
GlobalFoundries Stops All 7nm Development - jasondavies
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13277/globalfoundries-stops-all-7nm-development
======
sliken
Andy Grove gave a keynote at hot chips, I think around 1999. Back then, almost
everyone had a fab. Arm wasn't a big thing, the iphone didn't exist,
smartphone generally didn't exist, and many companies had fabs. ,

He basically outlined how each process shrink would allow more transistors,
but also get more expensive. His conclusion was that fewer fabs would use the
leading process in each generation and that costs would almost double for each
generation.

It wasn't a particular opinion at the time. Generally it was thought if you
were serious about making CPUs, that you would have your own fab.

Impressive how true his predictions were.

~~~
gwern
"Moore's Second Law" claims another victim, it seems.

~~~
gwern
For those curious about the origin, the earliest source I have on hand is
[https://www.gwern.net/docs/cs/2003-ross.pdf](https://www.gwern.net/docs/cs/2003-ross.pdf)
"5 Commandments [technology laws and rules of thumb]", Ross 2003, which
attributes it to Moore in the 1990s who attributes it to Arthur Rock at an
unspecified time:

> Sometimes Called Moore’s Second Law, because Moore first spoke of it
> publicly in the mid-1990s, we are calling it Rock’s Law because Moore
> himself attributes it to Arthur Rock, an early investor in Intel, who noted
> that the cost of semiconductor tools doubles every four years. By this
> logic, chip fabrication plants, or fabs, were supposed to cost $5 billion
> each by the late 1990s and $10 billion by now.

(I shamelessly call it Moore's second law to arrogate the prestige of the
first law into its invocation, and because it's hard for me to remember
'Rock's law' \- who's that? Plus it puts it in good company by making it an
instance of Stigler's Law, which was not first described by Stigler and thus
renders Stigler's law autological.)

~~~
Dylan16807
The difference between tool price doubling every time density doubles, and
tool price doubling every time density quadruples, is pretty vast. Even though
those two predictions resemble each other, I don't think it's fair to call
them the same thing.

------
jkabrg
Can someone explain how this works?

We've got the following chip companies: Intel, AMD, Samsung.

And we've got a bunch of "fab" companies: Intel, TSMC, Global Foundries,
Samsung.

What's the difference between the two sets of companies? Why can't Intel just
buy a "7nm" processor from TSMC?

And what exactly is "7nm"? The distance between the closest transistors in a
chip? Just guessing.

[edit]

From browsing Wikipedia, I gather that:

    
    
      - A chip company designs a processor. The design is in the form of a circuit diagram(?)
      - A fab company turns that diagram into a physical product.
    

So for example, ARM designs a chip, which then gets built by Samsung. ARM is
strictly responsible for design, and Samsung provides a factory.

~~~
rayiner
There is a little more complexity that bears on why companies like Intel would
have their own fab. In practice, a processor design isn’t just a circuit
diagram (or a netlist:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netlist](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netlist)).
A circuit diagram is an idealized model that hardware does not totally
reflect. For example, wires have capacitance and transistors leak current. In
fact the smaller the process node, the less the real circuits reflect
idealized circuits. High-performance designs thus are tuned for the specific
properties of the process.

Historically, Intel has not only led in process technology, but has reaped
benefits from having the process engineers next door to the processor
designers. Intel CPUs have been tuned for the exact process that will be used
to make them, including by laying out transistors by hand to maximize
performance.

Custom design happens with foundaries as well, of course, but there have
historically been synergies from putting processor design and process design
under the same roof.

~~~
dnautics
I have heard the argument? Rumors? that Intel has suffered from the closeness
of the chip designers to the process engineers... for a long time if the
process is not robust, the designers could workaround, but that made it hard
for non-in-house designers to develop. The need for robustness has forced a
discipline in the tsmc process engineers to be more disciplined, which scales
well downward.

------
martinpw
I'm reminded of the chart in this article showing the number of leading edge
foundries dropping with every generation:

[https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/240901-tsmc-announces-
pl...](https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/240901-tsmc-announces-plans-
new-16-billion-foundry-push-envelope-5nm-3nm-process-nodes)

and now one more step down.

(As explained in the article, GF is not in the righmost box because they were
not yet on the leading process when the chart was made).

------
noobermin
>Along with the cancellation of the 7LP, GlobalFoundries essentially canned
all pathfinding and research operations for 5 nm and 3 nm nodes.

Is it just me or does this seem like a drastically bad move for the long term?

