Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, it means there will be even worse touchscreens because now automakers can't afford silicon that might actually power a tablet.
How can they not afford a 300 dollar tablet in a 40k dollar car?
[deleted]
TSMC to customers: It's time to stop using older nodes and move to 28nm
61–70 of 81 posts
Re: TSMC to customers: It's time to stop using older nodes and move to 28nm
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems like the automotive industry is gonna be the one to have to blink here. I’m not intimately involved in the details of the industry but didn’t the automotive industry already try to pass their risk onto TSMC by cancelling contracts early on into covid and we’re already told to get to the back of the line when they wanted their chip orders again? If TSMC has enough demand to sell everything they make, they don’t…
What does blink mean? Does your chips work when it is -70c - cars are used in arctic environments and so automakers have special tests to ensure they work in cold temperatures most of us will never see. Do you chips work when it is +65c - the inside of a parked car will get that hot, and the car is expected to work. How long will you keep the new chips in production - the longer the better we need to provide spare pa…
I think OP is saying that TSMC is saying “Okay auto manufacturers, we don’t want to manufacture chips that meet all of your requirements when we have so much order volume, so you’ll have to drop the requirements or find a different fab.” So the auto industry making their own fabs is exactly what TSMC wants them to do.
Re: TSMC to customers: It's time to stop using older nodes and move to 28nm
#63Dumb 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?
For memory, you always need to redesign the part.
Memory is a delicate balance between "we need to store the data strongly" and "we need to write the data quickly" and "make it small".
Memory is one of the things that fell off of Moore's Law quite a while ago.
Re: TSMC to customers: It's time to stop using older nodes and move to 28nm
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems like the automotive industry is gonna be the one to have to blink here. I’m not intimately involved in the details of the industry but didn’t the automotive industry already try to pass their risk onto TSMC by cancelling contracts early on into covid and we’re already told to get to the back of the line when they wanted their chip orders again? If TSMC has enough demand to sell everything they make, they don’t…
Doubtful the story you heard is correct. Too many mainstream articles on semiconductors are just vague, uncheckable facts combined with filler that seems to have been suggested by Intel's PR department, even when Intel is totally irrelevant. Intel needs delicious subsidies!
> Intel is totally irrelevant
Intel still has the fastest chip in the world with the i9-12900KS. They are also the second largest semiconductor company in the world by revenue, only just last year barely passed by Samsung. [1]
I know Intel is not hip, but to call them irrelevant is some serious reality distortion.
--
[1] https://www.eetasia.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/I...
Re: TSMC to customers: It's time to stop using older nodes and move to 28nm
#65Why don’t they find a way to move these workflows to developing economies who are trying to increase their exposure to chip manufacturing (eg india)?
Re: TSMC to customers: It's time to stop using older nodes and move to 28nm
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not an expert, but my layman's understanding is that the lower sizes and new production techniques decrease power consumption. The price of ongoing power consumption probably dwarfs the price of the chip itself in terms of cost of ownership in most cases. E.g. an i7 draws 65W at idle, or about 1.5kWh/day. That's ~$0.20/day where I live, about $6/month or $36/year. Max draw is ~4x that. I've probably paid more in…
E.g. an i7 draws 65W at idle, or about 1.5kWh/day I don't know which chip you're talking about but a 12900K idles at ten watts.
He is talking about an i7 on an older node, since he is comparing the lower production cost of older nodes with their higher usage cost (electricity). I don't know what intel generation would correspond to 32nm, but that was the node discussed.
Re: TSMC to customers: It's time to stop using older nodes and move to 28nm
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems like the automotive industry is gonna be the one to have to blink here. I’m not intimately involved in the details of the industry but didn’t the automotive industry already try to pass their risk onto TSMC by cancelling contracts early on into covid and we’re already told to get to the back of the line when they wanted their chip orders again? If TSMC has enough demand to sell everything they make, they don’t…
Legacy auto is screwed. They are getting smaller and have fixed costs and fixed cultures that are going to be hard to remove. At the same time this makes it hard to recruit the types of people you need to turn the ship around. This thread is a good example of the legacy auto mentality of blaming a supplier, instead of taking responsibility for the situation they are in.
This is about all auto. Or you thing that EV won't experience cold climate?
Re: TSMC to customers: It's time to stop using older nodes and move to 28nm
#68Dumb 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?
Neat trivia: Intel recently backported a microarchitecture to a bigger node to cope with fab issues at the time. The 11th gen "Rocket Lake" parts are a 14nm backport of the 10nm Ice Lake processors.
From what I understand, doing so was no small effort and is considered a strong triumph for the team that accomplished it.
Re: TSMC to customers: It's time to stop using older nodes and move to 28nm
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
What does blink mean? Does your chips work when it is -70c - cars are used in arctic environments and so automakers have special tests to ensure they work in cold temperatures most of us will never see. Do you chips work when it is +65c - the inside of a parked car will get that hot, and the car is expected to work. How long will you keep the new chips in production - the longer the better we need to provide spare pa…
I think OP is saying that TSMC is saying “Okay auto manufacturers, we don’t want to manufacture chips that meet all of your requirements when we have so much order volume, so you’ll have to drop the requirements or find a different fab.” So the auto industry making their own fabs is exactly what TSMC wants them to do.
And the automakers will likely balk at spending many dozens of billions of capital outside of their core competency.
Since all the other legacy fabs are also at capacity for the next few years.
Re: TSMC to customers: It's time to stop using older nodes and move to 28nm
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, it means there will be even worse touchscreens because now automakers can't afford silicon that might actually power a tablet.
How can they not afford a 300 dollar tablet in a 40k dollar car?
Because it becomes a $3000 tablet, in today's chip-shortage environment, to meet certification for automotive use.