Qualcomm to give all its 3nm AP foundry work to TSMC instead of Samsung
thelec.net
thelec.net
Was recently reading some non-authoritative news that TSMC is also having yield issues on their 3nm. From the sound of it probably not as bad as Samsung. Taken together this doesn't look good for Intel's optimism toward catching up in just a few years.
Which is why those news are clickbait title. For a node that is expected to enter volume production by the end of 2022 / early 2023, having yield issue in Q1 2022 is completely normal. Compared to Samsung which is still having yield issues now on their current 5nm / 4nm node.
These are likely only around 80-100mm^2 (likely because it’s impossible to find die size numbers for recent snapdragon processors — reviewers need to solve this).
Abysmal would be damning their process with faint praise. I wonder if Samsung is even turning a profit or just trying to offset losses.
This has been the case for sometime, I pointed it out way back in 2017 on SemiWiki. They are fine on mature node though, this is only a problem on leading edge.
But credit where credit are due, Samsung didn't give up. Leading edge is hard, and that is saying the least. If you have been wondering where those Samsung NAND and DRAM profits gone, Foundry services. And if you have been asking why TSMC just doesn't hike price. Samsung has been keeping them at bay some what. And if you think TSMC is a monopoly and has no competition. You should spend a weekend doing more reading on Semi-Conductor industry.
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.
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.
But USA didn't have to force them. ASML's EUV tech started out as a US funded venture, so I don't think they want to start a fight with USA.
And USA could obviously change its laws to block sales of technology even if less than 25% of the end product is from USA.
USA didn't have to force ASML to stop selling to China, they just had to ask them nicely.
That seems like 20% true. The US had a brief EUV program ("EUV LLC") in the late 90s - it wasn't much compared to how much difficult, risky, and expensive development obviously still needed to be done afterwards. The EU also has basic semiconductor research, notably IMEC.
I have also seen that claim in a YouTube video by "Asianometry" and I wonder what the original source of that apparent misinformation is.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sure an important part. But lets not forget that there is a lot of knowledge in TSMC too. And China is trying to slowly buy their engineers.
Intel and AMD (now Global Foundries) both had access to same Dutch company's product and they didn't or barley managed to keep up.
The western alliance has not only rebuffed Russia, it has expanded eastwards against promises made and thus provoked the current situation in Ukraine.
What would the US do if the soviets were to expand into Mexiko? Or... Cuba? We know how that went. If the mission of NATO was to secure peace, why would they reject Russia? It makes no sense from that perspective.
The answer is that there are other reasons NATO exists and what it is being used for.
Instead they’ve had a string of bad actors taking bad actions and just going back to a dictatorship doing all the same things as the USSR.
Why allow them to join and give them all our strategic information just for them to use it against us?
Every country is free to join NATO if they want, Russia has no say in it. And the reason why most Russia neighbors want to is because Russia is a bully, and NATO can protect them from being bullied.
> What would the US do if the soviets were to expand into Mexiko? Or... Cuba? We know how that went.
Well, for one the US did not attack Cuba... Also, Soviet Union was aggressor side for the whole duration of Cold War, that move was just prelude to further aggression against the West.
> If the mission of NATO was to secure peace, why would they reject Russia
Because the best way to secure peace is to keep Russia at bay.
> Russia as a white-majority christian country shares many values and culture with the others.
LOL, no. Russia does not share western values, such as democracy, freedom of speech or other human rights. They do not belong in Europe, they belong in Asia.
Please, go read an history book.
"If a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government. There’s so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.”
-- Robert Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
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.
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.
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)
https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/technology_node#Leading_edge_tr...
What’s plan B?