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Four companies will produce the microchips on which the global economy depends

44 points by tmoretti 13y ago

shalmanese 13y ago
What's more worrying is that this number seems like it can only go down, not up. To build a company that could compete in this market would require both a mind-boggling amount of investment as well as the acquisition of decades of institutional knowledge.
- joseph_cooney 13y ago
  Using today's fabrication techniques, yes. But not if new, less capital-intensive techniques are discovered.....
  - cinquemb 13y ago
    Makes me think AMD could see this + 3d printing(like makerbot and friends) as something they could move to…
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
      - femto 13y ago
        Aren't there groups out there doing one-off chips using ion implantation? One could envisage a machine that takes a silicon blank and blasts it with a steerable beam of dopant ions, similar to a small scale Cathode Ray Tube, with the silicon in place of the phosphor. A CRT is feasible to DIY [1,2]. What about an ion implantation device? Okay, it won't do 14nm features first up, but could it make a working transistor?? [1] http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-Electron-Accelerator-A-Cathode-Ray-Tube-in-a-/ http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-Electron-Accelerator-A-C... [2] http://www.sparkbangbuzz.com/crt/crt6.htm http://www.sparkbangbuzz.com/crt/crt6.htm
        cinquemb 13y ago
        maybe one can apply a magnetic field to the surface of the silicon blanks to help with placement of the dopants?
        femto 13y ago
        I can't get a picture of that in my mind. Any more details? One advantage over a CRT is that there is no need to view the "screen", so equipment can go under the Si target. Maybe a very sharp probe, meaning it has a very high electric field intensity at its tip? The probe could be shifted x-y using piezo actuators. If the ion source has a very small physical extent, there would be essentially a "single"[1] electric field line running from the ion source, though the target, to the under-target probe. (Does Si allow E field lines though like this?) The emitted ion would follow the electric field line, crashing into the Si target before reaching the sharp probe. Moving the probe would scan the electric field line, and the point of impact across the surface of the wafer. Alternatively, keep the ion source and probe stationary and move the wafer x-y. [1] small meaning that the spread of the field lines is less than the desired feature size.
        cinquemb 13y ago
        I'm not sure Si would allow E field lines like that unless it was already doped to a certain extent (at least without diving into matsci book :P). But i was thinking along the same lines by maybe instead of the probe moving, one would move the wafer from one end to another and using an applied magnetic field lines to accelerate ions to the wafer as it moved. What i'm picturing in my head right now is you have two metal coiled cylinders (inner and outer) with the space in between is where the wafer will move through. Now if i could only think of where the ions can be fired in order to follow the magnetic field lines inside between the cylinders to surface of the wafer (theres probably a better setup, but trying to figure out the direction of B and E fields to be able to do something like that in my head is too much for me atm). I think what i'm getting at though is that it might be easier to get nm distances by moving the wafer through B field lines in x direction than moving an E field line x and y.
        13y ago
    - femto 13y ago
      It wouldn't work if a volume manufacturer had to sequentially make chips (especially if each one took a week, or longer, to fabricate). It would work for an individual though. Same way a 5ppm laser printer isn't good enough for a newspaper manufacturer, but is adequate at home.
      - cinquemb 13y ago
        Yeah I was thinking mostly from an individual standpoint (something that could be sold to more individuals rather than businesses). The market is still pretty new for this kind of tech, but if people can envision a future of what people could do with something like this, in 10 to 20 years it could be pretty big. Could even have military applications (com gear is fried on an intel sensitive mission, and exfil is not for another week or two)…
    - T-A 13y ago
      That would be quite an about-face; Global Foundries was spun off from AMD in 2009.
- krichman 13y ago
  That's because they are talking about the pinnacle of chipmaking tech. There are many more companies that can make chips on a larger scale.
bayesianhorse 13y ago
I don't believe it's a bad thing. Mostly it's a sign that there is a finite number of distinct microchip designs the global economy really needs. These microchips improve all the time. Now, once there really is a monopoly problem, it's still possible for smaller chip makers to emerge with less efficient or powerful chips, if the market is desperate for "fresh blood".
