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Comment by jasonwatkinspdx | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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