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TSMC Talks 7nm, 5nm, Yield, and Next-Gen 5G and HPC Packaging

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Re: TSMC Talks 7nm, 5nm, Yield, and Next-Gen 5G and HPC Packaging

#51

Post by AJ007 »

opencl wrote: post #48
ww520 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know whether the Intel foundry accepts outside customers and to what extent the outside customers have influence on Intel, but TSMC benefits from being single mindedly focused on chip fabrication and has the support of a wide array of customers, financially and technically. Apple, Nvida, AMD, Qualcom, Micron, most of the phone manufacturers, and any other chip consumers all give orders to TSMC. All these pour…

Sure TSMC is more focused but Intel has dramatically greater resources. Their R&D budget is ~5x TSMC's and ~10x AMD's. You have to be pretty badly distracted to fail to produce superior products with such an enormous budget advantage. Intel technically accepts outside fab contracts but they haven't had any customers since they bought out Altera, their previous only customer. [1] https://ycharts.com/companies/INTC/r_a…

Yeah but certainly all of the work TSMC’s customers account for something there too. Doesn’t seem like an apples to apples comparison.

Re: TSMC Talks 7nm, 5nm, Yield, and Next-Gen 5G and HPC Packaging

#52

Post by wtallis »

MegaButts wrote: post #38
ksec wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I hope you're right, 5nm started risk production were direct from TSMC report. They are expecting even faster ramp than 7nm. And TSMC has a history of being very conservative. Their approach has been iteration rather than a leap like Intel did. And you can bet it will arrive on scheduled for next year's Apple iPhone. There are roadmap, tools, technique for 3nm ( As explained in the Article ) and even 2nm. So none of…

I'm not saying they're pipe dreams. I'm saying things go wrong sometimes. How many companies have never missed a deadline? I'm not even saying that to be argumentative - I am genuinely curious.

It sounds like you're still not taking seriously the fact that 5nm isn't just planned, but already well into the execution phase. It's far enough along that the worst case scenario at this point would be for TSMC's 5nm to be much more usable than Intel's first attempt at 10nm. The horizon for really serious unforeseeable problems is well past 5nm already.

Re: TSMC Talks 7nm, 5nm, Yield, and Next-Gen 5G and HPC Packaging

#53

Post by nv-vn »

sanxiyn wrote: post #7

> by our estimate TSMC will be a "full node" ahead of both Intel and Samsung How times have changed! I still vividly remember Intel being a full node ahead of everyone else with their release of 22nm node. For example, see this article from 2012: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/127987-deliberate-exce... This too shall pass.

Funny how this article emphasizes their in-house manufacturing as part of Intel's success when it's very much what's holding them back these days.

Re: TSMC Talks 7nm, 5nm, Yield, and Next-Gen 5G and HPC Packaging

#54

Post by nv-vn »

ww520 wrote: post #42
sanxiyn wrote: post #7

> by our estimate TSMC will be a "full node" ahead of both Intel and Samsung How times have changed! I still vividly remember Intel being a full node ahead of everyone else with their release of 22nm node. For example, see this article from 2012: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/127987-deliberate-exce... This too shall pass.

I don't know whether the Intel foundry accepts outside customers and to what extent the outside customers have influence on Intel, but TSMC benefits from being single mindedly focused on chip fabrication and has the support of a wide array of customers, financially and technically. Apple, Nvida, AMD, Qualcom, Micron, most of the phone manufacturers, and any other chip consumers all give orders to TSMC. All these pour…

I think the key difference here is also competition. If Intel's foundry can't get 10nm right then Intel is SoL until that's resolved. Whereas AMD was able to ditch GF for TSMC as soon as it became clear that TSMC had the superior process.

Re: TSMC Talks 7nm, 5nm, Yield, and Next-Gen 5G and HPC Packaging

#55

Post by vbezhenar »

geogra4 wrote: post #5
wmf wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, although there was an element of luck that Intel 10 nm failed at the same time that TSMC 7 nm came out smoothly. The opposite situation happened back at 32 nm and could happen again.

yeah but how many nm are left? There's a phsyical limit to transistor size!

I've heard about TSMC working on so-called "3nm", so while I don't know whether it approaches physical limits (those nanometers are just marketing speak after all), it's certain that we have another 10-15 years of progress ahead of us.

