Intel vs. Samsung vs. TSMC
semiengineering.com
semiengineering.com
Chips are really great of course but at the same time its completely magic in a bad way. It haven't clicked for me how it all works until I watched videos of people building CPU analogs in Minecraft or something. Just don't like the feeling of not having an idea of how this thing works just by looking at it.
I find it pretty funny that, since we're no equipped to sens electrical flows just by looking at it, it's more the visual / sensorial support for you mental model that helps you. E.g. you don't really have more information by seeing the circuit physically than looking at plans, it just that your brain finds it easier.
But it's also pretty clear that having physical objects in the loop actually changes the brain thought process, so it's not just an affair of having the information at hand, how it's presented to our senses must imply changes.
It’s simply more enjoyable to look at, like looking at mechanical watches or industrial machinery. Chips are kind of dull. Not to take anything away from their enormous utility and impact of course.
It's like the difference between a game whose logic is 90% Lua or Python scripts, included plaintext in the game directory, vs. one that's 100% compiled C++. One is susceptible to modding by a 12 year old kid armed with a notepad, or a 22 year old kid trying to make a flashy visualization of finite state machines to get a good grade on CS labs for little work[0]. The other is... still mutable, if you get into reverse engineering, and probably pay for (or pirate) SoftICE[1]. More importantly, one lets you learn how to make similar things, through looking and experimenting; the other doesn't[2].
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[0] - Well, that involved Processing to show an animated diagram of a simple FSM, and Colobot with a flying Moon robot programmed with that FSM for the flashy vis, plus some half-assed IPC using text files...
[1] - Ghirda wasn't a thing back then.
[2] - See also "Show source" in browsers - used to be a great on-ramp to webdev and programming, back when JS was just a toy language.
Now sure, I know now I can do digital electronics with the right tools. But the tools I can use, that most hobbyists and professionals can access, allow only limited control. You can't just fab yourself an alternate chip to do something, you have to buy the very specific one that happens to do what you want, or a more general one that can be reprogrammed. And you rarely can reprogram existing chips on a board you modify, because the vendors don't want to see the magic.
Yes, I too, as a kid, was pissed off about digital electronics, and regularly remarked to a friend that soon we'll have light switches and fridges implemented using microcontrollers. If I only knew how true that prediction would turn out...
Now the irony is, at that same time I was making those complains, I was also studying X86 assembly and C++, trying to learn how to make video games. Turns out, the common thread that connects programming computers and analog electronics is accessibility. I could do both for almost free, while gradually learning through experimentation. I couldn't do that with digital electronics - the cost and educational barrier was just too great.
I don’t think there is quite another product made by humankind that matches the sheer number of humans/sqinch - even including rockets, space ships, and some hospital clean room equipment.
Truly a golden era to be alive as a civilization to appreciate the height of human potential.
Prior to the great acceleration changes were slow enough that the world seemed static over a lifetime. If it wasn't, the changes were almost as likely to be negative as positive.
It's also entirely possible that we are in a transitional period. That in hindsight the great acceleration will be the first half of a sigmoid function.
Maybe we're transitioning between stages of a sigmoid. Or maybe we're still on an exponential trajectory, but on a timescale of one lifespan, the change still looks linear (if very fast).
plagues (black death, plague of justinian, many more)?
conquered by mongols?
targeted by crusades over centuries?
Do you think the Natives in North America, South America, or Australia saw it as golden?
... oh god what if we collapse again like Atlantis?!!
https://semiwiki.com/eda/synopsys/347420-the-immensity-of-so...
TSMC also discussed some of the challenges for multi-die design a month ago:
https://semiwiki.com/semiconductor-manufacturers/tsmc/345909...
My take is that the rapid rise in heterogeneous solutions and complexity will provide some excess semi profitability, but at the cost of long run performance increases for "new nodes". Instead of one path forward there are now many.
Or the most recent:
https://semiwiki.com/semiconductor-manufacturers/347646-tsmc...
This is a feature, not a bug.
Leading edge nodes are becoming harder and harder to develop on, particularly outside of memory and logic. This is because of limitations in terms of Ft, max voltage, layout, poor scaling of analog, etc. Leading edge nodes nowadays generally release without a lot of key features and so can only be used for compute tiles, requiring other tiles for IO, analog circuits, etc.
As the nodes mature these features will generally get added on (that might not even be possible in the future if the current trend continues), at which point you can do a SoC with all these things integrated on one die (which was essentially the only option before we had the packaging technology for heterogeneous chiplet systems).
This is why heterogeneous chiplet designs are the future.
Source: my job is helping to develop and test analog and mixed signal circuits on leading edge nodes at Intel.
It's just that for over 50 years optimizing transistor pitch in 2D was sufficient to drive demand and investment. The clear winning single path forward provided the exponential growth we've come to expect. I suspect the complexity and uncertainty of this new heterogeneity does not. Underlying system and process simplicity and reliability support overlaying complexity in software and network.
I started in semi with 68020/30 to see the huge jump from 2um to 0.8um and stayed in on the trailing edge of analog down to 28nm. Maybe there is another 40 years of growth, but it feels like even though 3D stacking increases the power law of dimensionality, it may reduce iteration rate more. We've got 8 high HBM, but will we have 100 in even 8 years or 1000 in another 8 more?
No, probably not, but that's not the point. The point is that now memory and logic (in case of HBM) can be further decoupled, allowing us to use processes optimized for each, instead of having to compromise one for the other. This will allow for cheaper and faster iteration.
You're correct that 3D scaling will likely not go very far, but that's not the key part; the ability to tightly couple heterogeneous dies, allowing for specialization and decoupling of processes, is the key to further scaling.
