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The economic damage a war would cause is immense. TSMC however would contribute surprisingly little to the economic damage. TSMC has a big volume and an edge i

by yyyk 4y ago

The economic damage a war would cause is immense. TSMC however would contribute surprisingly little to the economic damage. TSMC has a big volume and an edge in node process. However, the vast majority of chips in use are in embedded usecases. Most non-general-computing hardware containing chips doesn't need 4nm. It would chug just fine with two decade old chips. Even military hardware uses very outdated chips. Catching up to a modern semi fab would cost time and money, but making more outdated chips isn't that much of a problem. There's a certification issue, but in such a scenario surely certification would be relaxed. As for general purpose computing, servers always have the option of scaling horizontally. The biggest issue would be with phones and tablets. Unfortunate, but tiny compared to the other costs of war.

freemint 4y ago
It would mean no new gaming consoles, Apple devices, AMD CPUs, high performance FPGAs, GPUs by either NVIDIA or AMD, WIFI chips from Broadcam, no Qualcomm ARM CPUs, maybe also no cheap Mediathek CPUs for smartphones.
- yyyk 4y ago
  IIRC, NVidia and Qualcomm fab at Samsung. Others would have to compete for limited remaining quantity or use slightly inferior chips. All this difficulty with high end smartphones and gaming consoles is completely insignificant compared to the 'normal' economic damage a war would cause.
  - freemint 4y ago
    NVIDIA does some manufacturing at Samsung however certain products are only made on TSMC. Such as the coming RTX 4000 series which is made entirely on TSMC 5nm. I missed some announcement though that Qualcomm is moving more towards using Samsung. > All this difficulty with high end smartphones and gaming consoles is completely insignificant compared to the 'normal' economic damage a war would cause. This 'difficulty' would set Moores Law back more than half decade outside of Intel and Samsung smartphone chips. The next smallest large scale node being 12nm at Global Foundry and keep it frozen there for at least 2-3 years in total leaving as decade behind Moore's Law. You underestimate how much damage that causes. Even if China completely wipes out Taiwans 1% share of GDP that impact is miniscule compared falling 10 years behing on Moore's Law.
    - ptero 4y ago
      > Even if China completely wipes out Taiwans 1% share of GDP that impact is miniscule compared falling 10 years behing on Moore's Law. I could not tell if it was a tongue in cheek statement, but if not, can you explain why falling 10 years behind on Moore's law would be such a big deal.
    - yyyk 4y ago
      Moore's Law is dead. We were mostly stuck on 14nm for years and... it had no obvious effect on economic growth. A better way to put it: What kind of application must have a very small node and would not be able to run economically without a tiny node? Embedded doesn't care all that much. Servers can scale horizontally. What's left is various consumer products, and even here you can easily make a smartphone on 12nm, it would just be slower. Hmm.. Maybe VR and locally-run ML must have a tiny node size. Hardly big markets. For all else, there'd be a temporary efficiency loss, but we'll make do and catch up within a decade. You could argue delaying the future would have a running effect, but it seems to me mostly leisure activities would be affected and investment/production would be fine? The Moore's law effect is insignificant compared to the damage of a conflict between the world's #1 manufacturer and #1 consumers.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  That sounds horrible how will we ever survive not buying a new better thing for a few years?! /s
  - koheripbal 4y ago
