shortage-to-persist-until-2024-2025 https://www.techpowerup.com/292492/tsmc-r-d-svp-expects-chip...
    - shmerl 5y ago
      That's worse than I though. Quite a long wait.
danuker 5y ago
Recent discussion: Global chip shortage may soon turn into an oversupply crisis https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30489538 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30489538
ohazi 5y ago
If we manage to get through this chip shortage and then China decides to invade Taiwan and we lose TSMC, I'm gonna fucking lose it. Everything feels so fragile right now.
- winstongator 5y ago
  I wonder if TSMC has a self-destruct button. I do not think they want CCP to take over those fabs. Agree, this is a worst case scenario, and we need to get at least one TSMC fab in the US.
  - Traster 5y ago
    I imagine the conversation goes like this "Sorry, Mr Xi Jinping, your bombs caused seismic activity that destroyed the calibration of our machines and of the the 5,000 highly trained engineers we employ, only 2 turned up today and I'm not sure how much work we can expect from Raffles the team mascot.
  - j_walter 5y ago
    There are a few key points in the process that you could easily disrupt and pretty much cause a scorched earth type of response. There are a few ways to do it as well...like export all of the photo masks to the US or Europe. Those fabs can't produce anything without them...and all of the ones for their Taiwan advanced fabs could probably all be loaded into a dozen or less shipping containers. Destroying them is another way to go about it if you can't get them out of the country safely.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - nomel 5y ago
    > I do not think they want CCP to take over those fabs. This makes the very incorrect assumption that you could just swap out the TSMC staff and things would continue working. Chip fabrication isn't just about pushing a button to turn on a machine. It requires the massive amounts of esoteric knowledge of all the processes, machines, chip design rules, everything.
turbinerneiter 5y ago
Well, I'm banking on an oversupply which makes production cheaper by making my team build up chip design knowledge, so we have some designs ready when it happens. If not, FPGA dev skills will still be super useful for our work.
- madengr 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
bobsmooth 5y ago
Hopefully all the new plants being planned come online without disruption.
jmyeet 5y ago
I'm not convinced we'll ever see an end to the chip shortage while proof-of-waste crypto exists. The interesting part of all this is that one company (ASML) won out in the race to build the machines for EUV lithography so for the cutting edge processes like TSMC's 5nm (and I assume 3nm?) the chipmakers rely on a monopoly where demand currently exceeds supply. Now for GPUs and a lot of CPUs I see the obvious advantages of a smaller process: smaller chips, less power usage, less heat dissipation (although this is all complicated). What I don't understand is how older processes can't be used for things where this of primary concern. Cars have a lot of control units in them but I don't believe they all needs the billions of transistors a Ryzen does. Couldn't older processes like 14nm and 22nm be used to make these just fine? This isn't my field but I'm also led to believe that a new process basically means an entirely new fab (vs retrofitting an old fab). Whatever the changes required are it's almost from the ground up except perhaps the shell of the building. If true a lot of these old processes must still exist right?
- samus 5y ago
  The old processes still exist and are cheap^H^H^H^H^H quite affordable, but only because the cost was amortized long ago and now the equipment is just milked for profit until quality control becomes too difficult. Building them anew is possible, but takes significant investment and time. Which about sums up the issue: many important items in semiconductor engineering have inelastic supply. Fabs depend on reliable deals with industry customers years ahead, and during Covid they got badly burned on that front by car makers, and now the money flood is unleashed again on the market, but the market can't provide (yet).
- whazor 5y ago
  ASML is still selling (and ofc maintaining) older generation machines. They also refurbishing the generations before that and still giving them customized upgrades for example for making radio frequency chips, LEDs. So yes, these processes still exist and are also out of capacity. At first this was strange to me: why all fabs out of capacity from low to mid to high... But I guess it is similar to a housing market, where for example rich people want to live in bigger houses but overall price is roughly per square meter impacting the entire market. There must also be some chips who are okay with every resolution as long as they can book a slot somewhere. I can also imagine some chips even though they don't require the latest fabs do have much more value than AMD CPU/GPU.

