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Comment by chneu | Hacker News Reader

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

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> 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.

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