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TSMC to customers: It's time to stop using older nodes and move to 28nm

anandtech.com

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Re: TSMC to customers: It's time to stop using older nodes and move to 28nm

#11

Post by kurthr »

Thanks TSMC... when will you release a HV version of 28nm? Oh... never, because you transitioned to bottom poly at 40nm.

How is your automotive eFlash at 28nm... oh, you're still working on it (since 2018)?

Well, guess we won't have many display drivers (or displays) or autos then, or maybe marketing should pull their heads out and smell the roses.

I mean, I get it. Most things should transition to 28nm on 300mm wafers for process & equipment reasons, but in order to do that many of them need for the right process to exist, and the foundries are concentrated only on the latest nodes that make margin $$ so they don't develop critical features for even 28nm. Could your customers redesign their entire architecture and packaging? Yes, but it will take years to decades to prove reliability.

I'll note that Apple's rumored OLED on Si for MR/AR is likely on a giant 80-90nm process in 300mm at TSMC so for money and volume, they'll do most anything... even build capacity.

Re: TSMC to customers: It's time to stop using older nodes and move to 28nm

#12

Post by cumshitpiss »

tiffanyh wrote: post #9

Dumb question: if something is being manufactured on 60nm today, can you not just take the same design and start manufacturing it on 28nm? Or do you need to literally redesign the entire circuit?

No, you'd need to invest a lot of labor to port the design over. Factors like area, power, gate voltages can be completely different even between technologies on the same node (for example Global Foundaries 28nm is likely completely different than TSMC 28nm, aside from the feature size).

Re: TSMC to customers: It's time to stop using older nodes and move to 28nm

#13

Post by monocasa »

pbronez wrote: post #6

How hard is it to migrate a design from 40nm to 28nm? Can this be automated?

Depends on the design.

Did you throw RTL at a layout engine and let it figure it out? Pretty damn close to automated and could get to automated with a little upfront elbow grease by a company specializing in such things.

Heavy analog design? It's going to be a lot more work.

Re: TSMC to customers: It's time to stop using older nodes and move to 28nm

#14

Post by verall »

tiffanyh wrote: post #9

Dumb question: if something is being manufactured on 60nm today, can you not just take the same design and start manufacturing it on 28nm? Or do you need to literally redesign the entire circuit?

Chip designs have multiple layers of abstraction to represent a "circuit". Moving from 60nm to 28nm, your RTL is probably fine, but the physical layout will need some reworking as the transitors have different characteristics, SRAM different latencies, etc. It could be more cost effective to also rework some of your RTL, depending on your volume.

Re: TSMC to customers: It's time to stop using older nodes and move to 28nm

#15

Post by PaywallBuster »

hulitu wrote: post #2

Looks like TSMC is preparing its own grave. When everybody wants to invest in new foundries they are telling customer to go away.

They're the Apple of foundries.

They focus on high end high margin and segment their customers accordingly

Re: TSMC to customers: It's time to stop using older nodes and move to 28nm

#16

Post by Zenst »

pbronez wrote: post #8
Zenst wrote: post #5

Interesting as 28nm closing in on a decade of age - https://omdia.tech.informa.com/OM016176/28nm-to-be-a-long-li... But yes, many nodes are long lived. So the nodes they are nolonger expanding would of been around one heck of a time and can imagine the equipment to produce current output will have a repair/servicing cost as well as materials that are starting to make smaller nodes more cost effective for them as a ma…

I'm also interested in the migration costs. Perhaps there will be a market for a migration service... though the TAM on that is probably small enough that it can't support a product-first approach.

Yes it certainly does seem like an opertunity for a specialist company to offer a full service, but aspects like that would usualy be handled for node shrink in colaboration with the node provider. But one aspect will be say for example a microicontoller used for sensitive equipment, the level of certification and validation from goverment/mil certification down to Insurance certification (Lloyds of London have a lot of standard in many feilds that have to be ticked from my experience in the Oil industry alone) that can bury many a product. Heck even your CE/FTC certification is not cheap so any changes,such as node size will see that whole process repeated - hence not all chip makers rush for the latest and greatest node as existing work and proven. Equally some equipment may well see issues upon smaller nodes due to the enviromental factors and smaller nodes more susptable to thinks like radiation in which some exotic space particle would be smaller than the node at larger size but smaller may well start to become an issue. Hence many reasons for legacy nodes still in play and utilised.

May well end up in a decade or two in which suppliers end up having to use China or Russia for production as the only way to get access to the nodes they need, and not like things like that not happened before thinking of how NASA for a while was dependant upon old tried and tested Russian rockets for space launches. Just hope this is not a future problem that is allowed to creep up and hit us all.

Re: TSMC to customers: It's time to stop using older nodes and move to 28nm

#17

Post by kurthr »

tiffanyh wrote: post #9

Dumb question: if something is being manufactured on 60nm today, can you not just take the same design and start manufacturing it on 28nm? Or do you need to literally redesign the entire circuit?

You need to redesign the entire circuit. If it is completely standard digital (e.g. no RAM, no Flash, no 3V IO, no ESD structure), then you can likely port it without too much pain. However, you still have to change the entire package/bond pattern, and completely requalify the part with a customer who sees no advantage. Minimum port/design cost $1M and expect mask fees of at least $2M.

So at 30% margins on a $0.33 part, you can expect to break even 30M sales later!

Re: TSMC to customers: It's time to stop using older nodes and move to 28nm

#18

Post by akmittal »

monocasa wrote: post #3
hulitu wrote: post #2

Looks like TSMC is preparing its own grave. When everybody wants to invest in new foundries they are telling customer to go away.

There's not many investing in new >28nm foundries.

India is investing in 28-65nm https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/indias-semiconductor-mi...

Re: TSMC to customers: It's time to stop using older nodes and move to 28nm

#19

Post by jjoonathan »

Zenst wrote: post #5

Interesting as 28nm closing in on a decade of age - https://omdia.tech.informa.com/OM016176/28nm-to-be-a-long-li... But yes, many nodes are long lived. So the nodes they are nolonger expanding would of been around one heck of a time and can imagine the equipment to produce current output will have a repair/servicing cost as well as materials that are starting to make smaller nodes more cost effective for them as a ma…

> just running that on 28nm without any changes is not possible?

From what I understand, "node" in this context doesn't look like a printer resolution, it looks like a lego kit of transistors and such that TSMC has tuned to use the layer heights / counts / materials they plan to deposit. Since these details change between nodes, the 2D shapes aren't portable. You have to swap components.

Re: TSMC to customers: It's time to stop using older nodes and move to 28nm

#20

Post by variaga »

tiffanyh wrote: post #9

Dumb question: if something is being manufactured on 60nm today, can you not just take the same design and start manufacturing it on 28nm? Or do you need to literally redesign the entire circuit?

In almost all cases, switching processes means a complete redesign. 28nm vs 60nm isn't just "we can draw smaller parts now". Lots of other things (silicon doping levels, choice of metal for the routing layers, operating voltage levels, thickness of the insulating layers, ...) change too, requiring design changes to keep the old design working the same way it used to.

A very small set of processes allow one way reuse e.g. you can build a tsmc28hpm design directly in the tsmc28hpc process (but you can't build a 28hpc design in the 28hpm process) - but, for instance, neither of those is directly compatible with the tsmc28hpc+ (note the 'plus' in the name) process. And all 3 of those have the same feature size and are made by the same foundry.

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