Hacker News Reader

Comment by 11thEarlOfMar | Hacker News Reader

Chip fabricators are planning 2 years of record spending on capital equipment and fabrication facilities[0]. Note that when a new 'fab' is built, the spend is on the order of $10 Billion. Also note that 85% of the world's capital spend on chip fabs is in Korea, China, Taiwan and Japan. Hence, 85% of the world chips are fabricated in that region.

Notably, the bulk of the equipment that is purchased is made by US firms (about 1/2), with 1/4 from Europe and 1/4 from Japan.

[0] www.semi.org/en/news-media-press/semi-press-releases/semiconductor-equipment-2020-year-end-forecast

View on HN

> note that 85% of the world's capital spend on chip fabs is in Korea, China, Taiwan and Japan. Hence, 85% of the world chips are fabricated in that region.

I don't follow the logic. Why would the first 85% imply the second 85%?

I guess assuming linear correlation between spend and capacity?

That's true, it really doesn't immediately mean that. Over time, should the regional spend patterns persist, it would in fact mean that in dollar terms. Edit: Perhaps should have said 'will be'.

It's difficult to nail down the breakout of production regionally, because, for example, the US has 85% of the global semiconductor sales, but only 44% of that 85% are fabricated in the US. Here is the 2019 breakdown from Semiconductor International Association[0].

In unit terms, it could be quite different since there are so many low-value chips made on legacy equipment that has been depreciated.

[0] https://www.semiconductors.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/20...

> because, for example, the US has 85% of the global semiconductor sales

This is incorrect. I looked at the PDF that you had linked to[0], and it says, on page 14 (of the PDF) that the total sales in the Americas is 22% of global sales. They say "Americas", so that includes Canada, Mexico, Central, and South America. The Asia Pacific region is where 60.3% of all semiconductors are sold to. And China is the largest consumer of semiconductors, at 33.8%.

[0] https://www.semiconductors.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/20... (under Section 2: Global Market, on page 15 of the PDF / page 11 of the numbering scheme they use)

I believe the 85% refers to global sales by firms headquartered in the US. That includes Intel & TI, but also Fabless, like nVidia, Broadcom, AMD, Qualcomm.

Assuming that fab equipment has a relatively flat price in terms of production capability, it will be true over time. These are the places that purchase 85% the equipment, the equipment produces chips, so these places produce 85% of chips. Of course, some of the equipment will yield higher or lower chip outputs than others, and some of it will be shipped/resold elsewhere, but with large geographic and time scales, the output percentage will tend toward the capital spent percentage.

But how do you measure the output?

I can assume that the price per wafer is relatively flat, but neither the size, nor the complexity, nor the dollar value linearly follow from it.

I wouldn't be surprised if the volume is actually bigger if you count not the money value, but wafers.

$10 billion. That's the price of a nuclear plant...

The ROI calculations for a nuclear power plant are very different though, in terms of the dollars per gigawatt-hour that will be sold to the grid over many years, for the total expected life span of the power plant.

Usually because they're built with some extreme form of government subsidy, or the fully loaded cost of a nuclear power plant is not taken into account in the $/GWh, such as eventual storage and disposal of nuclear waste at a government-run, government-funded facility.

No, it doesn't include accident remediation or dismantling that plant. So start by finding a radioactive storage facility (oops!), then triple the cost.

Chernobyl and Fukushima will cost about $1 trillion each ... for just the first 100 years.

"chip fabs is in Korea, China, Taiwan and Japan. Hence, 85% "

that is going to change very soon as the european union is going to make their own supply chain in fabrication of chips. for security reasons.

We'll, it will take a decade, but this is one of the few European projects I believe might actually work. It's a well defined goal (fab chips) and the winners of the contracts is more or less predetermined (AMSL, etc). That's much less fluffy than "we're going to build a system of standards so that Europe can build a federated cloud".

Where are raspberry pi made?

Their greenboards say MADE IN THE UK, but the chips themselves are all Asia I think...

AFAICT, all current Pi models are assembled in Wales, UK, at a Sony manufacturing plant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56B0P5WdAGQ

The parts, of course, come from various places.

If you mean the SoC, the latest model is fabricated on a 28nm process. This is a relatively ancient fabrication technique (about a decade old) which is widely available from several contract manufacturers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com