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Currently TSMC has the only leading edge chip fabrications plants (fabs) on the planet and they're all located in Taiwan. They account for all new chips for all
by CitizenKane 3y ago
Currently TSMC has the only leading edge chip fabrications plants (fabs) on the planet and they're all located in Taiwan. They account for all new chips for all new Apple products, all new AMD products, most new Nvidia products, etc. Most companies design the the chips, but then outsource the manufacturing of them to TSMC as building a fab has astronomical upfront costs.
TSMC has acquired a lead in this area through a number of different methods. One of the main things is that they focus deeply on manufacturing. Another is that they work 24 hours a day in R&D, running 3 shifts so they basically have the lights on all the time. And as mentioned above, the upfront costs are incredibly high with a fab costing on the order of 20+ billion dollars to construct.
Intel is attempting to catch up, but it will likely be another 3 to 5 years before they are able to do so. Honestly just having R&D up and going all the time is probably a huge advantage for TSMC and probably a big reason behind their success. Regardless, suffice to say basically all cutting edge product shipments would cease in a matter of months if TSMC fabs were destroyed.
- marcosdumay 3y agoMulti-shift R&D is a weird proposition. Is it for best using machinery?
- biztos 3y agoAccording to this, it has something to do with the movement of the wafers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35667282 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35667282 It also has to do with competitive boasting: theirs goes to eleven.
- marcosdumay 3y agoI'd translate "move wafers" as run test batches. What I understand from that is that he can run more tests on his machines. Honestly, I'm not sure anything of that is real. I can't believe other fabs don't run tests 24/7, and I can't believe they have people that rarely meet changing the same machines instead of only running tests without changing anything.
- ambrose2 3y agoI used to work in R&D for leading edge node development and we had a couple night shift technicians to unblock long running high priority tests. However, we could have iterated much faster if we had dozens of engineers running additional tests at night. Some tests require you to be there at the tool to change temp and so on. And there are ton of possible tests you can do. If you get a result back in the middle of the night and have engineers to review the results and configure a new test then and there, that’s a much faster learning cycle time. Another advantage of TSMC is how they have enough fab space dedicated to R&D that they can run prototypes through quicker because they aren’t competing with manufacturing to get processed.
- azinman2 3y agoSo if it’s so successful why doesn’t Intel etc just copy this process?
- foota 3y agoCost and culture? I don't know that most 20 year intel employees in Beaverton are going to be willing to do night shifts.
- marcosdumay 3y agoWorse yet, Moore's law was basically an automatic monopoly for anybody that had a much more productive R&D than the others. But we are only noticing the gains now, that the law is gone for years already. Maybe the culture thing is really pervasive. It wouldn't be a first.
- pests 3y agoSome things are hard.
- CitizenKane 3y agoTo add to what others said here, another salient factor is that in Taiwan it's pretty possible to get late night food, drink, and other things. These things are almost non-existent in the US which would make working night shifts extra rough.
- jmartrican 3y ago> Currently TSMC has the only leading edge chip fabrications plants (fabs) on the planet and they're all located in Taiwan. What about Samsung? I thought they also made leading edge.
- drozycki 3y agoNVIDIA, Apple, AMD, Qualcomm exclusively use TSMC for their best chips. Even Samsung prefers to use TSMC-fabbed Qualcomm SoCs over their in-house design and manufacturing for their flagship phones.
- CitizenKane 3y agoThey're close, but I believe they're not doing any 3nm manufacturing at the moment but I could be wrong about that.
- tester756 3y ago>Intel is attempting to catch up, but it will likely be another 3 to 5 years before they are able to do so According to them they will do it in next 12 months.
- toephu2 3y agoActually TSMC has 2 fabs in Mainland China (a 12" fab and an 8" fab), and one in the USA (8" fab) [1]. [1] https://www.tsmc.com/english/aboutTSMC/TSMC_Fabs https://www.tsmc.com/english/aboutTSMC/TSMC_Fabs
- CitizenKane 3y agoThey do, but they don't produce any of their leading edge chips in mainland China, just as they won't be in the USA either. Looking at the wording of my post I should have made the leading edge part more clear. My mistake there!
- koromak 3y agoWhat happens if a war with Taiwan does break out? Who's poised to pick up the slack?
- tommoor 3y agoLiterally no-one – the majority of high-tech consumer electronics would stop being produced as soon as existing chips run out.
- greggsy 3y agoThat’s not true - with the exception of the leading edge nodes, there are other fabs. The question is how easily could they migrate and prioritise the workload?
- makeitdouble 3y agoThere's very few of these other fabs outside China. They exist, but aren't able to deliver enough at a global scale. That's what we learned the hard way during the chip shortage a few years ago, where car production for jbstance basically came to a crawl.
- a_wild_dandan 3y agoIf that happens, you won't care. You'll be concerned with your personal safety.
- tedivm 3y agoThis is part of the reason why you're hearing posts about TSMC expanding out of Taiwan. As it stands today it would be a fairly large economic hit to have advanced processors stop production. Building out redundancy seems to be a top priority. It's also worth noting that in the event of a war the US is very, very likely to bomb the shit out of the TSMC plants. https://www.businessinsider.com/us-would-destroy-taiwan-semiconductor-factories-avoid-china-trump-adviser-2023-3?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/us-would-destroy-taiwan-semi... https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/14/us_china_tsmc_taiwan/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/14/us_china_tsmc_taiwan/
- cyrillite 3y agoWhere can someone dig into the data on this?
- throwaway2037 3y ago> Currently TSMC has the only leading edge chip fabrications plants (fabs) on the planet No, Samsung has some in South Korea also.