Strongly recommend this deep dive podcast from Acquired https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/tsmc
And if you don't have 2.5 hours, Throughline did a good 47 minute episode as well: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/05/1127015286/silicon-island
Ask HN: Why is TSMC so competitive in semiconductor fabrication?
131–140 of 149 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why is TSMC so competitive in semiconductor fabrication?
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
As pure designers yeah but Chinese government is about to do to chips what they did to solar and batteries so I wouldn't count them out yet. Might be 5-10 years before they catch up but they are by no means out of the fight.
what did China do in battery? I thought China is still behind Japan and South Korea.
Uhh you may be living under a rock: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1249871/share-of-the-glo...
Not only do they currently have the largest share of current technologies they are going to be first to market with next-gen batteries too with CATL and BYD both entering mass production of sodium-ion batteries this year. These have lower energy density for now but that will likely chain as improvements land.
Japan and Korea dropped the ball is what happened, it wasn't any singular error but many unforced errors over a good 10 year period that led to them being now substantially behind.
Re: Ask HN: Why is TSMC so competitive in semiconductor fabrication?
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except in manufacturing, getting your yield up and tuning a process is basically 'just work'. You define a space of parameters you want to explore and then you brute force it by building samples at each parameter step and then analyzing it. This can be pipelined and parallelized to some extent, but then you have to convince enough PhD level employees to do night shifts, because each process step is basically a miniat…
I just think that if TSMC can find such PhD level employees in Taiwan, why couldn't other competitors find them in places way more abundant in those types of people? Convincing them is a matter of paying them more, there are plenty of highly educated physicians who work night shifts. And it's not like TSMC could hide this secret sauce either, so you would think that before dumping another 20 billion in a new investme…
I remember reading something that TMC has links with the local universities to train talent, and nearly guarantee them a job in the end... Ireland has an Intel Fab here, and I don't think there are many courses around here doing chip development... Mind you, not sure Intel Ireland does chip development, but could be wrong... they have something like 6k employees, god only knows what they are doing...
Re: Ask HN: Why is TSMC so competitive in semiconductor fabrication?
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US has been an ally of Taiwan since before the CCP existed.
Before the CCP existed, Taiwan was part of China, and was occupied for many years by Japan. After the Chinese civil war and the rise of the CCP, the defeated nationalist government moved to Taiwan. It is only then that any US alliance with Taiwan began.
China had never ruled over the island. It called it a province for ~ 7 years before Japan took Taiwan and actually ruled over it. The US was allied with KMT after they took over from the Qing dynasty. And continued to be allies after CCP pushed KMT out. When China attacked Taiwan the U.S. stepped in.
Re: Ask HN: Why is TSMC so competitive in semiconductor fabrication?
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I'm not exaggerating when I say that designing a new technology node for mass production is like a moon program. It's insane. I had a friend tell me about what goes on in these asml machines. Essentially the targeting system that moves the wafer around cannot have any vibration so I kid you not the platform is floating and controlled by magnets. And this is just the etching machine.
The etching process that uses a laser to blast a moving molten tin sphere to shape it so the next laser blast that vaporizes it produces parallel EUV light is pretty insane, too. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ge2RcvDlgw
Very cool video. Worth a watch
Re: Ask HN: Why is TSMC so competitive in semiconductor fabrication?
#136There are many great comments in this thread. Finally in 2023 we are getting somewhere in these topics.
I will ignore the Tech side of it. ( You dont buy ASML and expect it all to work, that is like saying you buy a computer and the results of the programmers are all the same. ) You should spend a weekend or two on Youtube Channel on Asianometrys, SemiWiki or Semi Engineering.
On the Business Side of things. With what the ex-CEO Morris Chang called the Grand Alliance, meaning TSMC being Foundry only they will have to work with every industry members to get things work.
TSMC also do not have their own product to compete against their customers ( Pure Play ). Compare to Intel and Samsung, do you prioritise your own SKUs first? where you might earn much higher margin, think Xeon and Exynos SoC? or Global Foundry's case, AMD's order. How do you also balance the capacity planning with so many different customers? This is something that TSMC does extremely well compared to all in the industry.