Disturbingly, using the magical tool twice on the same incantation never produces exactly the same result.
Microprocessors are always the choke point, where I’d be hard pressed to reproduce one, and they form the basis for so much else.
Even going to 1925 and teaching how to make a MOSFET would help.
Not particularly micro, but a processor nonetheless.
If the drinking water is far away at the top of a mountain it isn't so convenient to throw your garbage in it, take a dump in it or float the dead in it.
(a TTL 4004 would be an energy drain and would be hot, but it would work). I think CRAY used ECL
What about a bunch of other things like smelting iron or teaching everyone to read? They don't seem like choke points because we are long past them.
Producing cheap iron is hard.
Producing even the simplest IC? Definitely not. And that is ignoring the need for electricity and everything else required to actually use it.
It might look like witchcraft though to the uninitiated.
Currently it is more esoteric on how a baby (human but not only) is formed than how we build a microprocessor. So if anything I would say we are statistical acrobats, existing despite the numerous approximations in biology. Compared to us humans, microprocessors are predictable and boring.
This is how science destroys wonder instead of inspiring it.
What is mystical is the fact that you exist in the first place, plus everything else. It’s all far out and enchanting.
I strongly disagree around how forming a baby is amore esoteric.. cell mitosis is a pretty well understood science at this point and eventually we will reach a hard limit of covering all the surface area of that domain of knowledge. However technological discoveries unfold more like a fractal.. it isn't really a bounded domain as far as we know.
Because if you need to explain GPS at the level of the impact of general relativity, my understanding is that by itself is already a topic normally introduced in the final year of a physics degree.
If you're OK with simplifying to "time passes at a different rate for the satellites, here's the equation, I will not explain why it works just roll with it", why insist on ceasing to use it if the foundation isn't understandable?
“There’s a lot more going on than just saying a sentence and then things happen!”
What you've suggested doesn't work at high resolution at sea or in the wilderness due to lack of radio towers at suitable frequencies, atmospheric variations and ducting influencing the signal of the existing systems.
Doesn't work in valleys or cities due to multipath reflections.
Only works in low rise areas or while flying at high altitude.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_propagation
That's why the satellites got built in the first place, and why China and the EU added their own satellites to the US and Russian global navigation satellite system.
I found a similar treasure some years ago: How we take convenience for self-evident. We love to pretend everything should be as easy as possible. You should really never have to think about anything, never have to learn anything, never do anything, nothing involving muscles, endurance or fine motor skills. Life is best without developing and without accomplishing.
"The Last Man Who Knew Everything"[0] was 1773–1829 and the trend towards compulsory education was only beginning, 2 countries at the start of his life and 7 at the end[1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Man_Who_Knew_Everythi...
There is nothing surprising in that, we know where we have been historically.
When people don't understand vaccination, or electricity, or the shape of the Earth, the more interesting question is where we are going.
"An etch exists because of its own desires and the use of powerful and arcane magic. The etch passes from a state of humanity to a non-human, non-living, and non-conductive existence through force of light. It retains this status by certain conjurations, enchantments, and a reticlefactory. An etch is most often encountered within its hidden chambers, this lair typically being in some dry, deserted area or vast underground lab, and in any case both solidly constructed of stone and very sterile.
Through the power which changes this creature from human to etch, the armor class becomes the equivalent of +1 plate armor and +1 shield {armor class 0). Similarly, cast dice are 8-sided, and the etch can be affecied only by magical attack forms or by monsters with magical properties or 6 or more hit dice.
Etches were formerly ultra powerful magic-users of magie-user/clerics of not less than 18th level of magic-use. Their touch is so cold as to cause 1-10 points of damage and paralyze opponents who fail to make their saving throw. The mere sight of an etch will cause any creature below 5 nm {or 5 hit dice) to flee in fear of overexposure. All etches are able to use magic appropriately at the level they had attained prior to becoming non-human.
An etch can only be permanently destroyed when their reticlefactory is destroyed. Unless the etch's reticlefactory is located and destroyed, the dice will be cast, and the etch will re-adhere in 1d10 days after their apparent defect.
The fallowing spells or attack farms have no effect an etches: charm, sleep, enfeeblement, annealing, insanity or death spells/symbols.
Description: An etch appears very much as does a wight or mummy, being of skeletal form, eyesockets mere black holes with radiating points of amplificated light, and garments most often rotting (but most rich)."
Or now with latest LLM and voice recognition you can just utter the words to summon food.
Except with chips it is shrink instead of rise. Like if a chip works well and is reliable, time to shrink it (or run it faster, or run it hotter, etc) :)
https://resources.sw.siemens.com/en-US/video-simplified-phys...
If the article is correct that the major semis are going to kind of forge their own paths, in my opinion, that means marketing lots of even 1/3 or quarter steps.
What do you mean by that ?
We get dazzled by leading edge semi conductors by that's only part of the picture.
Wouldn't Intel actually become competitive? Of course without TSMC they wouldn't have had any incentives to open up their fabs...
I wonder how global foundaries is doing these days.
It's not a good thing, but it's not doomsday. The earliest Ryzens 1000s had issues with making incorrect calculations in certain circumstances, and look where they are now. More recently, just a year ago, certain Ryzen mobos literally fried their chips to ~1000 degrees (literally 1000 celsius).
Yes, there are reports of ~50% failure rates, etc... but if you get a shipment of a contaminated batch, it's probably gonna fail, and a single source shouldn't be used to generalise.
> I wonder how global foundaries is doing these days.
I guess they are in an entirely different market than high-end Intel/TSMC/Samsung fabs?