Hacker News Reader

Comment by ac29 | Hacker News Reader

> It's the only chip manufacturer "left" in the US

Global Foundries, Micron, and Texas Instruments all come to mind

GF hasn't gone past the 12nm node. TI is at 45nm. Micron is on relatively recent processes, but they make RAM, not logic (which are totally different processes). Intel is the only chip manufacturer left that is working in logic at anything like the leading edge.

GF is a few nodes behind. Micron doesn't make semiconductors, they mostly make flash and whatnot. TI doesn't have the capacity or knowledge to expand to Intel's size/capacity

> doesn't make semiconductors, they mostly make flash and whatnot

Um.

All that stuff is still semiconductors, just with different patterns printed on them.

You're right but also wrong. Flash is just semiconductors etched in a different pattern than logic, but you don't print on semiconductors. Semiconductors are 'printed' on wafers via photolithography.

Intel's wafers are made of silicon, which is a semiconductor. Silicon on sapphire hasn't been widely used for a long time, if that's what you're thinking of. Photolithography prints resists on semiconductor wafers which are then used to pattern the next process step, such as wet etching, plasma etching, oxide growth, epitaxial polysilicon growth, ion implantation, etc. These mostly remove semiconductor from the wafer or alter its properties.

Interesting, I hadn't known that silicon is itself a semiconductor before all the circuits are added. Am I correct in saying that the etching process transforms a single semiconductor into billions?

No, silicon is still just one semiconductor, just like water is just one liquid. The substrate is still just one piece of silicon, despite having many silicon semiconductor devices fabricated in it. Polysilicon layers may or may not be additional pieces of silicon.

I see! Thanks for the info.

Happy to help!

The linked ppt here has a lot of details: https://fabweb.ece.illinois.edu/

This is a very wrong take.

Fabs run on data. It takes years to gather that data.

Fabs can't just be repurposed overnight. Yields must be good, which takes data, equipment, etc which is all extremely specialized.

Very ignorant take.

> TI doesn't have the capacity or knowledge to expand to Intel's size/capacity

I mean, they might if Intel were allowed to fail.

Much more likely that SMIC would, because TI isn't just 15 years behind; it also has the disadvantage of being in the US. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_industry_in_Chin... for a look at what it looks like where conditions are more favorable.

Yeah terrible position to be when your own government is investing in your competitors' company using your own tax dollars.

As a software engineer, this isn't an entirely new concept.

I think all three of those other companies are also getting CHIPS-act subsidies?

I suppose it could be worse. Still, now the US has a vested interest in seeing Intel crush AMD and others.

They just need to bribe POTUS, and everything will be fine.

AMD is not a chip manufacturer and what “others”?

Right, AMD sold off their foundry business as GlobalFoundries in 02009 to the Mubadala sovereign wealth fund of the UAE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GlobalFoundries

The others would probably be GlobalFoundries, Micron, Microchip, and TI.

"Real men have fabs" (no more, no more).

GF is a zombie company. Micron and TI are both far far away from leading edge. There is only one American company which is both developing and manufacturing leading edge nodes.

re: Micron - Memory is very different from logic chips. You vast number of repeating cells in memory. If any of them are bad you can just turn them off and bin them as lower capacity. You can do that to some extend with logic chips but not nearly as much as memory.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com