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It's insanely hard.

TSMC is so dominant because they have very, very, deep institutional knowledge. Even if you have billions to invest it's not easy to create that, and definitely impossible to do it short term.

There's only 3 companies left chasing smaller nodes. Everyone else has given up and are focusing on revenue from high volume parts in older processes.

The only three are Samsung, Intel, and TSMC. Idk why going on with Intel but Samsung should BSs doing better but that institutional knowledge that TSMC has is crazy. They all technically invest in asml that makes the machines. If I had to redo my education I’d get into electrical engineering just for this.

> I’d get into electrical engineering just for this

I get the impression it's mostly physics guys.

Everything is physics when you get down to the fundamentals.

So "Chemistry, the central science" did not convince you?

> Everything is physics when you get down to the fundamentals.

Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/435/

TLDR: Math is not. :-)

Nah, neither physics nor electrical engineering. It's all chemistry at TSMC.

Eh, the process engineers I've talked to don't have a great life, at least here in the US. It seems inevitable you end up perpetually on call for some machine, and I don't mean some type of machine, I mean unit #23 over in fab #4 and then that's your baby for years. The pay is considerable worse than software too.

I almost went to get a CE degree because I find it all so fascinating but ultimately I'm glad I didn't.

If you want the best people to work in an area you need to pay them. I'm surprised given the possible returns these aren't seven figure jobs.

the pay is worse than software because you're competing with Asian wages in a manufacturing context, where the margins are slim.

the serious system architects, designers, and fab managers are doing just fine, software or not. the dudes in Phoenix who are getting pushed through 2-year degrees to help run a clean room are probably making 65k.

If enough funding magically appeared, GlobalFoundries could be a contender, right?

> If I had to redo my education I’d get into electrical engineering just for this.

This is the crazy thing. Such fundamental important technology but salaries generally suck. Much more money in cat memes and influencer channels.

Yeah the salaries for EEs are really depressing in most of the industry. It's really hard work. Most EEs end up leaving for software or research (I did!).

I took EECS, did a masters in analog design and I've only worked professionally making shitty SaaS websites. Making way more money with way less stress while still feeling accomplished that I learned how to do the complex stuff I wanted to know how. Very hard to make nearly as much otherwise.

I went to school for CS while one of my best friends went for EE. It definitely seemed like the far more complex discipline.

In fact for a small project in an elective he programmed a computer vision system that was far ahead of anything me or my peers had made at the time in our CS program. He had pretty much zero programming experience.

I must admit he's a particularly smart person but it was crazy that I went on to make more money than him. His work is way more complicated than mine as far as I can tell.

There is one more player joining that small club, Huawei

I was under the impression they had their chips manufactured by SMIC.

Exactly, the fourth player quickly catching up to the others is SMIC.

If there's one company that has the capability to become a Samsung/Intel (IDM) on steroids, it is Huawei. They have the money,talent, determination and state backing.

Presumably only for their own and Chinese brands however as I can't see anyone letting them do fabication for major players outside of China. They've also got a huge hurdle given they cant buy the standard equipment every chip fab needs owing to it all being produced by a single company.

TSMC is solving some of the hardest physics, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and other kinds of engineering I don't even know about. It's unlikely anyone catches up to them in terms of lithography ability for a long, long time given how well they've executed 45nm and lower nodes.

More like ASML is solving the physics problems and TSMC is the one with the most capital and experience to run their EUV machines. It’s not that other competitors don’t exist, it’s more like they’ve given up or can’t keep up. Global foundations I believe isn’t making the investment past 16nm. Samsungs latest node doesn’t perform as good as TSMC and intel is being intel.

> Global foundations I believe isn’t making the investment past 16nm.

GlobalFoundries' Fab 1 can do 1 nm, and its Fab 8 is capable of doing 14 nm:

> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=GlobalFoundries&o...

1 nm is very impressive.

I meant 12 nm. Sorry for the typo. :-(

No. I don’t know where this oft-repeated semiconductor meme came from, but it’s a really poor take.

ASML are solving a small subset of physics problems: how to project extremely small features. TSMC are solving many more physics problems: how to structure layers of doped silicon into transistors, how to structure those transistors into logic gates, and those logic gates into functional blocks. This is why silicon process is not just a matter of capital investment, and why nobody is going to show up overnight with 10 billion dollars and change things. It’s not that TSMC are the only ones with a big bag of cash to give ASML.

Yeah I love how people thinks it's easy to mass produce designs that take hundreds of individual steps and weeks for a single wafer to go through the process. 50+ Layers, aligned at the (sub?) nanometer level. Trying to tweak the process so that your electrons stop quantum tunneling across layers in all directions.

A fab is far, far, more than ASML's machines. A chip can take around 3 months going through various steps repeatedly.

ASML's machines are very impressive, but they're just one piece of that puzzle. And ASML themselves rely on collaborators like Zeiss.

This idea that it's all just capital and others are reluctant to invest otherwise they could duplicate TSMC simply false.

Why doesn't anyone enter? It takes billions and billions of dollars, tons of knowledge and if you get it wrong...even Intel screwed it up, and they are one of the only companies would could even try to do it.

Right now Intel is hamstrung because there is no separation between the fab and design sides. Nobody is going to trust Intel to fab their latest and greatest while the two sides are joined at the hip.

The sooner Intel spins out the fab side into its own entity the better positioned it will be to pick up the business that TSMC doesn't have capacity for.

I've seen plenty of Amazon's competitors running on AWS, plenty of Google's competitors using gmail, and suchlike.

People will overlook a lot, if the product is compelling enough and the sales guys can keep a straight face while promising not to peek.