You then have an economy of scale question. New node are now fast approaching $20B capital expenses, and if you do it elsewhere and not in Taiwan. That could easily be $30B simply because you have to replicate some of the infrastructure already in place along with higher operating cost. Add in another $10B+ of R&D. Ignoring the political side of things, could the industry sustain two Fab players both on leading edge? With an expected ROI within 3 years time. And if your answer is somehow yes, given the trajectory of continuing increasing cost of leading edge node, will it be sustainable in 5 years time? ( In case anyone is wondering, Intel are using their Profits from x86 CPU to catch up to TSMC )
TSMC's culture is also very engineering centric. You have people with Dr. in engineering and expect them to learn about Management or Finance. Rather than some Marketing and Sales people. They are also pragmatic enough with technology and advancement not just sticking to their Roadmap aka Intel 10nm. Most of their Marketing and PR were hired in the recent 5 years because the amount of fucking bull shit from Mass Media they have to endure.
They also work long hours. And are organised with much higher efficiency. Most of these are organisational and management problems. You can think TSMC are moving more like Startup speed within compare to Intel with lots of bureaucratic layers. ( Which Gelsinger is trying hard to break )
Re: Ask HN: Why is TSMC so competitive in semiconductor fabrication?
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
what did China do in battery? I thought China is still behind Japan and South Korea.
Uhh you may be living under a rock: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1249871/share-of-the-glo... Not only do they currently have the largest share of current technologies they are going to be first to market with next-gen batteries too with CATL and BYD both entering mass production of sodium-ion batteries this year. These have lower energy density for now but that will likely chain as improvements land. Japan and…
You mean Chinese battery companies have the largest Lithium battery market share in China where foreign competitors aren't allowed to compete? Last I checked CATL makes mostly NCM, largely based on LG Chem's tech, and then LFP.
>> Japan and Korea dropped the ball is what happened, it wasn't any singular error but many unforced errors over a good 10 year period that led to them being now substantially behind.You don't seem to understand the battery market. Japan and South Korea have been in the battery business at lease since the mid 1990's. Japan's manufacturing has declined over time, but LG Chem is the largest EV battery manufacturer in the world. Of course, that's the global market share, outside China -- ie, there won't be any Chinese battery in North America.
Re: Ask HN: Why is TSMC so competitive in semiconductor fabrication?
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your example of Hare suggests Intel was sleeping. I don't think they were. And no, TSMC is staying steady no matter what. That's how they've been operating from the start - regardless of if the "opponent" is making mistakes. It's not a strategy in that sense where they're competing. They're doing their own thing and the competitors either died by themselves or failed. They're not competitive as in they aren't competi…
Competitive in economics and the market means they can provide a good at a lower price than competitors. Either TSMC has no competitors, or they are beating them. If they don’t have competitors, it’s a sign other newcomers can’t compete, so they’re still competitive.
That's like saying if everyone fails an exam and 1 student failed a bit less that they're great or that public transport in American is great because there's none in the Amazon Forest.
IF we go at it that way everyone is competitive - just label the target market differently and claim to be on top / no competitors.
Re: Ask HN: Why is TSMC so competitive in semiconductor fabrication?
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's even crazier is it's 2500+ year old tech that we turned into science in a period of about a hundred years (1860s-1960s).
More like labeled it as science.
Kinda like all these “doctors” who just swaggered in and labeled brain surgery as science, we’ve been trepanning for thousands of years!
Re: Ask HN: Why is TSMC so competitive in semiconductor fabrication?
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
A bit of an aside, but your comment made me realize how much we don’t know about the process used to create the technologies that underpin our civilization. We (laymen) have no idea about the incredible complexity behind manufacturing a single CPU chip.
Many years ago I sat next to the CTO of Broadcom on a plane. We struck up a conversation and when I learned he worked for a chip designer I asked the question that I assumed was the most difficult part. I asked how the engineers laid out the circuits physically on the chip. He laughed and told me the engineers write software that defines the parameters and functions and the software lays out the chip (I know I am ove…
It is a mix: digital logic is almost entirely laid out by machine, but analog circuits and the underlying logic cells (as well as certain specialised digital blocks like memories) are a lot less automated. The most expensive part isn't doing that: it's doing the validation and simulation of the design so that it'll have the best chance of working after you've spend 5-6 figures and many months on actually building it (and then there's the cost of testing it in reality and figuring out what isn't actually working and how to fix it: the first batch of chips still extremely rarely works).