6 ms·

lack of competition is depressing

simpsond 5y ago
I really hope Intel can get back on track and find success with IDM 2.0. Not long ago they had a process advantage… up until 10nm yield woes.
bestouff 5y ago
Just wait for TSMC to become fully Chinese.
- unionpivo 5y ago
  Is this likely to happen ?
  - ilove196884 5y ago
    Probably. Make no mistake. China wants Taiwan for tsmc.
    - Hamuko 5y ago
      Haven't people been floating the idea of Taiwan destroying TSMC's facilities in the event of an invasion?
      - Rastonbury 5y ago
        Imagine the chip shortages then!
        lnsru 5y ago
        Don’t worry, Intel is expanding foundry capacity for this case. Apple SoC will stay on the same node for couple years, but that’s not an end of the world for consumers.
        Hamuko 5y ago
        TSMC also has the WaferTech fab in the US and is currently building fabs in the US and Japan. I imagine geopolitical diversity is one goal in the placement of those new fabs. But it'd still lead to a massive global chip shortage if TSMC's facilities in Taiwan were wiped out. And I guess that is a deterrent that Taiwan can use against China.
      - skohan 5y ago
        I would imagine there would at least be a sharp decrease in yield rates. Hard to imagine all those Taiwanese TSMC workers working hard to ensure the technological dominance of mainland China.
        dirtyid 5y ago
        >Hard to imagine all those Taiwanese TSMC workers There's a reason PRC has much more success poaching TSMC employees than US trying to fill up new fabs. Why TW has drafted laws to prevent TW semiconductor talent from working on mainland. Generally TWers prefer working in PRC, with comparable language / culture. Great compensation and quick flight home. Reality is most of TSMC employees will been prevented from being paperclipped to the US in event of war, their future will be firmly tied to PRC and as significant assets, they'll be treated with more carrots than sticks.
      - nicoburns 5y ago
        Not sure if it's true, but I've heard that Taiwan has already rigged all of TSMCs facilities with explosives specifically to deter Chinese invasion.
        thedougd 5y ago
        I wonder if a few smoke bombs in the clean rooms would be enough?
        sgc 5y ago
        It is certainly not hard to destroy the machines. But getting the expertise and data is worth a lot anyways, if you are already at this stage.
    - xuki 5y ago
      China want Taiwan with or without TSMC. If China take over Taiwan the US will probably block ASML from doing business with TSMC.
      - drexlspivey 5y ago
        The US cant block a european company from doing anything
        a2800276 5y ago
        They can block Nordstream 2...
        M2Ys4U 5y ago
        Germany did that
        adventured 5y ago
        It's the Cold War and national security is at stake, you're not going far enough. Think back to what went on from 1950-1990 in Europe and Asia, except it'll be even worse. Blocking Nordstream 2 is the very bottom of the barrel compared to what's coming. After a brief slumber the Russian Empire has awoken again in Europe and it's annexing territory (again). The Dutch would be foolish to spar with the US over ASML at this juncture. Dealing with Russia in Europe and China in Asia will take a concerted front by the US, Europe and their allies.
        baq 5y ago
        remember the Russian Empire has an economy the size of Italy. it does a lot of posturing and no doubt it can cause a worldwide mess if it stops exporting energy, but they're an empire in name only.
        dragonwriter 5y ago
        > remember the Russian Empire has an economy the size of Italy. And a nuclear arsenal roughly the size of the second through fifth largest in the world, combined, and an inventory of main battle tanks roughly equal, quantitatively, to the second through fourth largest in the world, combined, etc. When a country has outsized relative military capacity vs. relative economic capacity, especially when compared to their immediate neighbors, there is a very strong historical pattern of use or threat of use of the military capacity as a lever to achieve economic and/or territorial aspirations. It can fail (while there can be a lag time, economic power is eventually transformable into military capacity), but it isn't unusual for it to succeed, or for the eventual failure to be at the end of a long and bloody conflict.
  - etempleton 5y ago
    The Chinese government wants it to happen and probably can make it happen, but it will not be easy. China would have to take the island by force and an amphibious invasion is logistically difficult and almost certain to face heavy casualties on both sides. US and the west place a lot of strategic importance in Taiwan so they may come to the defense, but it is unlikely to be defendable for long. We are seemingly moving towards another Cold War: China and Russia vs US and NATO.
    - pmontra 5y ago
      Those fabs are not ore mines. If you blew up a mine the ore is still there. If you blew up those fabs there is nothing left. If Taiwan doesn't already have plans to destroy them in case of an invasion I'm sure they are the target of some missiles from outside the country.
