>> What is also missing in the report is that TSMC 3nm also performs better.
Was recently reading some non-authoritative news that TSMC is also having yield issues on their 3nm. From the sound of it probably not as bad as Samsung. Taken together this doesn't look good for Intel's optimism toward catching up in just a few years.
Which is why those news are clickbait title. For a node that is expected to enter volume production by the end of 2022 / early 2023, having yield issue in Q1 2022 is completely normal. Compared to Samsung which is still having yield issues now on their current 5nm / 4nm node.
It can’t come soon enough after rounds of terrible Samsung fab results. Their latest and greatest node is still somewhere around TSMC 7nm or intel 10nm, but with worse performance characteristics and current leakage.
These are likely only around 80-100mm^2 (likely because it’s impossible to find die size numbers for recent snapdragon processors — reviewers need to solve this).
Abysmal would be damning their process with faint praise. I wonder if Samsung is even turning a profit or just trying to offset losses.
This has been the case for sometime, I pointed it out way back in 2017 on SemiWiki. They are fine on mature node though, this is only a problem on leading edge.
But credit where credit are due, Samsung didn't give up. Leading edge is hard, and that is saying the least. If you have been wondering where those Samsung NAND and DRAM profits gone, Foundry services. And if you have been asking why TSMC just doesn't hike price. Samsung has been keeping them at bay some what. And if you think TSMC is a monopoly and has no competition. You should spend a weekend doing more reading on Semi-Conductor industry.
Phones with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 with the referenced 35% yield are launching this month (Samsung S22 is being delivered to preorders this week), so SS must have churned out quite a few wasted chips to meet the launch.
There is a positive feedback loop in fab progress: the more customers you have the more yield experiments you can do, the better the yields get, the more customers you get. This explains why the number of leading edge fabs is decreasing, ending up with a monopoly:
The Chinese government wants it to happen and probably can make it happen, but it will not be easy. China would have to take the island by force and an amphibious invasion is logistically difficult and almost certain to face heavy casualties on both sides.
US and the west place a lot of strategic importance in Taiwan so they may come to the defense, but it is unlikely to be defendable for long.
We are seemingly moving towards another Cold War: China and Russia vs US and NATO.
The equipment they need to manufacture the latest chips is made by a Dutch company. The US has convinced the Dutch government to ban the export of that equipment to China. If China managed to gain control of TSMC they would loose access to that equipment.
Plus the US can trivially exfiltrate all the IP related to TSMC before China properly takes the island. Insiders will happily turn it over for any number of reasons.
The next step if China were to move on Taiwan, other than getting all the data and IP from TSMC's internal networks, would be to spin up a US division and assign that IP to that new corporation. And then the US should try to get as many of TSMC's employees to the US that they can.
The US didn't just convince them to, the US was a big part of the development of technology with a government/industry consortium in the late 90s (EUV LLC) with DARPA being a big part. That partnership worked with ASML under terms that are now letting the US have a big say in export controls.
Not gonna happen. Tibet will get lots of freedom fighters courtesy of Uncle Sam and Aunty Indira. Same will happen at Xinjiang with groomed mujahideen fresh from Middle East plus American weaponry courtesy of free gift left in Afghan. China now is riped for breakage as inscribe in 5000 years of belief. One of American strategy to reduce China dominance is to accelerate breakage to 7 pieces (Xinjiang, Tibet, HK, North China, South China, Inner Mongolia and Heilonjiang). Attack on Taiwan, will have all the CCP children in America under internment similar to American Japanese during WW2. Would any parents able to meekly ignore that? Kill the emperor and save your children is a persuasive slogan. An economic blockade on the sea front and devastating India recovery of the western Aksai with Heilongjiang getting eyed upon by Putin while Japanese reconsider Manchuria. Most Chinese soldiers now are product of 1 child policy with very weak will to fight. Furthermore a breakage of world biggest dam would enough to wipe off 1/4 of Chinese capability on political and economic front. And remember the last few years strange prophecies happening in China. One notable one is June snowing in Beijing. Pandemic occuring in China history also signaling a change of dynasty. All in all, it is extremely unfavorable for Chinese to do a Putin Ukraine invasion. Putin is incredibly bright. You can go watch some of Putin's speeches on Youtube. Current Chinese leader is widelynknown on China to be not that well educated (due to Cultural Revolution) and lack eloquence. In short, attempt to take back Taiwan by force will end the China that we know now. People will care more about GPUs and CPU than the lives and prides of Chinese people.