177 points by t23 5y ago

"In his personal opinion—not necessarily that of TSMC—it is going to take two to three years to bring new fabs online to resolve the situation."

jaywalk 5y ago
Given his position within the company, I'd say that his personal opinion holds quite a bit of weight.
- nickff 5y ago
  My understanding is that presenting 'official positions' outside of shareholder meetings and disclosures can cause legal issues. He may be stating that it's a personal opinion to avoid that issue. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/regulationfd.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/regulationfd.asp
shmerl 5y ago
That's from now or from the beginning of that construction?
- WithinReason 5y ago
  From now: https://www.techpowerup.com/292492/tsmc-r-d-svp-expects-chip-shortage-to-persist-until-2024-2025 https://www.techpowerup.com/292492/tsmc-r-d-svp-expects-chip...
  - shmerl 5y ago
    That's worse than I though. Quite a long wait.

danuker 5y ago

Recent discussion: Global chip shortage may soon turn into an oversupply crisis https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30489538 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30489538

ohazi 5y ago

If we manage to get through this chip shortage and then China decides to invade Taiwan and we lose TSMC, I'm gonna fucking lose it. Everything feels so fragile right now.

winstongator 5y ago
I wonder if TSMC has a self-destruct button. I do not think they want CCP to take over those fabs. Agree, this is a worst case scenario, and we need to get at least one TSMC fab in the US.
- Traster 5y ago
  I imagine the conversation goes like this "Sorry, Mr Xi Jinping, your bombs caused seismic activity that destroyed the calibration of our machines and of the the 5,000 highly trained engineers we employ, only 2 turned up today and I'm not sure how much work we can expect from Raffles the team mascot.
- j_walter 5y ago
  There are a few key points in the process that you could easily disrupt and pretty much cause a scorched earth type of response. There are a few ways to do it as well...like export all of the photo masks to the US or Europe. Those fabs can't produce anything without them...and all of the ones for their Taiwan advanced fabs could probably all be loaded into a dozen or less shipping containers. Destroying them is another way to go about it if you can't get them out of the country safely.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- nomel 5y ago
  > I do not think they want CCP to take over those fabs. This makes the very incorrect assumption that you could just swap out the TSMC staff and things would continue working. Chip fabrication isn't just about pushing a button to turn on a machine. It requires the massive amounts of esoteric knowledge of all the processes, machines, chip design rules, everything.

turbinerneiter 5y ago

Well, I'm banking on an oversupply which makes production cheaper by making my team build up chip design knowledge, so we have some designs ready when it happens. If not, FPGA dev skills will still be super useful for our work.

madengr 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

bobsmooth 5y ago

Hopefully all the new plants being planned come online without disruption.

jmyeet 5y ago

I'm not convinced we'll ever see an end to the chip shortage while proof-of-waste crypto exists. The interesting part of all this is that one company (ASML) won out in the race to build the machines for EUV lithography so for the cutting edge processes like TSMC's 5nm (and I assume 3nm?) the chipmakers rely on a monopoly where demand currently exceeds supply. Now for GPUs and a lot of CPUs I see the obvious advantages of a smaller process: smaller chips, less power usage, less heat dissipation (although this is all complicated). What I don't understand is how older processes can't be used for things where this of primary concern. Cars have a lot of control units in them but I don't believe they all needs the billions of transistors a Ryzen does. Couldn't older processes like 14nm and 22nm be used to make these just fine? This isn't my field but I'm also led to believe that a new process basically means an entirely new fab (vs retrofitting an old fab). Whatever the changes required are it's almost from the ground up except perhaps the shell of the building. If true a lot of these old processes must still exist right?

samus 5y ago
The old processes still exist and are cheap^H^H^H^H^H quite affordable, but only because the cost was amortized long ago and now the equipment is just milked for profit until quality control becomes too difficult. Building them anew is possible, but takes significant investment and time. Which about sums up the issue: many important items in semiconductor engineering have inelastic supply. Fabs depend on reliable deals with industry customers years ahead, and during Covid they got badly burned on that front by car makers, and now the money flood is unleashed again on the market, but the market can't provide (yet).
whazor 5y ago
ASML is still selling (and ofc maintaining) older generation machines. They also refurbishing the generations before that and still giving them customized upgrades for example for making radio frequency chips, LEDs. So yes, these processes still exist and are also out of capacity. At first this was strange to me: why all fabs out of capacity from low to mid to high... But I guess it is similar to a housing market, where for example rich people want to live in bigger houses but overall price is roughly per square meter impacting the entire market. There must also be some chips who are okay with every resolution as long as they can book a slot somewhere. I can also imagine some chips even though they don't require the latest fabs do have much more value than AMD CPU/GPU.