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TSMC cancels chip price cuts and promises $100B investment surge

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Re: TSMC cancels chip price cuts and promises $100B investment surge

#201

Post by majormajor »

codeulike wrote: post #69
hyko wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first reaction to this plan is that it’s for the birds. The government would be better off just building a fab themselves. The raw materials aren’t that hard to get hold of; integrating consumer electronics into military systems would likely take just as long, if not longer (with all sorts of other negative effects on quality and security). I guess the analogy is with scrap metal drives in WWII, but this situation…

The government would be better off just building a fab themselves. But you can't just 'build a fab' can you? Thats the point. You need a shipment of ASML's magic EUV machines and a bunch of their engineers and a bunch more technicians and managers with the right kind of skills for running a large cutting edge fab.

If you think there's a scenario that justifies it in 10 years, you start today. In our quest for ever-more-just-in-time-efficiency we've forgotten that it doesn't work for certain things.

Re: TSMC cancels chip price cuts and promises $100B investment surge

#202

Post by imtringued »

variaga wrote: post #122
keanebean86 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to be that person and say it doesn't matter. Either you're a consumer who really only cares about a finished product's performance or you're a chip designer who has the time and money to research past the nm number. All us armchair semiconductor fabrication experts can have a good old time arguing ove who's 2nm is better. The real world will continuing doing it's thing. *I know this is hacker news and some…

You're basically right. Nobody doing actual chip design cares about process nm numbers. Process selection done right is a fairly tedious comparison of dynamic power consumption, static power consumption, achievable operating frequencies, wafer cost, SRAM density, IP availability, process maturity/yeild, fab capacity/ availability and about a dozen other factors. There will be a large-ish excel spreadsheet somewhere t…

It's basically a version number.

Re: TSMC cancels chip price cuts and promises $100B investment surge

#203

Post by kccqzy »

throwawayiIiIII wrote: post #200
georgeburdell wrote: post #121

Selfishly... so will all this CapEx by TSMC, Samsung, and Intel put pressure on wages? I’m in the industry at a large company getting 3% raises, 10% of comp as stock, and a salary about 1/3 less than a software dev. All while being highly reviewed. I write a lot of software for my job (although it’s not my title) and I’ve been thinking of trying for pure software jobs even if the work is more boring (I do semiconduct…

I also find it surprising that Hardware Engineers have a lower pay scale (Although I didn't hear very big differences like you said). Is there some kind of supply-demand behind this? Engineers for car-related things as well. Anecdotally I think you could in theory get a title change to software engineer, while doing the same thing, to get more pay.

There are big differences. A close friend who's a hardware engineer shared with me her salary. With five years of experience and a MS, her salary is the same as a fresh-out-of-undergrad junior software engineer at the same company. That's $120k in the valley.

Re: TSMC cancels chip price cuts and promises $100B investment surge

#204

Post by baq »

dcolkitt wrote: post #167
incrudible wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Semiconductor engineering is complex, but probably not so complex that your average Math Olympiad couldn't pick it up in a month or two. We have a chip shortage going on for months now, if all it took was two months and a bunch of smart people, those billions of dollars in chip orders would've made it happen. That tells me it has to be a bit more complex than you think.

Has any major organization started or entered the semiconductor fab space in the past year? From speaking with industry analysts, my understanding is we could spin up additional capacity. The issue is that most everyone fears the shortage will be over after the Covid supply chain disruptions, and therefore any new investments will not recoup their necessarily long payback periods. This is a very different calculus th…

A 10nm/7nm fab costs $10B and takes years to build, assuming you've got a process which works - developing that from scratch will take you a decade before you can even design the fab. You could compare the enterprise to a smaller scale NASA.

Re: TSMC cancels chip price cuts and promises $100B investment surge

#205

Post by baq »

ethbr0 wrote: post #116
dalyons wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally? Sitting about 40km from a priority US target, I'd support the US risking a strike to guarantee Taiwan's freedom What? That doesn’t make sense. If the US triggered nuke slinging over Taiwan the Taiwanese would be ash, not free.