Russia tried joining NATO multiple times and was rebuffed - this is entirely on the west. Obviously China is the new global rival to be concerned about, not Russia.
It does not seem unusual that an organization (NATO) created solely to defend/protect against one particular country would not allow that country to join forces with them.
If the German successor state to the Third Reich could join the western alliance after WW2, why can't the successor state to the Soviet Union join? Russia as a white-majority christian country shares many values and culture with the others.
The western alliance has not only rebuffed Russia, it has expanded eastwards against promises made and thus provoked the current situation in Ukraine.
What would the US do if the soviets were to expand into Mexiko? Or... Cuba? We know how that went. If the mission of NATO was to secure peace, why would they reject Russia? It makes no sense from that perspective.
The answer is that there are other reasons NATO exists and what it is being used for.
> The western alliance has not only rebuffed Russia, it has expanded eastwards against promises made and thus provoked the current situation in Ukraine.
Every country is free to join NATO if they want, Russia has no say in it. And the reason why most Russia neighbors want to is because Russia is a bully, and NATO can protect them from being bullied.
> What would the US do if the soviets were to expand into Mexiko? Or... Cuba? We know how that went.
Well, for one the US did not attack Cuba... Also, Soviet Union was aggressor side for the whole duration of Cold War, that move was just prelude to further aggression against the West.
> If the mission of NATO was to secure peace, why would they reject Russia
Because the best way to secure peace is to keep Russia at bay.
> Russia as a white-majority christian country shares many values and culture with the others.
LOL, no. Russia does not share western values, such as democracy, freedom of speech or other human rights. They do not belong in Europe, they belong in Asia.
I think there was more of a "break" in the decades since with Germany and Nazism, where in Russia, there wasn't as much of a break from the old Soviet systems and ways of thinking. Many years ago, I read this book, "The Limits of Partnership" by Angela Stent, one of the foremost US-Russia relations experts. She lays out in detail how an entire generation of Russians came up believing that the Soviet Union collapsed almost solely due to outside influence -- i.e. the United States -- and that it otherwise would not have failed without that undue influence. They want to see Russia restored to its former Soviet-era glory, encompassing all of its former territories. This is how pretty much the entire leadership in Russia thinks/believes. Putin 100% feels this way.
"If a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government. There’s so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.”
-- Robert Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
I read somewhere a long time ago (so I could be wrong.) The origin of Switzerland happened when the bully state later joined the alliance that was explicitly formed to fight against it.
There's a very straight-forward solution to the threat, which if the US Government were smart it would be pursuing asap.
First, we have TSMC working on building in the US, that should be continued and accelerated if possible.
Second, work with Taiwan to force TSMC to split itself into a US and Taiwan division. The US division will be granted all the same intellectual property and will be IPO'd (with TSMC retaining a super majority ownership position; if China ever gets ahold of TSMC, we'd simply force the parent to sell its majority ownership position on national security grounds). But how will Taiwan force that outcome on TSMC? Nation states have fun ways to make things like that happen when it comes to their domestic corporations. But why would Taiwan do that? The same reason they're getting TSMC to build fabs in the US (which is a political move): because we're asking nicely and the US is the only thing keeping Taiwan an independent liberal democracy. TSMC is so big and strategically important, they're a political entity as far as Taiwan is concerned, they're even more outsized vs Taiwan than Samsung is vs South Korea.
it's enough for a government to say it won't buy chips manufactured abroad and presto, you have TSMC fabs being built on US ground as we speak; EU is close behind.
Carrots and a lot of stick got TSMC to open a small fab in the US for sensitive supply chains. JP and EU are getting similarly marginal expansion. Reality is significant high-value strategic production will stay on the island in short/medium term because TSMC/TW will fight tooth and nail to prevent erosion of their silicon shield. There's no presto, everyone knows banning TSMC chips would kill trillions of western high tech industries.
If the invasion comes, it will come because China will think it will succeed. And if it looks like it's going to succeed, why blow your own factories? After the war, you will have to return to ordinary life, and hopefully a job. Blowing away your own factories, to spite your enemies doesn't make sense. Sure you deny China access yo them. But you deprive your people who will have to live after the war there even more.
More likely scenario is that US is going to try to get them blown up (probably not directly)
Perhaps. I agree that scuttling the factory wouldn't entirely deter China from attacking Taiwan, but it would definitely dent the value prospect of doing so. TSMC under Chinese ownership would be a remarkably powerful bartering chip (companies spend billions just getting their foot in the door around there), so I could really see it going either way. I know people from Taiwan, their general consensus is that under Chinese rule there would be no "ordinary life", and their goal is to make China respect their independence to the bitter end. There's definitely insufficient economic motive here, but the politics of the matter run much deeper than that.