    Across all industries? The supply chain is looking, and TSMC isn't the only fab in Taiwan. It would also impact car production, factory machinery production, solar panel production, PC production, medical device production, etc... And all of this happening across almost all industries simultaneously? That's not a recession event - that's a depression event.
    - tester756 4y ago
      would it actually impact those? why would (non-autonomous) car need state of art chips?
      - to11mtm 4y ago
        Well TSMC does do the 'state of the art' yes. I'm guessing they have some less modern stuff. Maybe. But. BUT. UMC is kinda an unsung player here to some extent. They are another Taiwanese Fab, and do a lot of the older process stuff. I'm guessing that whatever plans Taiwan's government has for TSMC Facilities in a Kobayashi Maru scenario with China, UMC probably gets some version of it as well. Lets also assume that if things get to that state with Taiwan/China, at minimal we'd probably have a larger embargo against China (another source of such chips) and there's a possibility of trade disruption with other Asian players like South Korea.
another_story 4y ago
This makes no sense. The economic damage of removing over half the chip market in a short period of time would be immense. Even if we don't need high end chips, which we absolutely do need, Taiwan and TSMC still make plenty of all sorts of chips that go into every day devices. If TSMC falls, along with Taiwan, we're looking at the cost of everything electronic soaring. It'll make the run on graphics cards due to crypto miners a quaint memory.
- yyyk 4y ago
  The older tech is way more tractable, and there will also be chip recycling to help. Economics will ensure supply catches up, except the highest end chips. I find the focus on chips bewildering, since there are so many more critical issues like 'how do we prevent a stock market run and the crash of every company which outsourced manufacturing to China?' or (if you live in China) 'where do I get a food ration card?', if this gets real bad. Semis are merely an annoyance.
  - another_story 4y ago
    The other issues are important as well, but semis run everything we use. For instance, nearly half the world's display drivers are made in Taiwan. These can be made elsewhere but will take time to find production capacity. Do we have the technological capability to recycle old semis to work with current systems to keep things running? Do enough people have this skillset? I'm sure we figureit out, but I doubt it there are enough people to really get it moving. With a severe lack of chips we'll see systems falter or all out crash as components wear out and can't be easily replaced. I think you're underestimating how much runs on what Taiwan produces and I don't think "economics" can bring more production online in a meaningful time frame.
    - yyyk 4y ago
      Semis run everything, but: they wear out slowly, there's a long line of consumer semis for reuse, and few systems require the latest semi tech; There's extra capacity in the West for the older semi tech. It's understandable HN community would focus on semis, but compared to 'financial crash worse than 2008' and 'Would all people be able to get food next month?' semis aren't that important. Semi production would be a slow long-term crisis we would be able to adjust to if we could handle effectively the initial very big short-term crises resulting from a massive war. As Keynes put it: "In the long run we're all dead". If we couldn't handle the initial short-term economic crises we'll have bigger problems than long-term semi production adjustment. If we can, we could handle adjusting semi production and use. It's not that it isn't an issue, it's just way less important and less difficult than the other issues.
to11mtm 4y ago
> Even military hardware uses very outdated chips. I could be wrong but I thought that some of the ML stuff for military is causing more demand on the high end?