Why would China nuke Taiwan?

out of spite. they'd get glassed anyway, so why not use those nukes for something?

Re: TSMC cancels chip price cuts and promises $100B investment surge

#206

Post by ethbr0 »

comte7092 wrote: post #198
ethbr0 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taiwan has been Dutch, Han, Qing, Japanese, and ROC. Any appeal to history is nine^H^H^H^Hten dashes of propaganda. > it’s official government policy on both sides of the straight that there’s “one China” That's an oversimplification. The KMT / Pan-Blue believe there's "one China" in the sense that they believe the PRC is an illegitimate government, currently occupying mainland Chinese territory that belongs to the R…

This is the nuance I was calling for. Yes, there are different definitions on both sides of the straight. And while the independence side has gained strength in recent years, the official stance has been that China and Taiwan are a part of one country, however defined, and, to my knowledge, no official government act of the ROC has been promulgated to the contrary. As I stated in my original reply, independence isn’t…

> to my knowledge, no official government act of the ROC has been promulgated to the contrary

The 1999 "Resolution on Taiwan's Future," since elevated to DPP party platform, is crystal clear on "two Chinas."

Re: TSMC cancels chip price cuts and promises $100B investment surge

#207

Post by imtringued »

IshKebab wrote: post #28
sschueller wrote: post #12

Maybe we should start pulling chips of trashed electronics. There must be hundreds of thousands decently fast chips going into our trash. How many dead xboxes and PlayStations have chips in them that are still good? I'm thinking of a reverse pick and place machine that pulls chips of boards (boards that can not be used to fix other dead devices) and is able to test each valuable component for later reuse.

Completely pie-in-the-sky. Chips aren't fungible.

Yeah, we would have to assume a post-fab apocalypse where we dig out electronics from a landfill for it to be economically viable.

Re: TSMC cancels chip price cuts and promises $100B investment surge

#208

Post by ethbr0 »

baq wrote: post #205
ethbr0 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would China nuke Taiwan?

out of spite. they'd get glassed anyway, so why not use those nukes for something?

Because that's literally the land the hypothetical war would have been started to capture? Because the casus belli to their public has been that it's (PRC) Chinese land by historical and cultural right? Because the entire domestic and international point of provoking a Strait war would be to demonstrate China's strength?

It's a pretty bad look if your "winning" looks like "killed millions of people and rendered the land in question uninhabitable for a decade+." (To say nothing of the potential non-Taiwan collateral damage)

Re: TSMC cancels chip price cuts and promises $100B investment surge

#209

Post by comte7092 »

ethbr0 wrote: post #206
comte7092 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the nuance I was calling for. Yes, there are different definitions on both sides of the straight. And while the independence side has gained strength in recent years, the official stance has been that China and Taiwan are a part of one country, however defined, and, to my knowledge, no official government act of the ROC has been promulgated to the contrary. As I stated in my original reply, independence isn’t…

> to my knowledge, no official government act of the ROC has been promulgated to the contrary The 1999 "Resolution on Taiwan's Future," since elevated to DPP party platform, is crystal clear on "two Chinas."

Party platforms are not official government policy.

Re: TSMC cancels chip price cuts and promises $100B investment surge

#210

Post by kbelder »

kccqzy wrote: post #203
throwawayiIiIII wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also find it surprising that Hardware Engineers have a lower pay scale (Although I didn't hear very big differences like you said). Is there some kind of supply-demand behind this? Engineers for car-related things as well. Anecdotally I think you could in theory get a title change to software engineer, while doing the same thing, to get more pay.

There are big differences. A close friend who's a hardware engineer shared with me her salary. With five years of experience and a MS, her salary is the same as a fresh-out-of-undergrad junior software engineer at the same company. That's $120k in the valley.

Huh, I'm surprised. As a software guy, I think the hardware engineer has a tougher job that requires more skill.
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