Discussion Leading Edge Foundry Node advances (TSMC, Samsung Foundry, Intel) - [2020 - 2025]

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DisEnchantment

Golden Member
Mar 3, 2017
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TSMC's N7 EUV is now in its second year of production and N5 is contributing to revenue for TSMC this quarter. N3 is scheduled for 2022 and I believe they have a good chance to reach that target.


N7 performance is more or less understood.


This year and next year TSMC is mainly increasing capacity to meet demands.

For Samsung the nodes are basically the same from 7LPP to 4 LPE, they just add incremental scaling boosters while the bulk of the tech is the same.

Samsung is already shipping 7LPP and will ship 6LPP in H2. Hopefully they fix any issues if at all.
They have two more intermediate nodes in between before going to 3GAE, most likely 5LPE will ship next year but for 4LPE it will probably be back to back with 3GAA since 3GAA is a parallel development with 7LPP enhancements.




Samsung's 3GAA will go for HVM in 2022 most likely, similar timeframe to TSMC's N3.
There are major differences in how the transistor will be fabricated due to the GAA but density for sure Samsung will be behind N3.
But there might be advantages for Samsung with regards to power and performance, so it may be better suited for some applications.
But for now we don't know how much of this is true and we can only rely on the marketing material.

This year there should be a lot more available wafers due to lack of demand from Smartphone vendors and increased capacity from TSMC and Samsung.
Lots of SoCs which dont need to be top end will be fabbed with N7 or 7LPP/6LPP instead of N5, so there will be lots of wafers around.

Most of the current 7nm designs are far from the advertized density from TSMC and Samsung. There is still potential for density increase compared to currently shipping products.
N5 is going to be the leading foundry node for the next couple of years.

For a lot of fabless companies out there, the processes and capacity available are quite good.

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FEEL FREE TO CREATE A NEW THREAD FOR 2025+ OUTLOOK, I WILL LINK IT HERE
 
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Doug S

Diamond Member
Feb 8, 2020
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With effectively unlimited capital for investment, they could realistically just go wide and build lots of even subpar machines, speed of production wise, to hit their desired throughput goals.

Sure for every one EUV scanner able to process 150 wph they could have 20 that process 7.5 wph. Unlimited capital doesn't change the laws of accounting, which mean that you now have 20 machines to amortize for the same output as TSMC amortizes 1. But its worse than that since the fab floor needs to be much larger not only to accommodate all the extra EUV machines but all the extra wafer handling equipment and various other bits that do the less heroic tasks like wafer washing, annealing and on and on.

What's the cost per wafer going to be with this fab that's an order of magnitude larger with a massive equipment budget (and plumbing, chemicals, ionized water, electricity, staffing) to reach the same amount as one "normal" sized TSMC fab? The chips from those wafers might be acceptable for AI since there seems to be unlimited money for that at the moment, but for smartphones? If you go from a $50 SoC to a $500 SoC you're kind of going to throw your BOM out of line lol
 
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soresu

Diamond Member
Dec 19, 2014
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The Chinese EUV is apparently using a different method of generating the EUV light. Less expensive, but also less efficient which is likely to make the power of the light source a real Achille's heel.
The Japanese announced a new optical system for EUV litho that increases efficiency by 10x by decreasing the number of mirrors and therefore wasted EUV light.


 

LightningZ71

Platinum Member
Mar 10, 2017
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Sure for every one EUV scanner able to process 150 wph they could have 20 that process 7.5 wph. Unlimited capital doesn't change the laws of accounting, which mean that you now have 20 machines to amortize for the same output as TSMC amortizes 1. But its worse than that since the fab floor needs to be much larger not only to accommodate all the extra EUV machines but all the extra wafer handling equipment and various other bits that do the less heroic tasks like wafer washing, annealing and on and on.

What's the cost per wafer going to be with this fab that's an order of magnitude larger with a massive equipment budget (and plumbing, chemicals, ionized water, electricity, staffing) to reach the same amount as one "normal" sized TSMC fab? The chips from those wafers might be acceptable for AI since there seems to be unlimited money for that at the moment, but for smartphones? If you go from a $50 SoC to a $500 SoC you're kind of going to throw your BOM out of line lol
You're talking like any of that really matters to a company/country that has massive area, resources, population and patience to muscle into markets that they do not currently control. They are actively doing exactly this with EVs, but are much farther along in the process. They inefficiently built subpar vehicles for years, learning from their mistakes and selling FAR below cost in markets all over the world. Now, they have so.e of the best EVs in the business and dominate that market in many countries.

Do NOT undersell the willingness of the Chinese to patiently dump huge amounts of capital into a business line to win it.
 
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moinmoin

Diamond Member
Jun 1, 2017
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Do NOT undersell the willingness of the Chinese to patiently dump huge amounts of capital into a business line to win it.
People seem very inpatient though in announcing China's arrival as an isolated competitor doing all alone what the world's whole semiconductor ecosystem built up so far. China may or may not get to that point eventually, but the way people gloss over the complexities involved and refer to all the necessary shortcuts suddenly being feasible, researched, developed and available just in time is just little more than high fantasy.
 

DavidC1

Golden Member
Dec 29, 2023
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Do NOT undersell the willingness of the Chinese to patiently dump huge amounts of capital into a business line to win it.
Search for "Chinese vehicle landfills" and "Chinese bike landfills".

It is thousands and thousands of off the lot brand new vehicles and tens and hundreds of thousands of brand new bicycles all sitting out to rot.

Why? Because the company gets more money if they "prove" they have production. And you probably heard of ghost metropolitan areas, where a city that can hold 2 million people are empty, to prop up construction numbers.

