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On the topic of sustainability: Fabs consume a lot of water in gross terms, a potential problem given how scarce water is everywhere. Fabs are starting to recycle most or all of the water they consume. The goal is to be water positive; produce more water than is consumed. Pretty incredible...
I'm sort of on the fence here about how "real" these issues are. No criminal arrests AFAIK. That suggests some things are maybe being inflated. The top TSMC AZ boss losing his job ("retiring") is clearly related, I think. So this is an embarrassment for TSMC, and they take the embarrassment...
Downsizing, bringing in consultants, doing a merger, splitting the business up, staying the course or government intervention are the big options on the table for Intel.
Intervention is the last option for good reason. It seems like we're not quite there yet, they are currently doing...
There is a vast difference in the degree of empowerment of process engineers at TSMC vs. Intel (and Samsung).
TSMC practices continuous improvement, while elsewhere, it's not possible to improve.
I'm just stating what my experience has been. TSMC understand their process, while elsewhere...
Foundry is the exact opposite of Copy Exact!
A design rule is just a culture put into heuristic form and then enforced.
TSMC culture allows more flexibility, and design rules reflect that.
TSMC Arizona is productive and competitive, with just a 10% cost difference.
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/producing-wafers-at-tsmc-arizona-is-only-10-percent-more-expensive-than-in-taiwan-techinsights
I think we'll see F21 P1 expand production a lot if tariffs increase, and F21...
300mm production started in 2002 in Rio Rancho, NM. Fab 11X cost $2B, a huge sum at the time.
Conversely, 200mm has lasted a long time in the shadows of 300mm, but it sounds as though 200mm is now in the death throes and will expire in 2027.
It is really hard and expensive to keep ancient...
Interesting tidbit from the story (source is "industry analysts"):
"However, according to some industry analysts, the 18A process is roughly equivalent to TSMC's so-called N3 manufacturing technology, which went into high-volume production in late 2022."
18A used Intel restrictive design rules...
Question for Dan:
"Intel developed and maintained proprietary chip design tools for routing, placement, timing analysis, and power and thermal analysis."
I can intuit how this would create a barrier for customers who had never encountered the Intel custom software and struggle with getting...
China certainly has disruptive goals and aims to dominate semiconductors. All the weaker semiconductor companies in Europe and Japan (and USA) are at risk. UMC and some trailing edge foundries in TW also.
While that is true, it is important to prevent war. I think trading EUV for a 10 or 20...
My Summary:
The author believes Intel focus on highly customized design rules for x86 HPC cores prevented success on GPUs and hinders Foundry. He offers several insights I haven't encountered before (with just one reference provided however). This diagnosis appears to have much to do with why...
"Semiconductor revenue required to support one leading edge fab" is a fabulous metric, comparing Intel (with tons of revenue in 2011, far from the line drawn on the chart which shows the rightward movement of minimum revenue required from 2011 to 2015, projected). So they had a cushion, but...
Yeah, Paul, you make some good points. But I don't think its a mystery why:
Economies of scale (loses lead to more losses)
Big customer departures (Apple in 2018, Qualcomm in 2022)
Slow ramp of yield
Yield Improvement: There remain many "no root cause" investigations into yield losses at...
The Office of Diagnosis people are from SDI, the chemical division, not Samsung Electronics. This could be a beneficial process for Foundry. Samsung Foundry remains behind TSMC and Intel in many ways, and must catch up in system maturity, fab design maturity, but doing it rather than just...
I read it recently too (there's an audiobook). While this book is certainly better than some corporate "How I Did Its" (thinking of Jack Welch's Straight from the Butt), it fails to address the titanic shift that was apparent even in the 90s, which was:
- The Stickiness of Foundry (1990s to...
While I wish there was such a thing as a silicon shield, and thus would be happy to be wrong, I don't think it provides an ounce of deterrence to the CCP.
In a few years China will be self-sufficient, while the US will be Taiwan-dependent. This creates an additional incentive to capture...