~~~
sliken
Each generation of fab is significantly more expensive than the last. Pushing
the edge of physics is expensive. Transistors are so small these days they
can't use the normal light frequencies any more. Things like precisely
focusing light gets trickier when extreme frequencies are used.

The result is you have to almost double your volume with each generation, as a
result there are less and less fabs running the current process. Makes AMD
decision to split off Global Foundries look pretty good in hindsight.

Even those companies with the leading process make a substantial number of
chips on older process. So the bleeding edge CPU gets the latest greatest, but
the chipset, flash chips, and memory chips are often a generation or more
behind.

Seems realistic that if you are behind and don't have a huge customer (like
apple or nvidia) lined up that you just save a few $billion and let TMSC have
it. TMSC will of course charge more without competition, and make chips using
TMSC less competitive. If Samsung can't compete with TMSC (which remains to be
seen) TMSC might well delay future shrinks.

The market loves Moore's law, but the stress is really starting to show.
Physics is starting to interfere with what the market wants. Things like CPU
clock speeds stagnating, power per chip doubling for the first time in the
newest generation, and of course the ever lengthening product cycles.

It does make you wonder when AMD and Intel double the normal CPU socket from
95 watts to 180 watts or so. What are they going to do for the next
generation?

~~~
sigstoat
> It does make you wonder when AMD and Intel double the normal CPU socket from
> 95 watts to 180 watts or so.

could they, and still expect to sell? it seems hard to tell the data center
and supercomputing customers that they're going to have install massively more
cooling capacity.

~~~
wmf
ThreadRipper 2 is 250W and I don't see people complaining, so I wouldn't be at
all surprised if K SKUs move up to higher TDP.

In servers it's already rumored that Intel will increase TDP to ~300W per
socket. This doesn't require more cooling per se, you just fit fewer sockets
into the data center.

------
moeadham
This is the type of news that will be relevant in 20 years.

There are only 3 foundries left: Intel, TSMC and Samsung.

If (when) Intel gives up, none of them will have strong roots in the USA. One
of the biggest shifts in technological expertise from West to East in history.

~~~
Kadin
Doesn't seem to be obvious that Intel will blink first, before Samsung.

Intel might start making noises to try and get government subsidization
though, and I would expect Samsung to do the same to the Korean government.

Having a up-to-date fab is pretty clearly a national security asset, else you
are at the mercy of whoever you are buying silicon from. Maybe in the 90s or
early 00s when everyone was on the globalization train we would have just let
things go, but it's hard to imagine that happening now that hardball
realpolitik is back in fashion.

~~~
moeadham
Government intervention obviously changes the dynamics, but Intel is seriously
falling behind in low-power.

Do you see any indication they will be able to take on a majority marketshare
in mobile in the next decade?

~~~
giobox
The only chance of this happening realistically is if Intel decide to open
their fabs to let others produce their own CPU designs in Intel factories. For
example, instead of Apple going to TSMC for their next gen ARM design, Intel
decide to do a deal to win that business and produce iPhone CPUs in their
fabs. Intel I believe still holds an ARM license from the XScale days, so I
suppose an in house design for Android devices could work too.

Historically Intel has been hugely reluctant to do this, as part of the deal
when buying Intel chips was that to get access to their advanced fabrication
you have to buy their own high margin chip designs. Building other people's
chips is traditionally a much smaller margin business, and would be an
enormous change to Intel's business model.

I could still see this happening, especially with the current outlook for
Intel not looking as rosy as it once was, but it would be a major loss of face
for the company that once ruled strong on x86.

The fact that Intel effectively have no market share in the hottest consumer
computing market in history (smartphones) is a major failing on Intel's part.
Intel selling their ARM business (XScale) to Marvell the year before the first
iPhone launched increasingly looks like a pretty terrible decision in
hindsight.

