3 ms·

What Google really needs to do is get into the 2nm EUV space and go sub 2nm. When they have the electro lithography (or whatever tech ASML has that prints on th

What Google really needs to do is get into the 2nm EUV space and go sub 2nm. When they have the electro lithography (or whatever tech ASML has that prints on the chips) then you have something really dangerous. Probably a hardcore Google X moonshot type project. Or maybe they have 500mm sitting around to just buy one of the machines. If their tpu are really that good - maybe it is a good business - especially if they can integrate all the way to having their own fab with their own tech

ejiblabahaba 3y ago
This is frankly infeasible. Between the decades of trade secrets they would first need to discover, the tens- or maybe hundreds- of billions in capital needed to build their very first leading edge fab, the decade or two it would take for any such business to mature to the extent it would be functional, and the completely inconsequential volumes of devices they'd produce, they would probably be lighting half a trillion dollars on fire just to get a few years behind where the leading edge sits today, ten or more years from now. The only reason leading edge fabs are profitable today is because of decades of talent and engineering focused on producing general purpose computing devices for a wide variety of applications and customers, often with those very same customers driving innovation independently in critical focus areas (e.g. Micron with chip-on-chip HDI yield improvements, Xilinx with interdie communication fabric and multi chip substrate design). TPUs will never generate the required volumes, or attract the necessary customers, to achieve remotely profitable economies of scale, particularly when Google also has to set an attractive price against their competitors. If Google has a compelling-enough business case, existing fabs will happily allocate space for their hardware. TPU is not remotely compelling enough.

ejiblabahaba 3y ago

This is frankly infeasible. Between the decades of trade secrets they would first need to discover, the tens- or maybe hundreds- of billions in capital needed to build their very first leading edge fab, the decade or two it would take for any such business to mature to the extent it would be functional, and the completely inconsequential volumes of devices they'd produce, they would probably be lighting half a trillion dollars on fire just to get a few years behind where the leading edge sits today, ten or more years from now. The only reason leading edge fabs are profitable today is because of decades of talent and engineering focused on producing general purpose computing devices for a wide variety of applications and customers, often with those very same customers driving innovation independently in critical focus areas (e.g. Micron with chip-on-chip HDI yield improvements, Xilinx with interdie communication fabric and multi chip substrate design). TPUs will never generate the required volumes, or attract the necessary customers, to achieve remotely profitable economies of scale, particularly when Google also has to set an attractive price against their competitors. If Google has a compelling-enough business case, existing fabs will happily allocate space for their hardware. TPU is not remotely compelling enough.