by yyyk 4y ago

freemint 4y ago

It would mean no new gaming consoles, Apple devices, AMD CPUs, high performance FPGAs, GPUs by either NVIDIA or AMD, WIFI chips from Broadcam, no Qualcomm ARM CPUs, maybe also no cheap Mediathek CPUs for smartphones.

yyyk 4y ago
IIRC, NVidia and Qualcomm fab at Samsung. Others would have to compete for limited remaining quantity or use slightly inferior chips. All this difficulty with high end smartphones and gaming consoles is completely insignificant compared to the 'normal' economic damage a war would cause.
- freemint 4y ago
  NVIDIA does some manufacturing at Samsung however certain products are only made on TSMC. Such as the coming RTX 4000 series which is made entirely on TSMC 5nm. I missed some announcement though that Qualcomm is moving more towards using Samsung. > All this difficulty with high end smartphones and gaming consoles is completely insignificant compared to the 'normal' economic damage a war would cause. This 'difficulty' would set Moores Law back more than half decade outside of Intel and Samsung smartphone chips. The next smallest large scale node being 12nm at Global Foundry and keep it frozen there for at least 2-3 years in total leaving as decade behind Moore's Law. You underestimate how much damage that causes. Even if China completely wipes out Taiwans 1% share of GDP that impact is miniscule compared falling 10 years behing on Moore's Law.
  - ptero 4y ago
    > Even if China completely wipes out Taiwans 1% share of GDP that impact is miniscule compared falling 10 years behing on Moore's Law. I could not tell if it was a tongue in cheek statement, but if not, can you explain why falling 10 years behind on Moore's law would be such a big deal.
  - yyyk 4y ago
    Moore's Law is dead. We were mostly stuck on 14nm for years and... it had no obvious effect on economic growth. A better way to put it: What kind of application must have a very small node and would not be able to run economically without a tiny node? Embedded doesn't care all that much. Servers can scale horizontally. What's left is various consumer products, and even here you can easily make a smartphone on 12nm, it would just be slower. Hmm.. Maybe VR and locally-run ML must have a tiny node size. Hardly big markets. For all else, there'd be a temporary efficiency loss, but we'll make do and catch up within a decade. You could argue delaying the future would have a running effect, but it seems to me mostly leisure activities would be affected and investment/production would be fine? The Moore's law effect is insignificant compared to the damage of a conflict between the world's #1 manufacturer and #1 consumers.
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
That sounds horrible how will we ever survive not buying a new better thing for a few years?! /s
- koheripbal 4y ago
  Across all industries? The supply chain is looking, and TSMC isn't the only fab in Taiwan. It would also impact car production, factory machinery production, solar panel production, PC production, medical device production, etc... And all of this happening across almost all industries simultaneously? That's not a recession event - that's a depression event.
  - tester756 4y ago
    would it actually impact those? why would (non-autonomous) car need state of art chips?
    - to11mtm 4y ago
      Well TSMC does do the 'state of the art' yes. I'm guessing they have some less modern stuff. Maybe. But. BUT. UMC is kinda an unsung player here to some extent. They are another Taiwanese Fab, and do a lot of the older process stuff. I'm guessing that whatever plans Taiwan's government has for TSMC Facilities in a Kobayashi Maru scenario with China, UMC probably gets some version of it as well. Lets also assume that if things get to that state with Taiwan/China, at minimal we'd probably have a larger embargo against China (another source of such chips) and there's a possibility of trade disruption with other Asian players like South Korea.

another_story 4y ago

This makes no sense. The economic damage of removing over half the chip market in a short period of time would be immense. Even if we don't need high end chips, which we absolutely do need, Taiwan and TSMC still make plenty of all sorts of chips that go into every day devices. If TSMC falls, along with Taiwan, we're looking at the cost of everything electronic soaring. It'll make the run on graphics cards due to crypto miners a quaint memory.

yyyk 4y ago
The older tech is way more tractable, and there will also be chip recycling to help. Economics will ensure supply catches up, except the highest end chips. I find the focus on chips bewildering, since there are so many more critical issues like 'how do we prevent a stock market run and the crash of every company which outsourced manufacturing to China?' or (if you live in China) 'where do I get a food ration card?', if this gets real bad. Semis are merely an annoyance.
- another_story 4y ago
  The other issues are important as well, but semis run everything we use. For instance, nearly half the world's display drivers are made in Taiwan. These can be made elsewhere but will take time to find production capacity. Do we have the technological capability to recycle old semis to work with current systems to keep things running? Do enough people have this skillset? I'm sure we figureit out, but I doubt it there are enough people to really get it moving. With a severe lack of chips we'll see systems falter or all out crash as components wear out and can't be easily replaced. I think you're underestimating how much runs on what Taiwan produces and I don't think "economics" can bring more production online in a meaningful time frame.
  - yyyk 4y ago
    Semis run everything, but: they wear out slowly, there's a long line of consumer semis for reuse, and few systems require the latest semi tech; There's extra capacity in the West for the older semi tech. It's understandable HN community would focus on semis, but compared to 'financial crash worse than 2008' and 'Would all people be able to get food next month?' semis aren't that important. Semi production would be a slow long-term crisis we would be able to adjust to if we could handle effectively the initial very big short-term crises resulting from a massive war. As Keynes put it: "In the long run we're all dead". If we couldn't handle the initial short-term economic crises we'll have bigger problems than long-term semi production adjustment. If we can, we could handle adjusting semi production and use. It's not that it isn't an issue, it's just way less important and less difficult than the other issues.

to11mtm 4y ago

> Even military hardware uses very outdated chips. I could be wrong but I thought that some of the ML stuff for military is causing more demand on the high end?