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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

#4

Post by causi »

Which is to say that there isn't the profitability (or even the equipment) to build new capacity for such old nodes

I'm disappointed that nobody really bothers to work on the cost reduction side of older nodes. I kind of thought we could easily and cheaply turn out, say, 32nm chips by the million.

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

#5

Post by Zenst »

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 manufacturer and may well see legacy older nodes start becoming more expensive for suppliers to access moving forward. Which for some chips, may well prove less suitable or exsisting designs less accomodating to just shrink as from my understanding if you have a 40nm chip design, just running that on 28nm without any changes is not possible? Or certainly not as straight forward. Then there would be validation/testing for certification at the customer will need to do and for some chip nodes, that may prove more costly than sticking with the proven existing nodes.

So be interesting how this plays out, not aware of any real stickouts but mindful that for some companies using existing older nodes, things will not be as clear-cut as many will think.

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

#7

Post by Zenst »

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.

Russia and China may well be still developing fabs for such node sizes as they catchup.

EDIT ADD https://www.techspot.com/news/94233-russia-plans-manufacture... "Russia plans to manufacture chips locally on a 28 nm node by 2030" currently they are on 90nm

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

#8

Post by pbronez »

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.

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

#10

Post by lostmsu »

Zenst wrote: post #7
monocasa wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Russia and China may well be still developing fabs for such node sizes as they catchup. EDIT ADD https://www.techspot.com/news/94233-russia-plans-manufacture... "Russia plans to manufacture chips locally on a 28 nm node by 2030" currently they are on 90nm

If TSMC stops 28+ within a few years, nobody will need it by 2030 with such a huge gap in supply.
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