    - postingawayonhn 5y ago
      The equipment they need to manufacture the latest chips is made by a Dutch company. The US has convinced the Dutch government to ban the export of that equipment to China. If China managed to gain control of TSMC they would loose access to that equipment.
      - adventured 5y ago
        Plus the US can trivially exfiltrate all the IP related to TSMC before China properly takes the island. Insiders will happily turn it over for any number of reasons. The next step if China were to move on Taiwan, other than getting all the data and IP from TSMC's internal networks, would be to spin up a US division and assign that IP to that new corporation. And then the US should try to get as many of TSMC's employees to the US that they can. Operation Paperclip TSMC.
      - cma 5y ago
        The US didn't just convince them to, the US was a big part of the development of technology with a government/industry consortium in the late 90s (EUV LLC) with DARPA being a big part. That partnership worked with ASML under terms that are now letting the US have a big say in export controls.
  - adventured 5y ago
    There's a very straight-forward solution to the threat, which if the US Government were smart it would be pursuing asap. First, we have TSMC working on building in the US, that should be continued and accelerated if possible. Second, work with Taiwan to force TSMC to split itself into a US and Taiwan division. The US division will be granted all the same intellectual property and will be IPO'd (with TSMC retaining a super majority ownership position; if China ever gets ahold of TSMC, we'd simply force the parent to sell its majority ownership position on national security grounds). But how will Taiwan force that outcome on TSMC? Nation states have fun ways to make things like that happen when it comes to their domestic corporations. But why would Taiwan do that? The same reason they're getting TSMC to build fabs in the US (which is a political move): because we're asking nicely and the US is the only thing keeping Taiwan an independent liberal democracy. TSMC is so big and strategically important, they're a political entity as far as Taiwan is concerned, they're even more outsized vs Taiwan than Samsung is vs South Korea.
    - mook 5y ago
      Why would Taiwan do that though? TSMC is the goosr that lays the golden egg: giving it up means America has much less reason to protect it.
      - baq 5y ago
        it's enough for a government to say it won't buy chips manufactured abroad and presto, you have TSMC fabs being built on US ground as we speak; EU is close behind.
        dirtyid 5y ago
        Carrots and a lot of stick got TSMC to open a small fab in the US for sensitive supply chains. JP and EU are getting similarly marginal expansion. Reality is significant high-value strategic production will stay on the island in short/medium term because TSMC/TW will fight tooth and nail to prevent erosion of their silicon shield. There's no presto, everyone knows banning TSMC chips would kill trillions of western high tech industries.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    I think it's more likely that Taiwan would destroy their own fabs before allowing China to take them.
    - unionpivo 5y ago
      This is most likely a bluff. If the invasion comes, it will come because China will think it will succeed. And if it looks like it's going to succeed, why blow your own factories? After the war, you will have to return to ordinary life, and hopefully a job. Blowing away your own factories, to spite your enemies doesn't make sense. Sure you deny China access yo them. But you deprive your people who will have to live after the war there even more. More likely scenario is that US is going to try to get them blown up (probably not directly)
      - smoldesu 5y ago
        Perhaps. I agree that scuttling the factory wouldn't entirely deter China from attacking Taiwan, but it would definitely dent the value prospect of doing so. TSMC under Chinese ownership would be a remarkably powerful bartering chip (companies spend billions just getting their foot in the door around there), so I could really see it going either way. I know people from Taiwan, their general consensus is that under Chinese rule there would be no "ordinary life", and their goal is to make China respect their independence to the bitter end. There's definitely insufficient economic motive here, but the politics of the matter run much deeper than that.
WithinReason 5y ago
There is a positive feedback loop in fab progress: the more customers you have the more yield experiments you can do, the better the yields get, the more customers you get. This explains why the number of leading edge fabs is decreasing, ending up with a monopoly: https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/technology_node#Leading_edge_trend https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/technology_node#Leading_edge_tr...

