by KuiN on 6/29/22, 2:08 PM with 76 comments
by kurthr on 6/29/22, 3:13 PM
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.
by Zenst on 6/29/22, 3:03 PM
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.
by causi on 6/29/22, 2:58 PM
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.
by ksec on 6/30/22, 12:26 AM
There are things like PMICs that gets little to no benefits by moving to 28nm. I doubt that will happen. But there are also plenty of designs that are stuck using older mature node, that gets some benefits but has no financial incentive in doing so. Or will require some specialty nodes that is not on offer, which TSMC are currently working on. ( Compared to what comments here suggest they dont give a toss about it. )
So the whole thing is basically about balancing Fab capacity. And there is no better time to do it. You are either stuck waiting for capacity in a node or you move to 2xnm node where new GigaFab are being built and has much better capacity planning. Do you want your $thousands to even $million product to be on hold because of a ( what used to be ) $2 chip cant be Fabbed?
by lizardactivist on 6/29/22, 3:54 PM
by tiffanyh on 6/29/22, 3:07 PM
by Havoc on 6/30/22, 10:26 AM
by kylehotchkiss on 6/29/22, 10:58 PM
by pbronez on 6/29/22, 3:05 PM
by sitkack on 6/30/22, 10:28 AM
by hulitu on 6/29/22, 2:57 PM