> Today’s state-of-the-art is five-nanometre chips (though “5nm” no longer refers to the actual size of transistors as earlier generations did).
It's refreshing to see this mentioned. I'm no semiconductor expert, but it seems weird to me that although node size is measured in a physical unit, nanometers, it does not correspond to any real measurement that exists [1]. Each transistor in a 5nm chip is actually between 28 and 36 nanometers in width. It's called 5nm because of a theoretical calculation based on transistor density [2].
If Tesla advertised a new "200kWh" battery, I would be very disappointed if it turned out that the battery only held 95kWh, but the marketing department had decided that improvements in the charging network have made it "like 200kWh" compared to earlier models.
Interestingly, there is one dimension that still tracks the node number fairly closely.
In fact, the node number has never referred to transistor dimension, but the length of the gate electrode. A transistor would typically be about 4 times larger than that.
The reason to refer to the length of the gate electrode is because that was always the smallest feature printed on the chip. And that is what defined the required resolution of the lithography process.
So, a lithography process with a resolution of 32nm would be able to print chips with 32nm gate lengths.
Much has changed, and now transistors are no longer planar, they are 3-dimensional fin structures (FinFETs). The gate length scaling has slowed down, and now is not the smallest feature on the chip anymore.
The smallest feature in a modern FinFET process is actually the with of those 'fi s' that form the transistor channels.
And as if by magic, they correspond pretty well to the node names, i.e. a 5nm process will have a fin width of about 5nm.
You will likely not find that mentioned anywhere, it's just a fun fact that I noticed as a VLSI technologist.
The node size never referred to the actual size of the transistors. Back in the days when CMOS scaling was simple, it referred to the half-pitch, half of the center-to-center distance of the Metal 1 lines. The gate length was roughly the same, usually. But scaling had to be changed starting in roughly 2003 because atoms don't scale; the joke was that transistors were no longer switches, but just dimmers, because leakage was an increasing problem. Designs could no longer be simply scaled, producing a faster clock cycle for free; they had to be revised, and a FinFET looks very different from a traditional FET.
To make further progress designs had to be changed, and things have gotten fuzzier. Processes from different foundries have different densities. Intel's process for a given node is denser than that of the big foundries like TSMC.
On the plus side, MT/mm^2 seems to be gaining steam as a metric. It removes one dimension of cheating and has the whole "bigger is better" thing going for it.
Similar story with audio amplifiers and "Watts." Also, I think that small gas engines like lawnmowers went through some kind of scandal related to their horsepower ratings.
I thought the 5nm referred to the smallest dimension in a FinFet device. Specifically, the fin: "In theory, the finFET hits its limit when the fin width reaches 5nm, which is close to where it is today." [0]
I feel that stuff like this has a long history in engineering. It's like how TVs are in the 55 in "class", or a 2x4 is actually something like 1.75x3.5 now.
Funny, but Tesla actually stopped advertising battery sizes when the model 3 came out. It's actually a bit of work to find out (answer: 54 or 62 or 75 kWh)
> Each transistor in a 5nm chip is actually between 28 and 36 nanometers in width. It's called 5nm because of a theoretical calculation based on transistor density
So, TSMC is not really that far ahead after all? 28 nm is like a decade old now?
This sounds like women’s vanity sizing. Size 6 is now Size 0.
> But the logical endpoint of the relentless rise in manufacturing costs is that, at some point, one company, in all likelihood TSMC, could be the last advanced fab standing.
Most established, capital-intensive markets are winner-take-all, where a few big players control the bulk of the market. And they usually remain at the top of the market until some fundamental paradigm shift occurs that causes the market to shrink.
TSMC will be top dog for a while, until something happens that causes the market for custom made silicon to collapse. Just like Intel was top dog until something came along to replace the market for x86. Or like Microsoft was King Dingaling until people moved to mobile computing.
> TSMC will be top dog for a while, until something happens that causes the market for custom made silicon to collapse.
