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TSMC to build second Japan chip factory
- dralley 3y agoHow earthquake resistant is all the lithography equipment? The alignments are so sensitive..
- kibwen 3y agoLike Japan, Taiwan is also on the Ring of Fire, and is no stranger to earthquakes.
- andybak 3y agoIs "tectonically stable" a natural resource that relevant regions could use to their economic advantage?
- _kb 3y agoGeo/political stability.
- itishappy 3y agoYes, and it's one of the reasons why companies choose Arizona for their fabs. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/why-do-chip-makers-keep-building-foundries-in-the-arizona-desert/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/why-do-chip-makers-k...
- MauranKilom 3y agoI hear it's one of the factors regarding the location of Intel's upcoming German fab.
- ChatGTP 3y agoWe know how to make earthquake resistant buildings and foundations for decades now.
- sanxiyn 3y agoFabs still stop when there is an earthquake and it is expensive. Being earthquake resistant means extremely expensive equipments don't break when there is an earthquake, it doesn't mean there is no interruption.
- razakel 3y agoNot when you're talking about tolerances below nanometres.
- ChatGTP 3y agoEarthquakes last about a minute max, how many semi-conductors have been produced in Japan already? Many.
- avs733 3y agoA lot of this is from memory so...possibly wrong... Very but also its solveable. You stop manufacturing, realign the tools, and then move on. With the 2011(?) japanese earthquake, there were impacts of the earthquake vibrations on lithography well beyond Japan - and it took a while for the earth to settle back down to the point that lithography was stable again. Aftershocks, tsunamis, reverberation of earthquake energy are all sources of vibration that can affect lithography. The bigger issue (to me with what you are saying) is actually within the semiconductor supply chain. At least when I was involved, many/most/a huge fraction of the basic wafers come from Japan. Two of the major players were (are?) SUMCO and Shin-etsu, and they had huge fleets of CZ furnaces because power was relatively cheap, and more importantly, generally very stable. The process time for ingot (the precursor to wafer) growth is on the order of like weeks/months and is very energy intensive. So, power stability is a big deal. The power issues after the earth quake had huge impacts on wafer availability over the following year or so.
- itishappy 3y agoThey won't break, but they may screw-up in-progress wafers and need to be realigned. You're right that they're incredibly sensitive, and they've built this into the design of the fab. They float the masks, objectives, and wafers on pneumatic isolators (separate stages for each, I believe). Extra-sensitive machines will also be individually isolated from the rest of the fab to prevent adjacent machines and footsteps from interfering. Here's an example of a common pneumatic isolator, the kind of which can be found in almost every lab making optics: https://www.newport.com/f/pneumatic-vibration-isolators-with-automatic-re-leveling https://www.newport.com/f/pneumatic-vibration-isolators-with...
- kalleboo 3y agoAnd you can see what seismic isolation in a datacenter (as an example) looks like in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXwQSCStRaw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXwQSCStRaw
- rjzzleep 3y agoI think a while back TSMC finally understood that building a factory in the US is just not feasible, so their backup is to just transition to Japan long term if Taiwan's situation doesn't pan out. During the Pandemic for example, when Japan noticed that their supply chain is too dependent on China, and that during an emergency they too are subject to export controls, even for their own factories, they immediately acted to bring manufacturing of giants such as Iris Ohyama back to Japan. Contrast that to the US and Europe who keep talking about these things, but don't actually execute(although the US at least tries to throw money at the problem). TSMC lost the Chinese market, because their government went along headfirst with US trade war policy(similar to what Japan did in 1986, but worse in fact). South Korean officials on the other hand lobbied heavily to get long term exemptions, which allowed them to turn around their profit situation.
- boringuser2 3y agoThe thing is, TSMC floundered in America because they had to compensate American workers. American workers aren't cheap. These brutal Asian work cultures can only exist in Asia. Americans and Europeans compete through ingenuity and intellect economically, not through a meat grinder of hard work. It's much different. America's plan to revitalize their industry cannot be contingent on the graces of foreign countries. China is grinding out their own domestic chip manufacturing even though it's far behind the technological sophistication of Taiwan. In the long run, China's strategy is vastly superior. It's a bit embarrassing.
