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Comment by ksec | Hacker News Reader

>- Intel will have a 10nm later this year that is broadly equivalent to TSMC's current 7nm. They are still shipping 14nm as their leading node.

Just to add, by that time TSMC will have an improved 7nm based on EUV.

I wonder what happens after TSMC 3nm, that is roughly 2022 / 2023. I am pretty sure we can do 2nm, but without another market expansion to further spread the cost of unit, I wonder who will be able to afford these leading nodes. With every generation being much more expensive than previous gen. Smartphone unit shipment are not growing, in fact leading node Mobile SoC are likely shrinking on a YoY basis due to slower replacement cycle.

We surely haven't reach the technical limit of SemiConductors, but it looks to me we reach the Market / Economical Limit.

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Equipment sales were actually going down for close to 3 years now. We are up for long winter in the industry.

7nm is here to stay. 5nm is possible it is just an optimisation of 7nm SAQP and can be done without radical increase of maskset costs.

After that, we are going down the rabbit hole of EUV litho.

A poorly held secret in the industry is that fabs want to use EUV to not to make <7nm, but to make economical <40nm litho with single exposure.

The biggest increase in cost after 40nm were due to increased numbers of exposures and more non-device and metal layers.

Cheap 20nm, single exposure planar litho will be a very commercially attractive process for a lot of things.

>Equipment sales were actually going down for close to 3 years now. We are up for long winter in the industry.

I heard some say this, Would it really be "Winter" though? I guess from equipment manufacture perspective that is yes. From the industry as whole I guess it is just longer cycle, more cost reduction from technology stand points.

>A poorly held secret in the industry is that fabs want to use EUV to not to make <7nm, but to make economical <40nm litho with single exposure.

I guess that is still many years out? Considering all the ASML EUV unit are fully booked till 2021, and with increasing use of EUV from Intel I guess that is likely to continue till 2023 / 2024.

It would be quite some time before we can make super cheap 20nm components.

> I heard some say this, Would it really be "Winter" though?

Yes, serious economists hired by fab companies almost all think so. See, fab ecosystem can't create demand by itself, it relies on clients selling new fancy things, and there are no new fancy things on the horizon, and even "megaclients" are scaling down new orders.

The one overt ways fabs can stimulate consumption is by inventing ground breaking new concepts, and then giving them away... As was with chip cameras (smartphones, optical mouses) RF integration (think of every SoC with wireless today,) MEMS, power on silicon...

Even on that from, there is little new things coming.

> I guess that is still many years out? Considering all the ASML EUV unit are fully booked till 2021, and with increasing use of EUV from Intel I guess that is likely to continue till 2023 / 2024.

1 single exposure on planar EUV process can replace 10+ multiple patterning exposures. So, even with a dramatically lower throughput, it can slash process times, and shoot up yields.

I thought we were reaching some physical limit at 5nm, (Only one electron could pass through the gate?)

> Smartphone unit shipment are not growing

While smart cars are still nowhere near the horizon, they already contain all kinds of chips and 5G is just being laid out, so ... talk about mobile ;)

100M Car Sold every year and majority of them ( Until AV Comes ) don't require any more Silicon than a Smartphone. The 5G hype will hopefully move the market to slightly faster replacement cycle, although I doubt it will happen.

The only possible lift for the market is the SEA and India make major leaps and bounds in their economical growth. But that is unlikely to happen either.

are you aware that motor control, and I don't even want to know what else, is already equipped with chips? No, no you don't.

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