Contrary to many popular technological opinions, Moore's Law will be dead for a while. We're nearly at our physical limits. When this is ceiling is hit, we'll start seeing numerous more competition enter the fray. This is because the research part will be too large for one company to innovate itself out of (TSMC will be the first to hit the ceiling and the competition will reach the same ceiling in a short time. Together, they may advance our scientific understanding but I think governments would need to get aggressively involved). This is afundamental scientific limitation. There is no emerging research that will overcome this problem (zero theoretical research that can be used for engineering the manufacturing needed for the next advancements).
3D transistors are next but that's not growth at an exponential curve. We're looking at a linear growth future for a while.
P.S. I'm 33 and I expect within the next 6-15 years that we'll hit this limit and be at this limit for most of my working career unless we start seeing some seriously massive investment to unearth more advanced physics that we can implement at the pico-level. If you disagree, I'd love to hear what you think that will allow Moore to continue because I've read numerous studies and essentially all have zero tangible implementations.
This is too aggressive a take. Yes, TSMC is 50% of all EUV production right now. But it's only 50%. Samsung has huge resources and is on track to build a 3nm process by 2022/2023, which is not very far behind TSMC (though I don't know if their 3nm processes compare).
Besides just diversifying global chip production, Samsung has the (geopolitical) benefit of being in a country with large US bases and plenty of internal demand for their chips (if the Exynos designers can produce something exceptional).
Or a third party decides to enter the market and go for position number 2. Apple could probably do it with the cash they roll - but they don't want to do so. A country could. It sure seems like chips are important enough to warrant a national supply - so international pressures can't weigh on you politically through chip supply.
>"On january 13th Honda, a Japanese carmaker, said it had to shut its factory in Swindon, a town in southern England, for a while. Not because of Brexit, or workers sick with covid-19. The reason was a shortage of microchips. Other car firms are suffering, too. Volkswagen, which produces more vehicles than any other firm, has said it will make 100,000 fewer this quarter as a result. Like just about everything else these days—from banks to combine harvesters—cars cannot run without computers."
>"While car enthusiasts the world over are worried about assembly plant closures following the earthquake that ravaged Japan, many are still unaware of the significant role played by companies working at the start of the colossal logistical chain that results in the production of a vehicle.
Did you know that a single vehicle uses from 30 to over 100 chips
to control things like the parking brake, stereo, power steering and safety systems such as stability control? Development of these components is extremely complex, and only a handful of companies are able to meet the demands of the world’s automotive giants."
PDS: The world's automobile manufacturers, that is,
the world's carmakers --
would, or should have, a collective interest in IC/Chip fabrication -- especially in light of the most recent shortage...
According to the news sources I've been reading[0], this is a management failure by auto companies rather than some kind of structural issue with the chip industry. So it doesn't really make sense to me that automakers might build their own fab. They're the problem, not the fab. They're crying to the newspapers because it looks bad to admit they were cheap and will have to furlough workers. Politicians are playing along with the shortage angle, because when you save a worker's job they tend to vote for you. I predict the end result will be politicians spending taxpayer money to make filling these orders worth the fab's time.
>Mr Duesmann described the problems as “a crisis upon a crisis”. Demand for cars slumped for much of last year because of the coronavirus pandemic, prompting auto suppliers to cut their orders for the computer chips that manage everything from a car’s brakes and steering to its electric windows and distance sensors.
>But demand for cars jumped unexpectedly in the final three months of 2020, as buyers became more optimistic. Audi had its best quarter ever, largely because of a rebound in China.
You say that development of the chips in cars is extremely complex, but I was under the impression car chips are generally outdated, semi-rugged processors that might have some additional safety features like lockstep cores. The control systems algorithms for the functions you describe aren't particularly complicated as far as I know.
Auto manufacturers are infamous for cost cutting. I assume selling them chips is a low margin high volume business, in which case I would be glad to replace their orders with higher margin ones at the earliest opportunity.
>Did you know that a single vehicle uses from 30 to over 100 chips
trying to sell extended warranty the dealer made sure to repeat that again and again ( i still didn't buy and as of now, 5.5 years later, no chip nor anything else has failed so far :)
Chip fabs are one of the most capital-intensive and brainpower-intensive industries that there are. At the same time it is motivated by tight margins. A short term supply shortage is not going to motivate carmakers to enter this entirely different market. It might happen on a national or supranational level though.