I really hope Intel can get back on track and find success with IDM 2.0. Not long ago they had a process advantage… up until 10nm yield woes.

bestouff 5y ago

Just wait for TSMC to become fully Chinese.

unionpivo 5y ago
Is this likely to happen ?
- ilove196884 5y ago
  Probably. Make no mistake. China wants Taiwan for tsmc.
  - Hamuko 5y ago
    Haven't people been floating the idea of Taiwan destroying TSMC's facilities in the event of an invasion?
    - Rastonbury 5y ago
      Imagine the chip shortages then!
      - lnsru 5y ago
        Don’t worry, Intel is expanding foundry capacity for this case. Apple SoC will stay on the same node for couple years, but that’s not an end of the world for consumers.
        Hamuko 5y ago
        TSMC also has the WaferTech fab in the US and is currently building fabs in the US and Japan. I imagine geopolitical diversity is one goal in the placement of those new fabs. But it'd still lead to a massive global chip shortage if TSMC's facilities in Taiwan were wiped out. And I guess that is a deterrent that Taiwan can use against China.
    - skohan 5y ago
      I would imagine there would at least be a sharp decrease in yield rates. Hard to imagine all those Taiwanese TSMC workers working hard to ensure the technological dominance of mainland China.
      - dirtyid 5y ago
        >Hard to imagine all those Taiwanese TSMC workers There's a reason PRC has much more success poaching TSMC employees than US trying to fill up new fabs. Why TW has drafted laws to prevent TW semiconductor talent from working on mainland. Generally TWers prefer working in PRC, with comparable language / culture. Great compensation and quick flight home. Reality is most of TSMC employees will been prevented from being paperclipped to the US in event of war, their future will be firmly tied to PRC and as significant assets, they'll be treated with more carrots than sticks.
    - nicoburns 5y ago
      Not sure if it's true, but I've heard that Taiwan has already rigged all of TSMCs facilities with explosives specifically to deter Chinese invasion.
      - thedougd 5y ago
        I wonder if a few smoke bombs in the clean rooms would be enough?
        sgc 5y ago
        It is certainly not hard to destroy the machines. But getting the expertise and data is worth a lot anyways, if you are already at this stage.
  - xuki 5y ago
    China want Taiwan with or without TSMC. If China take over Taiwan the US will probably block ASML from doing business with TSMC.
    - drexlspivey 5y ago
      The US cant block a european company from doing anything
      - a2800276 5y ago
        They can block Nordstream 2...
        M2Ys4U 5y ago
        Germany did that
        adventured 5y ago
        It's the Cold War and national security is at stake, you're not going far enough. Think back to what went on from 1950-1990 in Europe and Asia, except it'll be even worse. Blocking Nordstream 2 is the very bottom of the barrel compared to what's coming. After a brief slumber the Russian Empire has awoken again in Europe and it's annexing territory (again). The Dutch would be foolish to spar with the US over ASML at this juncture. Dealing with Russia in Europe and China in Asia will take a concerted front by the US, Europe and their allies.
        baq 5y ago
        remember the Russian Empire has an economy the size of Italy. it does a lot of posturing and no doubt it can cause a worldwide mess if it stops exporting energy, but they're an empire in name only.
        dragonwriter 5y ago
        > remember the Russian Empire has an economy the size of Italy. And a nuclear arsenal roughly the size of the second through fifth largest in the world, combined, and an inventory of main battle tanks roughly equal, quantitatively, to the second through fourth largest in the world, combined, etc. When a country has outsized relative military capacity vs. relative economic capacity, especially when compared to their immediate neighbors, there is a very strong historical pattern of use or threat of use of the military capacity as a lever to achieve economic and/or territorial aspirations. It can fail (while there can be a lag time, economic power is eventually transformable into military capacity), but it isn't unusual for it to succeed, or for the eventual failure to be at the end of a long and bloody conflict.
- etempleton 5y ago
  The Chinese government wants it to happen and probably can make it happen, but it will not be easy. China would have to take the island by force and an amphibious invasion is logistically difficult and almost certain to face heavy casualties on both sides. US and the west place a lot of strategic importance in Taiwan so they may come to the defense, but it is unlikely to be defendable for long. We are seemingly moving towards another Cold War: China and Russia vs US and NATO.
  - pmontra 5y ago
    Those fabs are not ore mines. If you blew up a mine the ore is still there. If you blew up those fabs there is nothing left. If Taiwan doesn't already have plans to destroy them in case of an invasion I'm sure they are the target of some missiles from outside the country.
