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Sort of incredible that Germany is getting decade old technology for this much investment.
by AdamN 3y ago
Sort of incredible that Germany is getting decade old technology for this much investment.
- formerly_proven 3y agoGloFo Dresden next door does 22nm FDSOI already
- r0b1n 3y agoThe likes of Bosch/Infineon/NXP are not interested in bleeding edge fabs, they sell embedded CPUs from very old fabs they still have. So this is an advancement for them, and totally sufficient for embedded stuff.
- baybal2 3y ago> totally sufficient for embedded stuff. No, TSMC 22 has no eFLASH, expensive SRAM, lacking of analog capability, lacks high temperature tolerance, and is tied to multiple patterning design flow. TSMC 40 on the other hand is the last portable node, with MRAM, eFLASH, high temp, some mixed signal, RF, no MP, and everything else your soul desires.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- r0b1n 3y agoDidn't know that. Maybe they'll add the missing parts as chiplets?
- 55873445216111 3y agoInfineon Aurix microcontrollers on TSMC 28nm have eFlash and RRAM available as NVM. https://www.infineon.com/cms/en/about-infineon/press/market-news/2022/INFATV202211-031.html https://www.infineon.com/cms/en/about-infineon/press/market-...
- arlcode 3y agoThey won't use that technology to produce mobile phones or GPUs. There are plenty of application were structure size, performance and/or power draw doesn't really matter. E.g. Automotive / Industrial applications
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoTo be pedantic, I think it does matter there, but the cost / benefit tradeoff is in favor of the 10 year old processes. And it can vary too, mass produced / generic chips can be more cost efficient if they can make more of them on a single wafer.
- nordsieck 3y ago> the cost / benefit tradeoff is in favor of the 10 year old processes. I thought a big part of the reason why that's the case in general is because the old fabs that house those old processes have already been depreciated - customers basically only pay for maintenance and the of raw materials. But that doesn't really apply to brand new fabs.
- brmgb 3y agoR&D is a significant part of what you have to amortise. I'm guessing they are going to pay the machinery significantly less than if it was brand new. Part of it might even be relocated from another fab. Yields should also be better. That leaves the building but I'm guessing the German state must be generous here and that should help offset that.
- crote 3y agoThat's exactly the issue, isn't it? The Chips Act was marketed as an attempt to bring back "cutting-edge chips" to Europe, and to promote research and innovation. In the end it turns out to just be a huge government subsidy for a bog-standard fab which is at least a decade behind what TSMC is building in Taiwan. Great for automotive companies who want to strengthen their supply lines, but pretty pointless when it comes to doing what it was actually supposed to do. Europe already has plenty of fabs like these which did not require billion-euro handouts.
- Barrin92 3y agoThe biggest concern for Germany is chip supply for the industry, especially the automotive sector, machinery, military and so on. 28/22 and 16/12 chips are still going to dominate in that sector for a long time.
- luplex 3y agothat's if we don't expect Germany to become an AI powerhouse, where GPUs are useful. Apparently this does not seem to be a priority.
- lm28469 3y ago> Apparently this does not seem to be a priority. It isn't for anyone besides HN/Twitter/&c. tech fanatics tbh
- oytis 3y ago20 years forward - "The AI is uncharted territory for all of us."
- moooo99 3y agoTo be fair, fillable PDF forms from public institutions still seem to be uncharted territory for large parts of Germany.
- LeonidasXIV 3y agoOn the other hand: Why fill out PDF forms if you can just send HTML forms and submit them directly to the administration. This is how the Danish system works.
- oytis 3y agoOr just use fax. That's how it works in Germany
- nolist_policy 3y agoSilicium chips and transistors are used for so much more things than cutting-edge computing. Germany is not really in that business (yet) so this is more a move to get their current supply-chain for automotive, machinery, etc. more independent.
