3 ms·

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 C

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.

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.