- moeadham 13y ago
  This has very little to do with design. This is about fabrication. GF, TSMC are purely fabrication, and do little to no design work internally. The chance that any other company can emerge and compete with this group, at least with respect to silicon is zero. A new company would have to poach thousands of engineers, and raise billions. Most competitors have simply given up (TI, ST, etc). The only possibility of more competition in the space is if an upstart is able to emerge when the next generation materials/processes emerge. Maybe carbon. Otherwise, expect the number of fabs to go one direction: down.
djcapelis 13y ago
While there's only a limited number of competitors in the high performance ASIC fabrication suitable for fast desktop CPUs space, the number of companies that operate plants that fabricate semiconductors is a lot larger: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat... It's also notable that a lot of companies who outsource new chip development still have substantial ties with the people building their foundries and maintain significant capabilities for manufacturing. IBM for instance, could probably run enough of its own fabs again to not rely on fabs from others if it really wanted to. There's also a small handful of fabs owned by governments and universities. And while the trend lately has been towards fabless companies, companies who do their own stunts and run fabs are pretty valuable because of it and eventually it seems likely an area some companies may want to play with again. For instance, can anyone think of a company with billions in cash reserves, a huge bent towards owning as much of its own supply chain as possible and a need for a lot of chips? I can.
- fpgeek 13y ago
  Indeed. And not only has that company's relationship with their main chip supplier deteriorated, said supplier is hitting capacity constraints while attempting to satisfy their own demand: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-24/chip-shortage-looms-as-samsung-courts-rival-to-fill-orders-tech.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-24/chip-shortage-looms...
  - hkmurakami 13y ago
    and said company's other chip partner is building huge capacity in the same country for 14nm process.
    - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
      Said company is also well known for investing in and reserving capacity from their partners, so it's not like they don't take a direct role in ensuring they have enough chips. Samsung can't just divert capacity away for their own use if Apple basically owns it for N years.
tcas 13y ago
This is in regards to the highest end fab technologies, which doesn't even include IBM who apparently have a 22nm fab. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricati... With the most advanced fab technologies there's a much smaller number of companies that can both afford the initial capital investment (these plants are _insanely_ expensive) and the engineering expertise / tools to even design at these processes. Meanwhile, the $3 microcontroller I buy that runs as 12mhz fits every requirement I have while being manufactured at a cheaper, but much larger process. The high end processors and FPGAs however, benefit much more from smaller feature sizes (and those FPGAs cost accordingly). As far as I know, when these 4 companies make advancements, the entire industry benefits. For example, Nikon comes out with a more advanced stepper for 14nm processes, Intel is the one paying the premium for them, and later the rest of the industry can benefit from a more reliable 65/45/32nm process after the cutting edge companies have moved on. I believe this is true for the EDA tool space as well. The last paragraph is a bit of speculation on my part. I'm not in the semiconductor field but I know a bit about it, and logically it makes sense for tools / equipment. It does not include things like internal knowledge about manufacturing reliably on a certain process however.
darkchasma 13y ago
Only one planet produces the water and food in which our entire existence is dependant, but we don't take that very seriously. Four chip makers seem almost excessive in comparison.
gaborcselle 13y ago
How much does one of these plants cost? It's said that they're astronomically expensive, but I haven't seen a dollar amount for building one.
- archgoon 13y ago
  TSMC Spent 9.3 billion on one of their plants back in 2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_fabrication_plant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_fabrication_plant Though the numbers I've typically heard are around 3-4 Instagrams.
hkmurakami 13y ago
we could also look at the semiconductor capital equipment companies, which are just as concentrated and sometimes even more so. applied materials, lam research, tokyo-electron, kla-tencor, etc. iirc kla has over 60% share in the defect analysis equipment sector.