But the whole problem at Intel is that they're not at the level of TSMC, they're years and generations behind. Splitting them up won't just magically make the fab business be better, and without the profit margins of the sale of processors it's unlikely they'll have the resources to invest to get them to be good. Case in point: AMD are doing very well after spinning off their fabs, but their fabs are not doing very well (relatively of course - they're just stuck to where they split and haven't had meaningful advances; but they're still a profitable business because those older chips are needed too).

> It takes billions and billions of dollars

Apple and Microsoft are trillion dollar companies ( both nearing $3 trillion market caps ). They can afford it. Heck they have the balance sheet to acquire both tsmc and samsung if either were up for sale.

I thought Apple was moving towards being a full-stack company. Where all the hardware and software is developed in-house. If anyone has the resources, it is apple.

> I thought Apple was moving towards being a full-stack company. Where all the hardware and software is developed in-house. If anyone has the resources, it is apple.

Having a modern chip fab binds an insane amount of capital, and makes you much more vulnerable in case of market turbulences. This is exactly a reason why there exist people who like to claim that Intel should spin off their fabs.

Depends how those market turbulences occur, for example a Chinese invasion of Taiwan will be a disaster for Apple.

It would be value destructive for Apple to buy TSMC and not service any other customers

>it's not like the market couldn't bear more competitors.

The market could only bear if they are willing to pay a lot more in the name of diversification. Otherwise most would simply have trouble keeping up.

We really need some basic FAQ on HN for hardware technology related topic.

Building and operating a fab is an extremely difficult and expensive task that will take at least 5-10 years to bear fruit. That makes it a high-risk venture which is hard to sell to the board and investors.

More importantly, the new chip production lines are dependent on hyper-specialized EUV lithography systems that only company is able to manufacture (ASML). ASML has their own limits to production too.

>Why aren't any other companies entering this space?

There are? INTC and Samsung?

>falling exclusively under PROC control

It wouldnt fall under PROC control.

It would be destroyed.

The USA would certainly bomb it if they had to

TSMC fabs have bombs build in to destroy everything if PROC invades I've read.

That's a bit hyperbolic don't you think? Sure, they're the only game in town when it comes to the leading edge nodes (eg. 3nm), but there's plenty of options at 14 nm and above. That corresponds to AMD zen (released in 2017) and Intel skylake (released in 2015). They're significantly worse than the latest and greatest CPUs today, but they're still in use today. I'd hardly call that as "going back to the stone age".

You read bullshit.

I also have a bridge I can sell you. And trust me: you've never seen one like this, at rates like I'm offering! Buy now!

And, If china bombs ASML we'll be back to stone age.

How would China do that exactly? None of their bombers have sufficient range.

They have intercontinental ballistic missiles. If needed, they can be retrofitted with non-nuclear payload.

China launching any kind of missile at ASML is WW3

The Chinese aren't stupid enough to do that. Any launch of ICBMs at a NATO country would be interpreted as a possible nuclear attack and draw an immediate US counterforce strike.

No, you'll just have to learn how to write software again.

Plus I don’t even think PRoC would know how to operate the EUV machines.

> Why aren't any other companies entering this space?

Because it would take over a decade to build a comparable chip fab and thats assuming you had unlimited cash to throw at it.

You'd be spending billions with zero revenue for a decade and no guarantees it'll be anything as close to as good as TSMC's setup. Try finding someone willing to invest in that and it becomes clear why theres not more chip fabs out there.

It's worse. It's one company in a 'contested' territory. So much so that US military is rumored to have considered the 'samson option' of bombing the TSMC facility were the PLA to occupy the island.

Taiwan (unlike Ukraine) is far too critical to the world economy.

TSMC makes a lot of money from fabricating chips on old technology using fully depreciated assets. No new competitor is going to spend billions today to fab chips on older technology.

Enter? Companies are trying to keep up.

Just few years ago was four companies doing the bleeding edge: Intel, GlobalFoundries, Samsung and TSMC. Intel was the best. First Global Foundries could not keep up. Then Intel fumbled ant TSMC became the best. Samsung is the only one keeping up with TSMC but they come slightly behind. Intel tries to catch up the two. No companies have "exited" they just can't compete.

The bleeding edge semiconductor node design is like doing Apollo moon program every 4-5 years. Only one can be the best.

> retake Taiwan

Take Taiwan. You can’t “retake” something you never had.

> It feels like China and the U.S. are on a path to war in the next decade or so

IMO, MAD (mutually assured destruction - if a nuclear power start a war with another nuclear power, both will probably end up destroyed by nukes) makes the prospects of that highly unlikely.

> It feels like China and the U.S. are on a path to war in the next decade or so

they are literally having discussions in San Fran right now to reduce the likelihood of that happening. And it sounds like China is quite open to discussion, and the US as well.

Well. China is promising things and they'll ignore it as usual until they are sure to have the upperhand.

They are building navy fleet like no other.

Still harassing neighbors ( eg. Philippines).

Nothing changed. They just want a bigger advantage.

And TSMC uses the ASML fabrication machines made by… one company. Basically two places are responsible for all of those chips. Intel really needs to get back in the game. Hopefully that’s still on the table.

Even if Intel could spin up a bunch of fabs competitive with tsmc, they'd still be competing for asml's capacity. We just can't massively scale up leading edge fab capacity.

It’s not for a lack of trying on Samsung’s and intel’s part that tsmc is dominant ;)

By internal and external claims, Intel is on track to be competitive with TSMC by 2025. And, Nvidia and other will use the capacity as soon it is available.