I don't really believe that such thing as a shortage exists in a free-market economy. Executives who complain of shortages are just way too rigid with their planning and are not willing to pay the increased price. Exactly this goes for VW.
> And whereas designing your own chips once meant having to make them as well, that is no longer true.
This hasn't been true for what, 15-20 years? Longer? If you had a digital design and enough cash you could have gone to one of many vendors, who in turn worked with an external fab such as TSMC (or in other cases, the fab division of the same company) to create your design. When working with a vendor like Broadcom, Agere, Toshiba, IBM, Intel, Marvel you can be entirely isolated from the physical aspects of making chips, if that's what you want. What has happened over the last few years is massive consolidation of these vendors so now the options are far more limited. It's basically just Broadcom or Marvel at the cutting edge. I don't think this goes anywhere to explain why more companies are designing their own chips but it's a more accurate description of reality.
Suppose I had $100M to blow. Could I build a fab in the USA that produced chips at, say, 65nm? I understand that a cutting-edge node like 7nm would be out of reach at that price point, but I'm curious what exactly is in reach.
I assume that "mm" is a typo in the article, but that cost was for a >15-year-old process node. 65nm for $100M might be a stretch, if that is accurate.
I tried to find some numbers on the relative amount of chips in a standard ICE car vs. a BEV. I'd have to guess BEVs have perhaps even an order of magnitude more chips. Certainly, they have chips that are far more advanced, looking at the Tesla FSD computer[0].
The chip industry, and the chip equipment industry are still capacity limited due to demands of remote work and school. That may level off and revert somewhat towards the end of the year. BEV sales may take up the slack, but also may demand a somewhat different chip supply chain and drive demand for different segments in the industry. We may well see the typical crash in equipment sales in 2022 as those two market drivers transpire.
> I tried to find some numbers on the relative amount of chips in a standard ICE car vs. a BEV. I'd have to guess BEVs have perhaps even an order of magnitude more chips. Certainly, they have chips that are far more advanced, looking at the Tesla FSD computer[0].
Well, you could have FSD in an ICE car just as easily.
In fact, I'm going to guess an electric vehicle has fewer chips than an ICE car because it doesn't have an engine. Depends how many PMICs you need for the battery cells.
How much of the cost is in the design of the fab factory vs its physical manufacture?
My hunch is now that chip design and chip manufacturing are separate, the cost of chip design is going to be revealed as a lot lower because the opaque accounting of before allowed for stupid inefficiencies.
But in this case, I have no idea whether funding the basic materials engineering, scaling it up, or building the scaled up design, is the hard part.
The two can't be separated at birth. Design is an iterative process that requires feedback loops with the manufacturing teams (including testing and packaging, which may or may not be a part of the fab).
Just an example, the design has to be altered to maximize yields. You don't know what the yields are like or what to alter in the design until you make a few chips and test them, which means you need to design the test harnesses, tape out a prototype, and get both to where they need to be. And then try again.
If the testing, fab, and design people/materials are in different places you have to move things and people around as a part of the process.
It's just an expensive endeavor that's difficult conceptually and logistically, with a lot of institutional knowledge required.
Very. 350 nm is about the limit of what [0]'s DIY process should be scalable to with somewhat more precision outside of the photolithography itself, as well as clean room conditions.
Removed now. Thanks! Submitted title was 'Economist: Chipmaking Is Being Redesigned'.
This is in the HN guidelines actually ("If the title includes the name of the site, please take it out, because the site name will be displayed after the link.")
[+] [-] lwneal|5 years ago|reply
It's refreshing to see this mentioned. I'm no semiconductor expert, but it seems weird to me that although node size is measured in a physical unit, nanometers, it does not correspond to any real measurement that exists [1]. Each transistor in a 5nm chip is actually between 28 and 36 nanometers in width. It's called 5nm because of a theoretical calculation based on transistor density [2].
If Tesla advertised a new "200kWh" battery, I would be very disappointed if it turned out that the battery only held 95kWh, but the marketing department had decided that improvements in the charging network have made it "like 200kWh" compared to earlier models.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_nm_process
[2] https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/technology_node#Meaning_lost
[+] [-] nyunai|5 years ago|reply
In fact, the node number has never referred to transistor dimension, but the length of the gate electrode. A transistor would typically be about 4 times larger than that.