Yea... lithography machines being 1/10x the efficiency probably isn't that big of a hurdle for them.
 

Harry_Wild

Senior member
Dec 14, 2012
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Intel shares rise amid reported joint venture interest

TSMC pitched a deal to chipmakers Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA), AMD (NASDAQ:AMD), and Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO) over forming a joint venture to operate Intel’s foundry business in the U.S., Reuters reported on Wednesday, with Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) also being approached.

Shares in Intel rose by more than 5% in early U.S. trading.

Under the proposal, TSMC (NYSE:TSM) will operate Intel’s factories but will not own more than 50% of the JV, the Reuters report said, citing four sources with knowledge of the matter.

Talks are in an early stage after initial reports that the Trump administration approached TSMC to help rescue Intel (NASDAQ:INTC), which is struggling with weak sales and a loss-making foundry division. Intel was also seen earlier considering a spin-off of its foundry unit.

Any deal will still require approval from Trump, who has signaled discomfort with Intel’s U.S. factories being owned by a foreign entity. TSMC’s 50% stake would accommodate for this, with the remainder of the JV operators all being U.S.-based.
 

511

Golden Member
Jul 12, 2024
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Intel shares rise amid reported joint venture interest

TSMC pitched a deal to chipmakers Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA), AMD (NASDAQ:AMD), and Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO) over forming a joint venture to operate Intel’s foundry business in the U.S., Reuters reported on Wednesday, with Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) also being approached.

Shares in Intel rose by more than 5% in early U.S. trading.

Under the proposal, TSMC (NYSE:TSM) will operate Intel’s factories but will not own more than 50% of the JV, the Reuters report said, citing four sources with knowledge of the matter.

Talks are in an early stage after initial reports that the Trump administration approached TSMC to help rescue Intel (NASDAQ:INTC), which is struggling with weak sales and a loss-making foundry division. Intel was also seen earlier considering a spin-off of its foundry unit.

Any deal will still require approval from Trump, who has signaled discomfort with Intel’s U.S. factories being owned by a foreign entity. TSMC’s 50% stake would accommodate for this, with the remainder of the JV operators all being U.S.-based.
TSMC 50% Stake and Rest of company 50%.
Intel has less than 50% Stake it doesn't make sense.

I would call this pinnacle of idiocity
 
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soresu

Diamond Member
Dec 19, 2014
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TSMC 50% Stake and Rest of company 50%.
Intel has less than 50% Stake it doesn't make sense.

I would call this pinnacle of idiocity
You are making the assumption that Intel want to keep that financial responsibility.

While having their own fab was once the greatest advantage they had, it is increasingly becoming a stone around their neck threatening to drag them down.

Already their dependence on it cost them dearly as their future µArch designs were tied to 10nm+ nodes after Skylake causing them to become stagnant while AMD and TSMC passed them by on server CPUs and process nodes respectively.
 
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511

Golden Member
Jul 12, 2024
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You are making the assumption that Intel want to keep that financial responsibility.

While having their own fab was once the greatest advantage they had, it is increasingly becoming a stone around their neck threatening to drag them down.

Already their dependence on it cost them dearly as their future µArch designs were tied to 10nm+ nodes after Skylake causing them to become stagnant while AMD and TSMC passed them by on server CPUs and process nodes respectively.
It's just the board also this would be the most idiot move considering they have put so much into their fabs.
 

Doug S

Diamond Member
Feb 8, 2020
3,083
5,316
136
You're talking like any of that really matters to a company/country that has massive area, resources, population and patience to muscle into markets that they do not currently control. They are actively doing exactly this with EVs, but are much farther along in the process. They inefficiently built subpar vehicles for years, learning from their mistakes and selling FAR below cost in markets all over the world. Now, they have so.e of the best EVs in the business and dominate that market in many countries.

Do NOT undersell the willingness of the Chinese to patiently dump huge amounts of capital into a business line to win it.


Economics always matters. You think the Chinese government is going to subsidy Huawei making smartphone SoCs so they can export more products? They will happily subsidize things they consider of national security importance like defense related chips and AI, but they aren't going to massively subsidize trying to take share away from Qualcomm. Hurting them is hardly a national priority.
 

LightningZ71

Platinum Member
Mar 10, 2017
2,077
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Economics always matters. You think the Chinese government is going to subsidy Huawei making smartphone SoCs so they can export more products? They will happily subsidize things they consider of national security importance like defense related chips and AI, but they aren't going to massively subsidize trying to take share away from Qualcomm. Hurting them is hardly a national priority.
They would if they anticipate doing a thing in the near future that has a high probability of destroying the vast majority of the world's leading edge chip manufacturing capabilities. This thing is something that they have openly stated they want to be fully prepared to do by 2027.

If the world is left with a VERY unreliable Samsung, a volume limited Intel, and MAYBE a small fab in Japan, where do you think that the world will have to turn to to make all the high end things that they love? As it stands, BRICS represents over 25% of the planet's population and many high end chips are embargoed from them. There is absolutely demand for everything that they can make.

And none of that even takes into account the potential for hidden components for the purpose of espionage and cyber warfare.
 

Doug S

Diamond Member
Feb 8, 2020
3,083
5,316
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They would if they anticipate doing a thing in the near future that has a high probability of destroying the vast majority of the world's leading edge chip manufacturing capabilities. This thing is something that they have openly stated they want to be fully prepared to do by 2027.

Even if the west doesn't get involved in it they would sanction the crap out of China, so they wouldn't be selling any chips to the US or EU.
 
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