44 points by tmoretti 13y ago

What's more worrying is that this number seems like it can only go down, not up. To build a company that could compete in this market would require both a mind-boggling amount of investment as well as the acquisition of decades of institutional knowledge.

joseph_cooney 13y ago
Using today's fabrication techniques, yes. But not if new, less capital-intensive techniques are discovered.....
- cinquemb 13y ago
  Makes me think AMD could see this + 3d printing(like makerbot and friends) as something they could move to…
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
    - femto 13y ago
      Aren't there groups out there doing one-off chips using ion implantation? One could envisage a machine that takes a silicon blank and blasts it with a steerable beam of dopant ions, similar to a small scale Cathode Ray Tube, with the silicon in place of the phosphor. A CRT is feasible to DIY [1,2]. What about an ion implantation device? Okay, it won't do 14nm features first up, but could it make a working transistor?? [1] http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-Electron-Accelerator-A-Cathode-Ray-Tube-in-a-/ http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-Electron-Accelerator-A-C... [2] http://www.sparkbangbuzz.com/crt/crt6.htm http://www.sparkbangbuzz.com/crt/crt6.htm
      - cinquemb 13y ago
        maybe one can apply a magnetic field to the surface of the silicon blanks to help with placement of the dopants?
        femto 13y ago
        I can't get a picture of that in my mind. Any more details? One advantage over a CRT is that there is no need to view the "screen", so equipment can go under the Si target. Maybe a very sharp probe, meaning it has a very high electric field intensity at its tip? The probe could be shifted x-y using piezo actuators. If the ion source has a very small physical extent, there would be essentially a "single"[1] electric field line running from the ion source, though the target, to the under-target probe. (Does Si allow E field lines though like this?) The emitted ion would follow the electric field line, crashing into the Si target before reaching the sharp probe. Moving the probe would scan the electric field line, and the point of impact across the surface of the wafer. Alternatively, keep the ion source and probe stationary and move the wafer x-y. [1] small meaning that the spread of the field lines is less than the desired feature size.
        cinquemb 13y ago
        I'm not sure Si would allow E field lines like that unless it was already doped to a certain extent (at least without diving into matsci book :P). But i was thinking along the same lines by maybe instead of the probe moving, one would move the wafer from one end to another and using an applied magnetic field lines to accelerate ions to the wafer as it moved. What i'm picturing in my head right now is you have two metal coiled cylinders (inner and outer) with the space in between is where the wafer will move through. Now if i could only think of where the ions can be fired in order to follow the magnetic field lines inside between the cylinders to surface of the wafer (theres probably a better setup, but trying to figure out the direction of B and E fields to be able to do something like that in my head is too much for me atm). I think what i'm getting at though is that it might be easier to get nm distances by moving the wafer through B field lines in x direction than moving an E field line x and y.
      - 13y ago
  - femto 13y ago
    It wouldn't work if a volume manufacturer had to sequentially make chips (especially if each one took a week, or longer, to fabricate). It would work for an individual though. Same way a 5ppm laser printer isn't good enough for a newspaper manufacturer, but is adequate at home.
    - cinquemb 13y ago
      Yeah I was thinking mostly from an individual standpoint (something that could be sold to more individuals rather than businesses). The market is still pretty new for this kind of tech, but if people can envision a future of what people could do with something like this, in 10 to 20 years it could be pretty big. Could even have military applications (com gear is fried on an intel sensitive mission, and exfil is not for another week or two)…
  - T-A 13y ago
    That would be quite an about-face; Global Foundries was spun off from AMD in 2009.
krichman 13y ago
That's because they are talking about the pinnacle of chipmaking tech. There are many more companies that can make chips on a larger scale.