The reason to refer to the length of the gate electrode is because that was always the smallest feature printed on the chip. And that is what defined the required resolution of the lithography process.
So, a lithography process with a resolution of 32nm would be able to print chips with 32nm gate lengths.
Much has changed, and now transistors are no longer planar, they are 3-dimensional fin structures (FinFETs). The gate length scaling has slowed down, and now is not the smallest feature on the chip anymore.
The smallest feature in a modern FinFET process is actually the with of those 'fi s' that form the transistor channels.
And as if by magic, they correspond pretty well to the node names, i.e. a 5nm process will have a fin width of about 5nm.
You will likely not find that mentioned anywhere, it's just a fun fact that I noticed as a VLSI technologist.
[+] [-] not2b|5 years ago|reply
To make further progress designs had to be changed, and things have gotten fuzzier. Processes from different foundries have different densities. Intel's process for a given node is denser than that of the big foundries like TSMC.
See https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/technology_node for more on this.
[+] [-] jjoonathan|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] analog31|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 11thEarlOfMar|5 years ago|reply
https://semiengineering.com/5nm-vs-3nm/
[+] [-] xxpor|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m463|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emteycz|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blackrock|5 years ago|reply
So, TSMC is not really that far ahead after all? 28 nm is like a decade old now?
This sounds like women’s vanity sizing. Size 6 is now Size 0.
[+] [-] fctorial|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amelius|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Waterluvian|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] k__|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] d58wfq7ps|5 years ago|reply
1500W PSU!!! But you'll never know how we came up with that figure!
[+] [-] mywittyname|5 years ago|reply
Most established, capital-intensive markets are winner-take-all, where a few big players control the bulk of the market. And they usually remain at the top of the market until some fundamental paradigm shift occurs that causes the market to shrink.
TSMC will be top dog for a while, until something happens that causes the market for custom made silicon to collapse. Just like Intel was top dog until something came along to replace the market for x86. Or like Microsoft was King Dingaling until people moved to mobile computing.
[+] [-] heimatau|5 years ago|reply
Contrary to many popular technological opinions, Moore's Law will be dead for a while. We're nearly at our physical limits. When this is ceiling is hit, we'll start seeing numerous more competition enter the fray. This is because the research part will be too large for one company to innovate itself out of (TSMC will be the first to hit the ceiling and the competition will reach the same ceiling in a short time. Together, they may advance our scientific understanding but I think governments would need to get aggressively involved). This is afundamental scientific limitation. There is no emerging research that will overcome this problem (zero theoretical research that can be used for engineering the manufacturing needed for the next advancements).
3D transistors are next but that's not growth at an exponential curve. We're looking at a linear growth future for a while.
P.S. I'm 33 and I expect within the next 6-15 years that we'll hit this limit and be at this limit for most of my working career unless we start seeing some seriously massive investment to unearth more advanced physics that we can implement at the pico-level. If you disagree, I'd love to hear what you think that will allow Moore to continue because I've read numerous studies and essentially all have zero tangible implementations.
[+] [-] singhrac|5 years ago|reply
Besides just diversifying global chip production, Samsung has the (geopolitical) benefit of being in a country with large US bases and plenty of internal demand for their chips (if the Exynos designers can produce something exceptional).
[+] [-] noizejoy|5 years ago|reply
p.s. and thus we have doxxed ourselves just a little bit: age group :-)
[+] [-] ianai|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peter_d_sherman|5 years ago|reply
https://www.auto123.com/en/news/the-devastating-effects-of-a...
>"While car enthusiasts the world over are worried about assembly plant closures following the earthquake that ravaged Japan, many are still unaware of the significant role played by companies working at the start of the colossal logistical chain that results in the production of a vehicle.
Did you know that a single vehicle uses from 30 to over 100 chips
to control things like the parking brake, stereo, power steering and safety systems such as stability control? Development of these components is extremely complex, and only a handful of companies are able to meet the demands of the world’s automotive giants."
PDS: The world's automobile manufacturers, that is,
the world's carmakers --
would, or should have, a collective interest in IC/Chip fabrication -- especially in light of the most recent shortage...
