4 ms·

Well, we stil have enough know-how outside Taiwan on everything to produce any semiconductors. A bigger world war is most likely what it takes to bring the supp

by bgnn 1y ago

Well, we stil have enough know-how outside Taiwan on everything to produce any semiconductors. A bigger world war is most likely what it takes to bring the supply chain to a halt. Even then, nobody magically forgets these things.

NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
Not magically, they forget naturally. No one human knows the whole sequence, from start to finish, no one can really write it down (or shoot a how-to video). Distributed, institutional knowledge is extraordinarily brittle.
- bgnn 1y ago
  I agree, forgetting happens naturally. For example, it would be pretty difficult to produce vacuum tubes now. But I doubt this is applicable for CMOS technologies. Most of the steps down to finfets (TSMC 16nm) are rather well known. Yes we don't know the exact recipe of TSMC, Samsung or Intel, but it's not like alien technology. I read technical papers from all these fabs regularly and it's more open than what would people expect. Of course they keep their secrets too, for the cutting edge. There's so much knowhow out there that it's quite probable we can get there again in a short time if TSMC vanished fron earth all of a sudden.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
    It's not just about secrets... it's about how many techniques and processes simply aren't documented. There's no need (someone knows how, and is in the business of training new hires), no capacity (they're not exactly idle), and no perception that any of this is important (things have kept working so far). Could they eventually replicate a CMOS technology? No one doubts this, but the latest lith process took how many years to develop, and only one company makes those machines anywhere in the world? Nearly microscopic molten tin droplets being flattened mid-air so that it can radiate a particular wavelength of UV? That's not something they'll have up and running again in 6 months, and if it were lost, regression to other technologies would be difficult or impossible too. We might have to start from scratch, so to speak.
  - insaneirish 1y ago
    > For example, it would be pretty difficult to produce vacuum tubes now. Vacuum tubes are still made. They’re used extensively in instrument amplification. But I think this bolsters your point!
    - grues-dinner 1y ago
      There's a guy who makes them in his garage. They're not really conceptually hard to make as such, they're just fiddly, delicate, labour-intensive and mostly replaced by astoundingly cheaper and often better (outside of a few niches) solid state options. If there were some kind of interdiction on silicon (an evil genie or some kind of Butlerian Jihad perhaps?), the market would remember and/or rediscover the thermoelectric effect and throw money/postapocalyptic bartered goods at glassblowers pretty sharpish. If that status continued, I'm sure we'd see developments in that space in terms of miniaturisation, robustness, efficiency, performance, etc., that would seem as improbable to us as a modern CPU would seem to someone in the no-silicon timeline. You may never get to "most of a teraflops in your pocket, runs all day on 4000mAh and costs three figures" but you could still do a meaningfully large amount of computation with valves.
      - NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
        >There's a guy who makes them in his garage. Savant-tier, obsessive, dedicates his life to it "guy" does it in his garage over a period of how many years, and has succeeded to what point yet? Has he managed even a single little 8-bit or even 4-bit cpu? I'm cheering that guy on, you know, but he's hardly cranking out the next-gen GPUs. >the market would remember Markets don't remember squat. The market might try to re-discover, but this shit's path dependent. Re-discovery isn't guaranteed, and it's even less likely when a civilization that is desperate to have previously-manufacturable technology can't afford to dump trillions of dollars of research into it because it's also a poor civilization due to its inability to manufacture these things.
        grues-dinner 1y ago
        You don't need trillions of dollars to start making tubes again. And it wouldn't be that one guy doing it for funsies, would it? If the question was "can one hobbyist bootstrap everything on his own" then I would agree. Maybe you completely lose even the insight that a small electric current can be used to switch or modulate a larger one. But if you're also losing mid-high-school physics knowledge, that's a different issue. As I said, you probably won't ever get to where we are now with the technology, but then again probably 99.999% of computing power is wasted on gimmicks and inefficiency. Probably more these days. You could certainly run a vaguely modern society on only electromechanical and thermionic gear - you have power switching with things like thyrotrons, obviously radios, and there were computers made that way, such as the Harwell Witch in 1952. Maybe you don't get 4K AI video generation or petabyte-scale advertising analytics but you could have quite a lot.
TimorousBestie 1y ago
I kinda doubt it. The theoretical knowledge is there, but there’s a huge gulf between that and all the practical knowledge/trade secrets held by TSMC. Another view on this topic is https://gwern.net/slowing-moores-law https://gwern.net/slowing-moores-law
- squigz 1y ago
  There are other semiconductor manufacturers, right? Certainly it would be catastrophic to the industry, and would likely set progress back a while, but it would hardly be insurmountable. This discussion also assumes TSMC wouldn't sell/trade knowledge/processes, or they'd not be stolen, which wouldn't be crazy, given the hypothetical war in the region
- chasil 1y ago
  Intel still knows 14nm quite well, and would likely sell access to the line if asked. If Taiwan ceased to exist, that would put us a decade back.
  - bgnn 1y ago
    Samsung is just tiny bit behind TSMC. The gap isn't a decade, more like 12-18 months. Also, TSMC has 5nm production in the US. There are actual people with know how of this process in the US.
    - voidspark 1y ago
      All of their photolithography equipment is manufactured in the Netherlands by ASML https://www.asml.com/en https://www.asml.com/en Other companies are using the same equipment (Samsung and Intel) but TSMC has deeper expertise and got more out of the same equipment so far.
- bgnn 1y ago
  I might be biased, being an insider of semiconductor industry, to think that there gulf isn't that huge. Virtuakly everything is known down to what, 28nm or so. That's still a fairly good process and pretty impossible to forget.

