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TSMC tells vendors to delay chip equipment deliveries

reuters.com

31–40 of 54 posts

Re: TSMC tells vendors to delay chip equipment deliveries

#31
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Six months ago it was a global chip shortage that had supply chains backed up around the planet. chip != chip. TSMC manufactures hundreds of products, check out slide 4 of the last quarterly results [1]. "AI" (on 5nm or below) is currently only a smaller share of total capacity. 7nm was only around 50% utilization, compared to 110% a year ago. The recent chip shortage was mostly from 28nm or above. Think automotive…

> The recent chip shortage was mostly from 28nm or above. As a reminder to others, 28 nm was the last planar process; there's a discontinuity in cost moving below 28 nm to FinFET processes. For applications which don't need the last bit of density of power efficiency, 28 nm is likely to stay a sweet spot for a long, long time to come.

I hear there are developments of half-node reductions in 28nm processes to get down to "22nm" mostly with wiring density. But your point stands, it's the last planar node for mixed signal.

Re: TSMC tells vendors to delay chip equipment deliveries

#32
post #26
post #2

This makes absolutely no sense. A month ago the headline was "Apple buys every 3 nm chip that TSMC can make for next-gen iPhones and Macs" [1]. Six months ago it was a global chip shortage that had supply chains backed up around the planet. And now it's suddenly "the world's top contract chipmaker grows increasingly nervous about customer demand"? In the middle of a revolution in AI? Something doesn't add up here. ht…

The article just obfuscates the news and hides a key detail at the end. China is a huge market for everything TSMC makes. China just showed this month that they can manufacture a near current generation flagship SoC using 90%+ domestic supply chains. This makes a big revision on future outlooks in China and ripples through demand forecast and capacity planning.

Does this mean that China is buying a bunch of ASML EUV machines?

Re: TSMC tells vendors to delay chip equipment deliveries

#33
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article just obfuscates the news and hides a key detail at the end. China is a huge market for everything TSMC makes. China just showed this month that they can manufacture a near current generation flagship SoC using 90%+ domestic supply chains. This makes a big revision on future outlooks in China and ripples through demand forecast and capacity planning.

Does this mean that China is buying a bunch of ASML EUV machines?

China won't be able to unless they develop the tech domestically.

Re: TSMC tells vendors to delay chip equipment deliveries

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this mean that China is buying a bunch of ASML EUV machines?

China won't be able to unless they develop the tech domestically.

Right that's what I thought, so how are they building a "near current generation flagship SoC"?

Re: TSMC tells vendors to delay chip equipment deliveries

#35
post #31
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The recent chip shortage was mostly from 28nm or above. As a reminder to others, 28 nm was the last planar process; there's a discontinuity in cost moving below 28 nm to FinFET processes. For applications which don't need the last bit of density of power efficiency, 28 nm is likely to stay a sweet spot for a long, long time to come.

I hear there are developments of half-node reductions in 28nm processes to get down to "22nm" mostly with wiring density. But your point stands, it's the last planar node for mixed signal.

Yep, there will be continuing improvements to 28 nm as a long-lived node; 45 nm was a similarly long-lived node (as are 90 nm and 180 nm, still seeing plenty of use), and today's 40 nm is a heck of a lot more polished than 45 nm was at release, while still allowing trivial design porting.

Re: TSMC tells vendors to delay chip equipment deliveries

#37
post #35
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear there are developments of half-node reductions in 28nm processes to get down to "22nm" mostly with wiring density. But your point stands, it's the last planar node for mixed signal.

Yep, there will be continuing improvements to 28 nm as a long-lived node; 45 nm was a similarly long-lived node (as are 90 nm and 180 nm, still seeing plenty of use), and today's 40 nm is a heck of a lot more polished than 45 nm was at release, while still allowing trivial design porting.

Could you mention where these chips from older mature nodes are used and what they look like(in terms of form factor / development environment), for context? I understand some aspects of chips being used for automobiles , but aren't most compute oriented chips based off ARM designs and such which will be on the newer nodes?