Re: TSMC Talks 7nm, 5nm, Yield, and Next-Gen 5G and HPC Packaging

#56

Post by simonebrunozzi »

sanxiyn wrote: post #10
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #9

I hate when acronyms prevent people from understanding important parts of an article. Here you go. TSMC = "Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Limited, also known as Taiwan Semiconductor, is the world's largest dedicated independent semiconductor foundry" (from Wikipedia).

You are expected to know what TSMC is if you are reading this... People wouldn't expand AMD to Advanced Micro Devices and then explain it develops CPU (Central Processing Unit, in case you didn't know!), would they?

I disagree with you. AMD is much more widely known than TSMC.

Re: TSMC Talks 7nm, 5nm, Yield, and Next-Gen 5G and HPC Packaging

#57

Post by ohazi »

opencl wrote: post #48
ww520 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know whether the Intel foundry accepts outside customers and to what extent the outside customers have influence on Intel, but TSMC benefits from being single mindedly focused on chip fabrication and has the support of a wide array of customers, financially and technically. Apple, Nvida, AMD, Qualcom, Micron, most of the phone manufacturers, and any other chip consumers all give orders to TSMC. All these pour…

Sure TSMC is more focused but Intel has dramatically greater resources. Their R&D budget is ~5x TSMC's and ~10x AMD's. You have to be pretty badly distracted to fail to produce superior products with such an enormous budget advantage. Intel technically accepts outside fab contracts but they haven't had any customers since they bought out Altera, their previous only customer. [1] https://ycharts.com/companies/INTC/r_a…

> You have to be pretty badly distracted to fail to produce superior products with such an enormous budget advantage.

I mean, this sure sounds like Intel lately...

Re: TSMC Talks 7nm, 5nm, Yield, and Next-Gen 5G and HPC Packaging

#58

Post by bitL »

ahartmetz wrote: post #44
bitL wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple financed TSMC's 7nm to a large extent, AMD lucked out.

AMD was lucky, but it is also being run by a highly accomplished semiconductor physicist, so some things are perhaps a little less luck than one might think.

I would vote for Lisa to be the CEO of the year. It's also fun to know she is a relative of NVidia boss that once worked at AMD and they both are from Taiwan, home of TSMC and who knows if they have family inside as well...

Re: TSMC Talks 7nm, 5nm, Yield, and Next-Gen 5G and HPC Packaging

#59

Post by ww520 »

opencl wrote: post #48
ww520 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know whether the Intel foundry accepts outside customers and to what extent the outside customers have influence on Intel, but TSMC benefits from being single mindedly focused on chip fabrication and has the support of a wide array of customers, financially and technically. Apple, Nvida, AMD, Qualcom, Micron, most of the phone manufacturers, and any other chip consumers all give orders to TSMC. All these pour…

Sure TSMC is more focused but Intel has dramatically greater resources. Their R&D budget is ~5x TSMC's and ~10x AMD's. You have to be pretty badly distracted to fail to produce superior products with such an enormous budget advantage. Intel technically accepts outside fab contracts but they haven't had any customers since they bought out Altera, their previous only customer. [1] https://ycharts.com/companies/INTC/r_a…

Intel's budget is not just for chip fabrication, they have a very wide array of product areas. Chip foundry is very cost intensive, in the range of 10's billions. I'm not surprised TSMC spends way more on fabrication than Intel does.

Re: TSMC Talks 7nm, 5nm, Yield, and Next-Gen 5G and HPC Packaging

#60

Post by magicalhippo »

hajile wrote: post #47
wmf wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GF canceled 7 nm; I guess they didn't have enough money to support the R&D needed to develop advanced processes.

I don't know that it was a lack of money so much as the cost/benefit ratio. We like to think of all the big chips from Intel, AMD, Nvidia, etc or of bleeding edge mobile processors from Apple or Qualcomm. The reality is that these are a small fraction of the total market for chips. The vast majority of chips are made at 28nm or larger because the cost of production is so much lower. Supply and demand is another big f…

Just to put it in a bit of perspective, ST recently released their very first 90nm variant of their popular STM32 microcontrollers.

Their older designs, which will still be produced in large numbers for some time I assume, are using 180nm.

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