bayesianhorse 13y ago

I don't believe it's a bad thing. Mostly it's a sign that there is a finite number of distinct microchip designs the global economy really needs. These microchips improve all the time. Now, once there really is a monopoly problem, it's still possible for smaller chip makers to emerge with less efficient or powerful chips, if the market is desperate for "fresh blood".

moeadham 13y ago
This has very little to do with design. This is about fabrication. GF, TSMC are purely fabrication, and do little to no design work internally. The chance that any other company can emerge and compete with this group, at least with respect to silicon is zero. A new company would have to poach thousands of engineers, and raise billions. Most competitors have simply given up (TI, ST, etc). The only possibility of more competition in the space is if an upstart is able to emerge when the next generation materials/processes emerge. Maybe carbon. Otherwise, expect the number of fabs to go one direction: down.

djcapelis 13y ago

While there's only a limited number of competitors in the high performance ASIC fabrication suitable for fast desktop CPUs space, the number of companies that operate plants that fabricate semiconductors is a lot larger: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat... It's also notable that a lot of companies who outsource new chip development still have substantial ties with the people building their foundries and maintain significant capabilities for manufacturing. IBM for instance, could probably run enough of its own fabs again to not rely on fabs from others if it really wanted to. There's also a small handful of fabs owned by governments and universities. And while the trend lately has been towards fabless companies, companies who do their own stunts and run fabs are pretty valuable because of it and eventually it seems likely an area some companies may want to play with again. For instance, can anyone think of a company with billions in cash reserves, a huge bent towards owning as much of its own supply chain as possible and a need for a lot of chips? I can.

fpgeek 13y ago
Indeed. And not only has that company's relationship with their main chip supplier deteriorated, said supplier is hitting capacity constraints while attempting to satisfy their own demand: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-24/chip-shortage-looms-as-samsung-courts-rival-to-fill-orders-tech.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-24/chip-shortage-looms...
- hkmurakami 13y ago
  and said company's other chip partner is building huge capacity in the same country for 14nm process.
  - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
    Said company is also well known for investing in and reserving capacity from their partners, so it's not like they don't take a direct role in ensuring they have enough chips. Samsung can't just divert capacity away for their own use if Apple basically owns it for N years.

tcas 13y ago

This is in regards to the highest end fab technologies, which doesn't even include IBM who apparently have a 22nm fab. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricati... With the most advanced fab technologies there's a much smaller number of companies that can both afford the initial capital investment (these plants are _insanely_ expensive) and the engineering expertise / tools to even design at these processes. Meanwhile, the $3 microcontroller I buy that runs as 12mhz fits every requirement I have while being manufactured at a cheaper, but much larger process. The high end processors and FPGAs however, benefit much more from smaller feature sizes (and those FPGAs cost accordingly). As far as I know, when these 4 companies make advancements, the entire industry benefits. For example, Nikon comes out with a more advanced stepper for 14nm processes, Intel is the one paying the premium for them, and later the rest of the industry can benefit from a more reliable 65/45/32nm process after the cutting edge companies have moved on. I believe this is true for the EDA tool space as well. The last paragraph is a bit of speculation on my part. I'm not in the semiconductor field but I know a bit about it, and logically it makes sense for tools / equipment. It does not include things like internal knowledge about manufacturing reliably on a certain process however.

darkchasma 13y ago

Only one planet produces the water and food in which our entire existence is dependant, but we don't take that very seriously. Four chip makers seem almost excessive in comparison.

gaborcselle 13y ago

How much does one of these plants cost? It's said that they're astronomically expensive, but I haven't seen a dollar amount for building one.

archgoon 13y ago
TSMC Spent 9.3 billion on one of their plants back in 2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_fabrication_plant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_fabrication_plant Though the numbers I've typically heard are around 3-4 Instagrams.

hkmurakami 13y ago

we could also look at the semiconductor capital equipment companies, which are just as concentrated and sometimes even more so. applied materials, lam research, tokyo-electron, kla-tencor, etc. iirc kla has over 60% share in the defect analysis equipment sector.