[+] [-] ahepp|5 years ago|reply
>Mr Duesmann described the problems as “a crisis upon a crisis”. Demand for cars slumped for much of last year because of the coronavirus pandemic, prompting auto suppliers to cut their orders for the computer chips that manage everything from a car’s brakes and steering to its electric windows and distance sensors.
>But demand for cars jumped unexpectedly in the final three months of 2020, as buyers became more optimistic. Audi had its best quarter ever, largely because of a rebound in China.
You say that development of the chips in cars is extremely complex, but I was under the impression car chips are generally outdated, semi-rugged processors that might have some additional safety features like lockstep cores. The control systems algorithms for the functions you describe aren't particularly complicated as far as I know.
Auto manufacturers are infamous for cost cutting. I assume selling them chips is a low margin high volume business, in which case I would be glad to replace their orders with higher margin ones at the earliest opportunity.
[0] https://on.ft.com/39V7w9h (paywalled after 3 free accesses)
[+] [-] trhway|5 years ago|reply
trying to sell extended warranty the dealer made sure to repeat that again and again ( i still didn't buy and as of now, 5.5 years later, no chip nor anything else has failed so far :)
[+] [-] samus|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] llcoolv|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kingosticks|5 years ago|reply
This hasn't been true for what, 15-20 years? Longer? If you had a digital design and enough cash you could have gone to one of many vendors, who in turn worked with an external fab such as TSMC (or in other cases, the fab division of the same company) to create your design. When working with a vendor like Broadcom, Agere, Toshiba, IBM, Intel, Marvel you can be entirely isolated from the physical aspects of making chips, if that's what you want. What has happened over the last few years is massive consolidation of these vendors so now the options are far more limited. It's basically just Broadcom or Marvel at the cutting edge. I don't think this goes anywhere to explain why more companies are designing their own chips but it's a more accurate description of reality.
[+] [-] klelatti|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gautamcgoel|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] meekrohprocess|5 years ago|reply
But I suspect that it is probably "no". Because it looks like ST was planning to pay ~$1.8B per 300nm fab in 2017.
https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/st-build-two...
I assume that "mm" is a typo in the article, but that cost was for a >15-year-old process node. 65nm for $100M might be a stretch, if that is accurate.
[+] [-] neonate|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 11thEarlOfMar|5 years ago|reply
The chip industry, and the chip equipment industry are still capacity limited due to demands of remote work and school. That may level off and revert somewhat towards the end of the year. BEV sales may take up the slack, but also may demand a somewhat different chip supply chain and drive demand for different segments in the industry. We may well see the typical crash in equipment sales in 2022 as those two market drivers transpire.
[0] https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/tesla-fsd-computer-retrof...
[+] [-] astrange|5 years ago|reply
Well, you could have FSD in an ICE car just as easily.
In fact, I'm going to guess an electric vehicle has fewer chips than an ICE car because it doesn't have an engine. Depends how many PMICs you need for the battery cells.
[+] [-] Ericson2314|5 years ago|reply
My hunch is now that chip design and chip manufacturing are separate, the cost of chip design is going to be revealed as a lot lower because the opaque accounting of before allowed for stupid inefficiencies.
But in this case, I have no idea whether funding the basic materials engineering, scaling it up, or building the scaled up design, is the hard part.
[+] [-] hctaw|5 years ago|reply
Just an example, the design has to be altered to maximize yields. You don't know what the yields are like or what to alter in the design until you make a few chips and test them, which means you need to design the test harnesses, tape out a prototype, and get both to where they need to be. And then try again.
If the testing, fab, and design people/materials are in different places you have to move things and people around as a part of the process.
It's just an expensive endeavor that's difficult conceptually and logistically, with a lot of institutional knowledge required.
[+] [-] adityar|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nindalf|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gitowiec|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] intricatedetail|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abdullahkhalids|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] namibj|5 years ago|reply
[0]: http://sam.zeloof.xyz/
[+] [-] Koshkin|5 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzyXMEpq4qw
[+] [-] ivanstame|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fumblebee|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lincpa|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] anigbrowl|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|5 years ago|reply
This is in the HN guidelines actually ("If the title includes the name of the site, please take it out, because the site name will be displayed after the link.")
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html