I'm confused about the iPhone 18 part; I assume that it would just be one of their usual processes, possibly with a few tweaks.
TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process
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Re: TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just knowing how the thing is built doesn't seem to be enough. Comac still sources its jet engines from Pratt and Whitney for instance, despite many years of trying no local manufacturer has been able to build them to the same spec.
Are P&W and Rolls Royce the only companies in the world capable of manufacturing high-end jet engines end-to-end?
They don't make them end to end either. Their jet engines are made up of parts supplied by thousands of suppliers.
Re: TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
I question your EV take. Tesla proved a business model, the technology and path from niche sports car to the best selling car on earth, and now on to the lowest cost per mile robotaxi. Simply knowing that a solution exists and is financially viable, is enough to motivate the competition.
>Tesla proved a business model Through almost all of Tesla's existence, its business model was ironically the sale of gasoline vehicles. Because, of course, Tesla's entire business model relied upon selling green credits to incumbent ICE vehicle makers. So it didn't really prove much of a business model, effectively being parasitic. >the technology and path from niche sports car to the best selling car on earth, The…
> The overwhelming bulk of the technology advancements that enable modern EVs -- from advances in batteries to cameras to sensors to embedded controllers and CPUs -- is thanks to the smartphone industry.
Would you point me to a source where I can read about this?
Re: TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just knowing how the thing is built doesn't seem to be enough. Comac still sources its jet engines from Pratt and Whitney for instance, despite many years of trying no local manufacturer has been able to build them to the same spec.
Which Comac? I thought they all used GE (CFM for Comac 919) or Russian/Chinese sourced engines.
That's the OP's point: COMAC is using CFM LEAP 1-C engines on the C919.
To be fair, they have taken the effort to build the CJ 1000A engine - which is on wing testing should the tangerine fellow cut them off. But its Plan B at best.
Re: TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process
#135Could someone help contextualize what parts of this manufacturing process are considered the most important and closely guarded trade secrets? I'd love to hear some slightly more concrete examples. How easily could another company replicate this process if they knew all the key details? It was my understanding that access to photolithography machines was one of the major obstacles in replicating chip manufacturing pr…
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Re: TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process
#136Right before I left Samsung Austin Semiconductor (Samsung’s fab in the U.S.), in 2019, they were phasing out local share drives in favor of a self-hosted cloud that Samsung created. The supposed reason was better security, though it’s unclear to me why they couldn’t globally apply whatever rules they wanted to enforce to all office locations, instead of forcing everyone to use a remote endpoint. The throughput was ab…
It is great that particular tools enable employees automate stuff and make their work more effective. From developer point of view I see that the effort would most certainly be diverted in another kind of solution. But yeah, "citizen developer" stuff is a thing that microsoft pushes especially in Power Platform / Canvas Apps - one programs with WYSIWIG and Excel-like formulas (PowerFX) But then again I wonder who are…
I'm sure the free GUI is the gateway drug, but at this point practically everybody in finance uses Excel. You can pass files and scripts around and be pretty confident that the external auditor will be able to use them.
Re: TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
This abuse of Excel might be in the running for a new form of esports.
It's always worth remembering there's exactly one reason Excel is abused -- IT isn't giving "non-developers" access to tools they need to automate their work.
Bingo. Working in an automotive OEM the entire company works on excel specifically excel vb scripts. No one knows why and no one has figured out how we got here. But it’s slow and steady abuse excel.
Re: TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process
#138How big are all of the design files for a modern chip? 10MB? 100gig? Billions of transistors, but surely a lot of compressible redundancy. Not that I think you can just plug in a thumb drive and download as you please, but just a sense of scale on how much data describes the design.
> Not that I think you can just plug in a thumb drive and download as you please
Why not? It's just data, and a thumb drive stores data. As long as it fits.
Re: TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process
#139How big are all of the design files for a modern chip? 10MB? 100gig? Billions of transistors, but surely a lot of compressible redundancy. Not that I think you can just plug in a thumb drive and download as you please, but just a sense of scale on how much data describes the design.
> Not that I think you can just plug in a thumb drive and download as you please Why not? It's just data, and a thumb drive stores data. As long as it fits.
I meant that plugging in a thumb drive and downloading the company jewels is sure to be noticed. I was hoping for something a tad more clandestine. USB storage devices on my corporate laptop are auto mounted as read only and need policy exceptions to be able to write.
Re: TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process
#140Right before I left Samsung Austin Semiconductor (Samsung’s fab in the U.S.), in 2019, they were phasing out local share drives in favor of a self-hosted cloud that Samsung created. The supposed reason was better security, though it’s unclear to me why they couldn’t globally apply whatever rules they wanted to enforce to all office locations, instead of forcing everyone to use a remote endpoint. The throughput was ab…
> it’s unclear to me why they couldn’t globally apply whatever rules they wanted to enforce to all office locations, instead of forcing everyone to use a remote endpoint
My guess is that they're worried that you'll download data and then copy it out of the device while the device is offline. An employee could even "lose" the device, giving an attacker unbound time to extract data from it.
Another equally likely explanation is that the exec in charge of their cloud services gains more prestige due to his solution being universally adopted internally, or some other crap along this line.