- raverbashing 3y agoA lot of the 'chip shortage' those past years was not for the cutting-edge stuff, but for automotive/embedded devices Not everything needs the 5nm cutting edge, and to be fair calling > 300mm (12-inch) wafers on TSMC’s 28/22 nanometer planar CMOS and 16/12 nanometer FinFET process technology, old is a bit unfair
- rasz 3y agoand zero of the shortages were caused by lack of fab capacity - companies cut orders for over a year. Old stocks got depleted, prices skyrocketed, then companies reluctantly put new orders and started selling at those inflated prices.
- arcticbull 3y agoThat's not exactly what happened. Manufacturers gave up their fab capacity at the start of the pandemic to hedge for a potential economic kerfuffle. That capacity was immediately resold to other parties, and by the time the folks who gave up their fab space realized things were going to be okay and came back, it was too late. It really was a fab supply shortage, but a situation of their own making too.
- rasz 3y agoCan you point at one/two examples of companies using this freed up fab space? Where did all that silicon go to?
- crote 3y ago3nm has already hit mass production. Considering this fab won't be ready for at least another two years, 2nm will have hit mass production already. 22nm dates back to 2012, and TSMC has been doing 14nm FinFET mass production since 2014. So yeah, a decade behind cutting-edge can indeed be called "old" when the entire point of the Chips Act was to catch up with Asia and become a center for innovation.
- 3y ago
- Lionga 3y agoHabeck and his kleptomanic friends and family will get a nice kickback later in life. Who cares if TSMC uses it for the things they do not want to have back home anymore as they are clearly getting to EOL.
- ho_schi 3y agoIm rather sure Robert Bosch and Infineon are aware of what chips they need. Obviously not the Zen 5, M3 or Meteor Lake. Germany needs CPUs for the industry. Cars, machines, planes, wind turbines and so on :) But you cannot build Personal-Computers with them? That failure is caused by Siemens (Siemens-Nixdorf) and AEG. In GDR/DDR they were close to build a 386 compatible CPU. The remaining knowledge is still somewhat available, Global Foundries in Dresden. But the CPUs for PC? Yes. Yes. Okay. Intel will build a Fab there, too ;)
- visarga 3y agoNowadays you need AI chips in cars too.
- croes 3y agoBut cheap ones, not the best.
- mrweasel 3y agoIt's actually a little fun. HN is always quick to point out when someone is over thinking software architecture, but for chips we're apparently blind to the fact that most of the chips in the world are pretty underwhelming, but gets the job done.
- coolspot 3y agoEach Tesla car carries 100 TFlops, same as PS5 .
- ryukoposting 3y agoI pity the man who looks at Tesla and says "Now THAT'S good engineering! We should emulate that!"
- ryukoposting 3y agoYou can do machine learning on a Cortex-M4F. Ask me how I know.
- varispeed 3y agoMCUs are created using still relatively ancient tech and we still have shortages of those. Many chips don't need fancy new tech.
- RF_Savage 3y agoEasier to make low power devices on older processes too. Much smaller leakage currents and more robust.
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y agoThe older tech is a great deal. Instead of paying a huge premium for smaller nodes you get low cost and keep the margin for yourself. Having the bleeding edge tech sounds great, but where are the customers that are going to pay for bleeding edge output and the countless billions of investment it takes to get set up to produce it? Decade old technology sounds very sensible.
- jon_adler 3y agoThey require functional safety. Certification can be very expensive and take a long time. What seems old within the consumer electronics market isn’t necessarily old within the automotive industry.
- ulfw 3y agoThey're building it for today's needs tomorrow. Sadly by the time this will come online plus another year or two in service the market might have already moved on to much higher performing embedded chips for EV products, which at the end will be sourced from Asia again. It's all good and nice if private companies want to do this, they should know best after all. Spending another 5 billion on taxes on this is flabbergasting, especially in an area of the country that is incredibly foreigner-unfriendly (to say it mildly).
- askvictor 3y agoIs this fab dependent on ASML's lithography tech? Given the backlog for their machines, perhaps going back a few generations an not being bleeding edge might make the fab much more feasible to get running sooner?