Re: TSMC tells vendors to delay chip equipment deliveries

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China won't be able to unless they develop the tech domestically.

Right that's what I thought, so how are they building a "near current generation flagship SoC"?

The near current generation chip being talked about is the one in the latest Huawei phones, made in collaboration with SMIC. I believe SMIC have older machines that can still be pushed to get to close to state of the art. It is newer machines that are under sanction and can't be sold to Chinese firms.

Re: TSMC tells vendors to delay chip equipment deliveries

#39
post #37
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, there will be continuing improvements to 28 nm as a long-lived node; 45 nm was a similarly long-lived node (as are 90 nm and 180 nm, still seeing plenty of use), and today's 40 nm is a heck of a lot more polished than 45 nm was at release, while still allowing trivial design porting.

Could you mention where these chips from older mature nodes are used and what they look like(in terms of form factor / development environment), for context? I understand some aspects of chips being used for automobiles , but aren't most compute oriented chips based off ARM designs and such which will be on the newer nodes?

Most of the chips I interact with on a daily basis are 45 nm, some are 28 nm. Currently working automotive, same in aerospace. A lot of this is because embedded flash generally trails several years behind general availability of a node; so if you're designing a µC or similar with embedded flash, you're starting a few years behind; and then you're guaranteeing a 10 or 15 year supply chain, so on average a production part is on a ~10 year old node (but development activities are biased towards the front of this, since you often need 7 years of remaining supply chain guarantees after start of production). Another factor is that it simply takes time to validate nodes. Automotive nodes trail general use nodes; SEU data takes a few years to gather. Even for non-embedded-flash parts, this can cause a similar delay.

As an example, the TI Hercules is an old but by no means obsolete safety processor. It's one of the best ways to get single-core lockstep capabilities for new designs today. The original TMS570LS parts are still built on a 130 nm process, but the "newer" (not new, but also newest) TMS570LC parts are on 65 nm.

These days most of my work hours are focused on the Aurix TC3xx, which is a 40 nm (tweaked 45 nm) part. This is a multi-core safety processor with an obviously higher transistor count than the Hercules (which is why it was selected for application), matching its smaller process.

Similarly in FPGA land, the Lattice MachXO is on an 130 nm process, while the newer MachXO2 migrated to 65 nm. I know Lattice does newer parts on 28 nm (and I'm sure there's 45 nm out there), but I haven't run into them.

Certainly for more density-heavy applications newer processes (28 nm, often) have come to the forefront, and we're at the point that we're seeing cost cuts going from 90 nm to 28 nm for equivalent functionality. But a lot of these designs are pin-out limited (the silicon area is dominated by getting signals on and off chip, not by the total area of transistors), so cost very much doesn't scale with transistor density; the cost per transistor has gone down, but the cost per unit area has gone up.

Re: TSMC tells vendors to delay chip equipment deliveries

#40
post #2

This makes absolutely no sense. A month ago the headline was "Apple buys every 3 nm chip that TSMC can make for next-gen iPhones and Macs" [1]. Six months ago it was a global chip shortage that had supply chains backed up around the planet. And now it's suddenly "the world's top contract chipmaker grows increasingly nervous about customer demand"? In the middle of a revolution in AI? Something doesn't add up here. ht…

> Six months ago it was a global chip shortage that had supply chains backed up around the planet. chip != chip. TSMC manufactures hundreds of products, check out slide 4 of the last quarterly results [1]. "AI" (on 5nm or below) is currently only a smaller share of total capacity. 7nm was only around 50% utilization, compared to 110% a year ago. The recent chip shortage was mostly from 28nm or above. Think automotive…

But in 2020/2021 we had a chip shortage on 8nm. Of course demand stopped in end 2022/early 2023. of course it was because crypto got corrected downwards. You can clearly see that in the slides
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