by bgnn 1y ago

NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago

Not magically, they forget naturally. No one human knows the whole sequence, from start to finish, no one can really write it down (or shoot a how-to video). Distributed, institutional knowledge is extraordinarily brittle.

bgnn 1y ago
I agree, forgetting happens naturally. For example, it would be pretty difficult to produce vacuum tubes now. But I doubt this is applicable for CMOS technologies. Most of the steps down to finfets (TSMC 16nm) are rather well known. Yes we don't know the exact recipe of TSMC, Samsung or Intel, but it's not like alien technology. I read technical papers from all these fabs regularly and it's more open than what would people expect. Of course they keep their secrets too, for the cutting edge. There's so much knowhow out there that it's quite probable we can get there again in a short time if TSMC vanished fron earth all of a sudden.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
  It's not just about secrets... it's about how many techniques and processes simply aren't documented. There's no need (someone knows how, and is in the business of training new hires), no capacity (they're not exactly idle), and no perception that any of this is important (things have kept working so far). Could they eventually replicate a CMOS technology? No one doubts this, but the latest lith process took how many years to develop, and only one company makes those machines anywhere in the world? Nearly microscopic molten tin droplets being flattened mid-air so that it can radiate a particular wavelength of UV? That's not something they'll have up and running again in 6 months, and if it were lost, regression to other technologies would be difficult or impossible too. We might have to start from scratch, so to speak.
- insaneirish 1y ago
  > For example, it would be pretty difficult to produce vacuum tubes now. Vacuum tubes are still made. They’re used extensively in instrument amplification. But I think this bolsters your point!
  - grues-dinner 1y ago
    There's a guy who makes them in his garage. They're not really conceptually hard to make as such, they're just fiddly, delicate, labour-intensive and mostly replaced by astoundingly cheaper and often better (outside of a few niches) solid state options. If there were some kind of interdiction on silicon (an evil genie or some kind of Butlerian Jihad perhaps?), the market would remember and/or rediscover the thermoelectric effect and throw money/postapocalyptic bartered goods at glassblowers pretty sharpish. If that status continued, I'm sure we'd see developments in that space in terms of miniaturisation, robustness, efficiency, performance, etc., that would seem as improbable to us as a modern CPU would seem to someone in the no-silicon timeline. You may never get to "most of a teraflops in your pocket, runs all day on 4000mAh and costs three figures" but you could still do a meaningfully large amount of computation with valves.
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
      >There's a guy who makes them in his garage. Savant-tier, obsessive, dedicates his life to it "guy" does it in his garage over a period of how many years, and has succeeded to what point yet? Has he managed even a single little 8-bit or even 4-bit cpu? I'm cheering that guy on, you know, but he's hardly cranking out the next-gen GPUs. >the market would remember Markets don't remember squat. The market might try to re-discover, but this shit's path dependent. Re-discovery isn't guaranteed, and it's even less likely when a civilization that is desperate to have previously-manufacturable technology can't afford to dump trillions of dollars of research into it because it's also a poor civilization due to its inability to manufacture these things.
      - grues-dinner 1y ago
        You don't need trillions of dollars to start making tubes again. And it wouldn't be that one guy doing it for funsies, would it? If the question was "can one hobbyist bootstrap everything on his own" then I would agree. Maybe you completely lose even the insight that a small electric current can be used to switch or modulate a larger one. But if you're also losing mid-high-school physics knowledge, that's a different issue. As I said, you probably won't ever get to where we are now with the technology, but then again probably 99.999% of computing power is wasted on gimmicks and inefficiency. Probably more these days. You could certainly run a vaguely modern society on only electromechanical and thermionic gear - you have power switching with things like thyrotrons, obviously radios, and there were computers made that way, such as the Harwell Witch in 1952. Maybe you don't get 4K AI video generation or petabyte-scale advertising analytics but you could have quite a lot.

TimorousBestie 1y ago

I kinda doubt it. The theoretical knowledge is there, but there’s a huge gulf between that and all the practical knowledge/trade secrets held by TSMC. Another view on this topic is https://gwern.net/slowing-moores-law https://gwern.net/slowing-moores-law

squigz 1y ago
There are other semiconductor manufacturers, right? Certainly it would be catastrophic to the industry, and would likely set progress back a while, but it would hardly be insurmountable. This discussion also assumes TSMC wouldn't sell/trade knowledge/processes, or they'd not be stolen, which wouldn't be crazy, given the hypothetical war in the region
chasil 1y ago
Intel still knows 14nm quite well, and would likely sell access to the line if asked. If Taiwan ceased to exist, that would put us a decade back.
- bgnn 1y ago
  Samsung is just tiny bit behind TSMC. The gap isn't a decade, more like 12-18 months. Also, TSMC has 5nm production in the US. There are actual people with know how of this process in the US.
  - voidspark 1y ago
    All of their photolithography equipment is manufactured in the Netherlands by ASML https://www.asml.com/en https://www.asml.com/en Other companies are using the same equipment (Samsung and Intel) but TSMC has deeper expertise and got more out of the same equipment so far.
bgnn 1y ago
I might be biased, being an insider of semiconductor industry, to think that there gulf isn't that huge. Virtuakly everything is known down to what, 28nm or so. That's still a fairly good process and pretty impossible to forget.