  - postingawayonhn 5y ago
    The equipment they need to manufacture the latest chips is made by a Dutch company. The US has convinced the Dutch government to ban the export of that equipment to China. If China managed to gain control of TSMC they would loose access to that equipment.
    - adventured 5y ago
      Plus the US can trivially exfiltrate all the IP related to TSMC before China properly takes the island. Insiders will happily turn it over for any number of reasons. The next step if China were to move on Taiwan, other than getting all the data and IP from TSMC's internal networks, would be to spin up a US division and assign that IP to that new corporation. And then the US should try to get as many of TSMC's employees to the US that they can. Operation Paperclip TSMC.
    - cma 5y ago
      The US didn't just convince them to, the US was a big part of the development of technology with a government/industry consortium in the late 90s (EUV LLC) with DARPA being a big part. That partnership worked with ASML under terms that are now letting the US have a big say in export controls.
- adventured 5y ago
  There's a very straight-forward solution to the threat, which if the US Government were smart it would be pursuing asap. First, we have TSMC working on building in the US, that should be continued and accelerated if possible. Second, work with Taiwan to force TSMC to split itself into a US and Taiwan division. The US division will be granted all the same intellectual property and will be IPO'd (with TSMC retaining a super majority ownership position; if China ever gets ahold of TSMC, we'd simply force the parent to sell its majority ownership position on national security grounds). But how will Taiwan force that outcome on TSMC? Nation states have fun ways to make things like that happen when it comes to their domestic corporations. But why would Taiwan do that? The same reason they're getting TSMC to build fabs in the US (which is a political move): because we're asking nicely and the US is the only thing keeping Taiwan an independent liberal democracy. TSMC is so big and strategically important, they're a political entity as far as Taiwan is concerned, they're even more outsized vs Taiwan than Samsung is vs South Korea.
  - mook 5y ago
    Why would Taiwan do that though? TSMC is the goosr that lays the golden egg: giving it up means America has much less reason to protect it.
    - baq 5y ago
      it's enough for a government to say it won't buy chips manufactured abroad and presto, you have TSMC fabs being built on US ground as we speak; EU is close behind.
      - dirtyid 5y ago
        Carrots and a lot of stick got TSMC to open a small fab in the US for sensitive supply chains. JP and EU are getting similarly marginal expansion. Reality is significant high-value strategic production will stay on the island in short/medium term because TSMC/TW will fight tooth and nail to prevent erosion of their silicon shield. There's no presto, everyone knows banning TSMC chips would kill trillions of western high tech industries.
- smoldesu 5y ago
  I think it's more likely that Taiwan would destroy their own fabs before allowing China to take them.
  - unionpivo 5y ago
    This is most likely a bluff. If the invasion comes, it will come because China will think it will succeed. And if it looks like it's going to succeed, why blow your own factories? After the war, you will have to return to ordinary life, and hopefully a job. Blowing away your own factories, to spite your enemies doesn't make sense. Sure you deny China access yo them. But you deprive your people who will have to live after the war there even more. More likely scenario is that US is going to try to get them blown up (probably not directly)
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      Perhaps. I agree that scuttling the factory wouldn't entirely deter China from attacking Taiwan, but it would definitely dent the value prospect of doing so. TSMC under Chinese ownership would be a remarkably powerful bartering chip (companies spend billions just getting their foot in the door around there), so I could really see it going either way. I know people from Taiwan, their general consensus is that under Chinese rule there would be no "ordinary life", and their goal is to make China respect their independence to the bitter end. There's definitely insufficient economic motive here, but the politics of the matter run much deeper than that.

WithinReason 5y ago

There is a positive feedback loop in fab progress: the more customers you have the more yield experiments you can do, the better the yields get, the more customers you get. This explains why the number of leading edge fabs is decreasing, ending up with a monopoly: https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/technology_node#Leading_edge_trend https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/technology_node#Leading_edge_tr...