~~~
gsnedders
> The only chance of this happening realistically is if Intel decide to open
> their fabs to let others produce their own CPU designs in Intel factories.

Intel Custom Foundry has been a thing since 2010.

That said, it's incredibly low volume compared with the competition.

~~~
kingosticks
Intel Custom Foundry historically has not offered the same tech as their
internal CPU foundry. Last time we engaged with them their IP offering
(memories, serdes etc) was very uncompetitive. It's possible that's now
changing but if you are wondering why it's been low volume, that's why.

------
baybal2
What unusual thing was happening as of recently, is that legacy processes up
to 90nm began "coming back back from the dead," because the bleeding edge
became so "congested" by very few behemoth consumers with exclusive deals with
fabs: GPUs, top tier phone SoCs, and high end network switch chips.

On my memory, 65nm was the last process on which a "cookie cutter SoC" was
still a good business. But with more opportunities coming up in "niche
microcontroller" market today, thanks to boom in "smart things," a generic
cheap low power process might too become a viable business again.

GloFo might have just noticed that, and are trying to capitalise by being
first in the new niche: tier 1 fab service on cost optimised legacy process.

They were already the biggest fab for companies to whom always getting the
best process is not raison d'etre, who can't afford gigantic MOQs of last gen
processes.

So they were picking up whomever TSMC was losing due to MOQs, and lack of
first class treatment. TSMC was too greedy putting so much focus on work with
tier 1 superplayers.

Question thought, what will this mean for their no. 1 customer...? Though they
announced them moving to TSMC, their 7nm might still not materialise for quite
some time, and they still have to make their low end chip tapeouts somewhere.

------
deepnotderp
So basically a monopoly for TSMC.

Intel is in serious trouble.

Samsung is still developing their photoresist.

And TSMC is shipping.

~~~
Tuna-Fish
There was an interesting slide from a few years back that showed the net
profit (less investment) of all the leading edge contract foundries since the
founding of TSMC. It was very easy to see that since then, TSMC has earned
more than the total net profit of the industry. Everyone else invests a lot of
money to maybe stay somewhat competitive and still lose money, while TSMC is
swimming in it.

This is just situation normal.

Sadly I could not find the slide online.

~~~
tanilama
Doesn't surprise me a bit, TSMC is notoriously for overworking and their pay
to the employees, while great by local standard, is like a bargain in US

------
lettergram
Hmm that doesn't seem great for AMD, but I don't really know - anyone else?

~~~
philjohn
It's actually great news for AMD. Due to the terms of the spinoff of GloFo,
AMD had minimum order volumes they HAD to send their way, and that caused
issues when they were ramping up Ryzen, causing GloFo to have to license the
Samsung process so they could keep their end of the bargain up.

This frees AMD to go exclusively with TSMC, or split their fab needs between
Samsung and TSMC.

~~~
dogma1138
No it doesn’t the WAS still stands which is OK as AMD likely will have enough
14nm parts to go until 2020.

~~~
philjohn
GloFo have said (as part of this move) they'll be renegotiating the WAS.

------
kragen
AFAICT this means TSMC has no competition for 7nm for their fabless customers,
which means they have no incentive to invest in getting to the next process
node — their customers' BATNA is now "spend several billion dollars building
your own <7nm fab." So I think this is the end of Moore's law for everyone
except possibly Intel and Samsung.

~~~
AgentOrange1234
They need their customers to be competitive with their competitors, right? If
Intel and Samsung by are still in the game, then AMD and Apple can only
survive if TSMC remains competitive?

~~~
kragen
That's sort of AMD and Apple's problem, not TSMC's. You can't expect TSMC
executives to risk TSMC's future by building a multibillion-dollar 5nm fab,
which may fail, when there are plenty of other customers out there for their
unique (?) 7nm process, on the theory that not moving to 5nm would be bad for
the overall health of the semiconductor industry.