- _kb 3y agoBy the stats, USA is the brutal one: https://data.oecd.org/chart/7kW3 https://data.oecd.org/chart/7kW3.
- boringuser2 3y ago[flagged]
- sanxiyn 3y ago
- rkagerer 3y agoWith all this capital investment and the physics approaching an asymptote, my gut says we're going to see fabbed chips become more commoditized in 20 years (with lower pricing and more competition), and I'm excited for that! Imagine if you could order a fab run as frictionless as ordering business cards.
- wil421 3y agoI thought companies were doing this for old but useful chips? There are chip manufactures who buy old fabs and then do runs for chips that go in automobiles/boats/whatever. At least, it was my assumption.
- hindsightbias 3y agoCanon's new litho might make low-volume very frictionless: https://global.canon/en/technology/nil-2023.html https://global.canon/en/technology/nil-2023.html
- doikor 3y ago> with lower pricing and more competition Every node shrink since 7nm (some say 28nm) has increased the price per transistor. So if we keep going for smaller and smaller nodes expect prices to keep on rising. Once we reach some physical limit that we can't figure out how to solve is when you can expect prices to stagnate/lower (and progress stops too)
- dcow 3y agoDoes this account for macroeconomic effects?
- Zigurd 3y agoThing is, fab building, integrating production machinery, fab supply chain, and operations still has a lot of special sauce in it. Some of those factors are not affected by transistor physics converging at a limit. But, for less than cutting-edge chips, if your budget is a bit more than for printing on paper, it's getting there.
- 3y ago
- alexnewman 3y agoSo what's cool about japan is people stay in the job for a long time and they are affordable, yet the country is very high tech and educated. This seems like a stronger match than America. The TSMC chairman said they retain people for 10 years in taiwan
- Moldoteck 3y agoInteresting why Japan and not some EU country. Risk wise, I think EU is a safer bet compared to Japan if China attacks Taiwan
- boringuser2 3y ago1. Japan is a vassal state of the US. 2. Japan has a different work and compensation culture than European countries. 3. China is no discernible threat to Japan.
- krapht 3y ago3: Hmmm. Not according to Japan's 2023 defense white paper. https://www.mod.go.jp/en/publ/w_paper/wp2023/DOJ2023_Digest_EN.pdf https://www.mod.go.jp/en/publ/w_paper/wp2023/DOJ2023_Digest_...
- boringuser2 3y agoI wouldn't put much stock in the strategic implications of these publicized papers outside of the strategic implications being that they want you to think China is a discernible threat. It's similar to the Israel/Iran thing with the end goal being trying to drum up the warmongers. Just reading a few sentences of that, it reads exactly like warmonger rhetoric that we all know intimately rather than inside baseball.
- krapht 3y agoUh, are you saying that Iran wouldn't erase Israel from the Middle East if they had the capability to do so? Where are you going with this? It's indisputable that Iran sponsors anti-Israeli militias across the Middle East, which would qualify them as a threat.
- snapcaster 3y agoIsrael has nukes, I don't think any country within missile range is going to wipe them off the map
- supportengineer 3y agoWe talk a lot about software bloat. How good/fast do chips really need to be for defense purposes? Chips are so good now it seems you could be 2-3 generations back and still get the job done.
- makeitdouble 3y agoThese chips are probably aimed first and formost at civil production, in particular for car/plane/boats (for domestic and export needs) and consumer electronics, from rice cookers to door bells etc. For Japan it's a crucial bet, a lot more than other countries in America or the EU as it's the crux of the economy.
- sofixa 3y ago> consumer electronics, from rice cookers to door bells I doubt rice cookers and toasters are using the latest chips for TSMC. E.g. the ESP32 microcontrollers are manufactured by TSMC on 40nm, and there are a bunch of different companies that have similarly sized/powerful microcontrollers being manufactured (e.g. STMicro).
