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Elon Musk says building his own 'TeraFab' chip fab may be the only answer
- andsoitis 1y ago> “Building advanced chip manufacturing is extremely hard,” Jensen Huang, chief executive of Nvidia, said at a TSMC event on Thursday. Perhaps. But if TSMC, Samsung, Intel, GlobalFoundries, SK Hynix, SMIC, and UMC can all do it, it isn't THAT esoteric.
- jdale27 1y agoLol. I assume you’re being facetious. But those companies have all been at it for decades.
- DaveZale 1y agoSupposedly, Taiwan based TSMC employees are always on call, and they'll get out of bed during the night to answer the call and go to work. I read that a while back... but it makes sense. Extreme work ethic and extreme competence.
- westurner 1y agoAre any of them making compostable sustainable chips out of graphene or carbon nanotubes yet though? They all compete for Silicon (SiO2) and P and B and Copper (Cu) and Neon (Ne), and PFAS for photoresist masks. Graphene can be made from CO2 and unsorted plastics, though graphene is typically manufactured from imported graphite FWIU. Traditional nanolithography works on silicon carbide. FET nano transistors can be patterned into graphene and other forms of carbon. Graphene oxide and Carbon epoxide are probably better substrates than doped Silicon. The work functions of graphene oxide and carbon nanotubes are different enough for reduced graphene oxide to be the substrate for carbon-based integrated electronic, phononic, and photonic computing chips.
- sanjayjc 1y agoAlternate semiconductor materials (Graphene, SiC) could circumvent some of the expensive steps required for Si, but not all. Here's a good article about the unimaginably high purity standards for the water used in the industry: https://www.asianometry.com/p/the-purest-water-in-the-world https://www.asianometry.com/p/the-purest-water-in-the-world The average fab uses about 2,000 gallons of ultrapure water each minute, 2-3 million gallons each day. Pipes and tubing are constantly shedding particles into flowing water - with random bursts that drive everyone crazy. Once the killer particle size limit ratcheted down to 20 nanometers - a limit we hit roughly about ten years ago - engineers realized that there existed no detection tool for consistently detecting sub-10 nanometer particles in low quantities.
- westurner 1y agoIt is also possible to make water filters and air filters out of graphene layers with one or more pore sizes. The pore size of graphene can be varied parametrically. Water filters and air filters and superconducting electronic computers can be made by stacking layers of graphene. Some products made out of graphene are compostable. Other forms of carbon are considered soil amendments. Does or would passive distillation allow some of the waste sediment to settle? Graphene can be added to concrete to make it stronger. Could the graphene in water from next generation graphene-based semiconductor and superconductor production be used as a concrete additive?
- k310 1y agoAt taxpayer expense? Asking for a friend with no subsidies.
- CamperBob2 1y agoMusk doesn't miss a trick when it comes to tapping the public purse. That's why he gets the big bucks.