------
eganist
This explains the sudden correction AMD saw mid-rally today.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=NASDAQ:AMD](https://www.google.com/search?q=NASDAQ:AMD)

The impact of the TSMC monopoly on 7nm might not have been fully priced in
quite yet as I doubt everyone caught this bit of news.(Disclosure: I'm long
AMD)

Edit: Actually, this news broke embargo at 4pm eastern, no? The downswing took
place mid-day...

------
JoachimS
See also
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17851278](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17851278)

------
PoespasAR
That does not seem like a future proof strategy to me.

------
shmerl
What does it mean for AMD?

~~~
lower
They've already announced that they're moving production to TSMC.

[https://www.anandtech.com/show/13279/amd-to-fab-7nm-cpus-
gpu...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/13279/amd-to-fab-7nm-cpus-gpus-at-tsmc)

------
flyinglizard
What are the political implications of the entire world becoming so reliant on
TSMC, with nearly all of its manufacturing concentrated in Taiwan?

It's no secret China is eyeing semiconductor manufacturing as sort of a last
frontier they need to cross before they become a vertically integrated
powerhouse. If China took over Taiwan, and assumed influence over TSMC,
wouldn't this be a major achievement?

1\. Why aren't TSMC scattering their fabs across different continents - not
only for political, but also to protect against natural disasters etc?

2\. How much of the USA protection of Taiwan takes into account semiconductor
manufacturing?

~~~
radicaldreamer
Taking over Taiwan would be extremely tough. There are geographical challenges
which would be tough to work out and the population would be extremely
hostile. It would be impossible without a beach landing, which China doesn’t
have the right equipment or training for and it’s unclear how willing the PLA
would be to go along with it without a very good reason. Additionally, what’s
the last war China was involved in? The short lived 1970s invasion of Vietnam?
You can’t consider suppressing the tianammen protests anything similar to a
land invasion of Taiwan even without the US security guarantee and potential
nuclear umbrella coming into play. This scenario seems increasingly to be a
non-starter for a variety of reasons.

~~~
komali2
I've met and worked out with both Chinese and Taiwanese soldiers. This is a
single, unprofessional perspective but you might find it interesting.

Both countries do a sort of military training for their youth, but only Taiwan
(last I checked) does a year of required service. That said, there are almost
no actual combat vets in either country, and Taiwanese military service is
basically "sweep gravel, peon."

BUT! The Taiwanese will come with far greater discipline, based on my
experience in on-base gyms. Chinese soldiers spend their days derping around,
playing ping pong, occasionally running around a track. Some of them get sent
out to the fringes of the country to "suppress dissidents" but the majority
sit around twiddling their thumbs (information told to me by privates, so,
grain of salt).

Taiwanese soldiers, volunteer and conscripts, do seem to get a great deal more
actual military training, in terms of equipment and exercises. And, maybe
unrelated, but their general strength levels are way higher than their Chinese
counterparts (like I said, I hung out in their gyms).

In any case, an invasion of Taiwan would "fail" by most measures of military
success. China could probably nuke the island into Ash, or rain shells on it
until there was nobody left to surrender, but there is a highly volatile
generation or two growing into a distinctly "Taiwanese" identity. They were
political enough to take over their own parliament buildings, while being
supported by local businesses with food and water. My unprofessional opinion
is they sure as shit would be an aggressively horrifying guerrilla force,
especially because ~80% are already trained.

~~~
discordance
China is currently holding 1 million Uighers in 're-education' camps [0].

I think if China had the will, they could manage it.

0: [http://time.com/5366225/china-uighurs-detention-
report/](http://time.com/5366225/china-uighurs-detention-report/)

~~~
st26
But a smoking crater the shape of Taiwan is not that useful to China. A big
part of why they want Taiwan is for the businesses, which you don't really get
if you nuke the island from orbit.