- makeitdouble 3y agoIf I get your point, the question would why have TSMC make these low end cheaper chip in Japan when they abund on the market ? The whole effort of bringing TSMC factories to Japan was triggered by the shortage a few years ago, when I think a Toyota factories had to slow down as they couldn't get enough chips to meet the production goals. They'll probably rely on TSMC to make the deal work even if external competitors offer better prices or availability in the short term.
- obmelvin 3y agoIsn't this about 6 and 7mm nodes? Aren't those still pretty good nodes with lower costs than the cutting edge (3nm and lower)?
- gipp 3y agoSo, maybe someone here can explain this to me. I anyways hear about how the entire semiconductor industry is completely dependent on TSMC, and nothing can operate without them, thus their geopolitical importance. But then what are Intel, Arm, etc in this picture? I don't understand semiconductor manufacturing in enough detail -- I assume TSMC occupies a different part of the supply chain? But chip manufacturing seems like a pretty integrated process top to bottom; what's the division between them? In concrete terms, what is it that TSMC is doing that nobody else is?
- cromka 3y agoARM does not manufacture own chips, they just design and license them. Outside of Intel, pretty much everyone else uses TSMC to build their computing chips.
- hosteur 3y agoNot even amd or TI?
- whstl 3y agoAMD's main manufacturer is TSMC. They also use other companies AFAIK. Texas Instruments has its own factories in the USA but AFAIK they make other kinds of ICs than the popular ones that TSMC is known for, they do mostly analog and embedded (still important stuff). The sibling post to yours lists other factories. There are definitely other companies.
- kmlx 3y ago> Outside of Intel, pretty much everyone else uses TSMC to build their computing chips. this isn’t correct. UMC, SMIC and TI have more than 10 fabs each. Nanya 3 fabs. Micron > 10 fabs. Intel > 10 fabs. Tower Semiconductor 7 fabs. Rohm > 10 fabs. Fuji 4 fabs. Fujitsu 5 fabs. Kioxia 10 fabs. Renesas 9 fabs. and the list goes on and on.
- mschuster91 3y ago
- Nokinside 3y ago6nm and 7nm technology nodes and 100k WSPM capacity. Other investors are Sony, Toyota, and Denso, they will also be main customers. Taiwan already has a fab in japan 40 nm, 28 nm, 22 nm, 16 nm, and 12 nm process technologies working with 55k WSPM capacity.
- Giorgi 3y agoNice choice, no way they will allow Chinese communists to get their hands on high tech.
- KingOfCoders 3y agoAlso from last year: "TSMC to build US$11 billion chip manufacturing plant in Germany" https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3230440/tsmc-build-us11-billion-chip-manufacturing-plant-germany https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3230440/tsmc-build-u...
- Linda231 3y ago[flagged]
- philip1209 3y agoPerhaps In-Q-Tel will mysteriously get $20b in new AUM.
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- wly_cdgr 3y agoJapan not gonna go to war for you when China invades, bros
- wly_cdgr 3y agoJapan still not gonna go to war for you when China invades, bros
- haolez 3y agoIs it feasible to a third world country to build a foundry like this? I've been curious about this for a long time. There are very few high end foundries in the world. It seems like a major supply chain risk.
- Andaith 3y agoQuestion I've had for a while now: Why doesn't the UK have any serious chipmaking facilities? They'd be the perfect location wouldn't they? Abundant cheap water, absence of earthquakes, the usual business friendly environment...?
- gkanai 3y agoThose 3 are not that important. You need either a significant high tech manufacturing industry (US post-war, Japan, Korea, Taiwan are all significant manufacturing nations), you need significant capital (debatable for UK), you need talent (UK has no history of chip manufacturing), etc.
- hlord2000 3y agoRelevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AE0DEOictVg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AE0DEOictVg
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- ChatGTP 3y ago"Abenomics" was a serious failure. Maybe Japan is starting to turn the corner, finally.
- gn4d 3y agohahahahahaha
- chrsw 3y agoThe way I see it, which could be a naive way, is that building chips in the USA is never going to make strict economic sense. The cost of living is just too high here. But what is the value of chip autonomy, supply chain security, IP security, etc and who will pay for it?