Depends on how critical TSMC will remain, there's also chance US will have to work with PRC to ensure production continuity. IMO preserving fabs as leverage is probably top priority for all parties concerned, no one gains from it's destruction. The scenario where US controls inputs, PRC controls fabs, TW controls production is still preferable to scenario where destroyed fabs grinds advanced industries around world (mostly in the west) to a crawl.
You think ASML wants to run afoul with the US, even if they can't force ASML? The main reason ASML has EUV is because it was funded by the US government to develop it. Now the tech is mostly ASMLs own, but they still have close ties to the US.
USA didn't have to force ASML to stop selling to China, they just had to ask them nicely.
> The main reason ASML has EUV is because it was funded by the US government to develop it
That seems like 20% true. The US had a brief EUV program ("EUV LLC") in the late 90s - it wasn't much compared to how much difficult, risky, and expensive development obviously still needed to be done afterwards. The EU also has basic semiconductor research, notably IMEC.
I have also seen that claim in a YouTube video by "Asianometry" and I wonder what the original source of that apparent misinformation is.
The company (originally named ASM Lithography, current name ASML, which is an official name and not an abbreviation)[10] was founded in 1984 as a joint venture between the Dutch companies Advanced Semiconductor Materials International (ASMI) and Philips.
The core ASML EUV technology is from their US subsidiary Cymer. All that IP is domiciled in the US. In addition, most of the critical semiconductor components throughout the scanner (FPGA, high performance analog, etc) come from American companies
If I recall properly, and if I trust what I read/viewed from the internet ages ago, EUV optics is from Germany (zeiss), and the EUV light is from cymer. cymer almost lost their part because they had been unable to deliver enough EUV light power for too long (in the end, it seems they shine their massive CO2 laser on a tin droplet, 2 times instead of one and yield enough power). mask/wafer alignment equipment, dunno where they are from (nanometric piezo-electric motors, with probably laser interferometer). Then, at the time everything was run in extreme vaccum, but heard something about hydrogen gas.
It's the Cold War and national security is at stake, you're not going far enough.
Think back to what went on from 1950-1990 in Europe and Asia, except it'll be even worse.
Blocking Nordstream 2 is the very bottom of the barrel compared to what's coming.
After a brief slumber the Russian Empire has awoken again in Europe and it's annexing territory (again). The Dutch would be foolish to spar with the US over ASML at this juncture. Dealing with Russia in Europe and China in Asia will take a concerted front by the US, Europe and their allies.
remember the Russian Empire has an economy the size of Italy. it does a lot of posturing and no doubt it can cause a worldwide mess if it stops exporting energy, but they're an empire in name only.
> remember the Russian Empire has an economy the size of Italy.
And a nuclear arsenal roughly the size of the second through fifth largest in the world, combined, and an inventory of main battle tanks roughly equal, quantitatively, to the second through fourth largest in the world, combined, etc.
When a country has outsized relative military capacity vs. relative economic capacity, especially when compared to their immediate neighbors, there is a very strong historical pattern of use or threat of use of the military capacity as a lever to achieve economic and/or territorial aspirations.
It can fail (while there can be a lag time, economic power is eventually transformable into military capacity), but it isn't unusual for it to succeed, or for the eventual failure to be at the end of a long and bloody conflict.
I would imagine there would at least be a sharp decrease in yield rates. Hard to imagine all those Taiwanese TSMC workers working hard to ensure the technological dominance of mainland China.
There's a reason PRC has much more success poaching TSMC employees than US trying to fill up new fabs. Why TW has drafted laws to prevent TW semiconductor talent from working on mainland. Generally TWers prefer working in PRC, with comparable language / culture. Great compensation and quick flight home. Reality is most of TSMC employees will been prevented from being paperclipped to the US in event of war, their future will be firmly tied to PRC and as significant assets, they'll be treated with more carrots than sticks.
Don’t worry, Intel is expanding foundry capacity for this case. Apple SoC will stay on the same node for couple years, but that’s not an end of the world for consumers.
TSMC also has the WaferTech fab in the US and is currently building fabs in the US and Japan. I imagine geopolitical diversity is one goal in the placement of those new fabs.
But it'd still lead to a massive global chip shortage if TSMC's facilities in Taiwan were wiped out. And I guess that is a deterrent that Taiwan can use against China.
