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Originally Posted by zx10guy
And the bottleneck is with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). They seem to be the only large scale manufacturer that is capable of producing these chips needed in the automotive industry. This is what we all get for outsourcing all of our manufacturing capability to one source.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/21/tsmc...last-year.html |
There are plenty of others on legacy nodes besides TSMC. TSMC is primarily focused on leading edge nodes, which isn't what automotive processors are on. That said, if given the choice between having TSMC fab your chip or someone else (not on a commercial basis), TSMC is always the preference.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tacoma
It's not as simple as just stop outsourcing. TSMC (and others like Samsung) have mastered production of the most advanced chips that other companies simply can't do. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger admitted they don't have the know-how to manufacture these most advanced chips. It's not just building the factory and start producing. You need the process technology that takes massive investment in the tens of billions of dollars.
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Intel has close to near peer capability with TSMC on the leading edge, and can easily manufacture on nodes for automotive applications, however Intel doesn't manufacture for anybody but themselves/subsidiaries (this will be changing with the announcement of Intel Foundry Services this year, but the fabs aren't built yet).
Quote:
Originally Posted by zx10guy
Yes, it is as simple as the problem being we've outsourced our chip manufacturing to overseas companies. These companies mastered the complex fabbing because we (the US) decided we didn't want to invest in having the fabrication capability here.
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This isn't true. TSMC has been the leading logic foundry for DECADES. And it's been due to technical leadership, not cost. There's plenty of leading edge US domestic fabs, however, they either haven't offered foundry services to anybody else (Intel), or are in a different segment (memory).
Quote:
Originally Posted by zx10guy
I didn't say we should take the lead in manufacturing these chips. The fact we don't have an alternative is shameful. There are fab plants here in the US. Micron has if I recall two plants. One of them is in Manassas Virginia where I've visited personally. Spending the money to ensure at least some fab capability in the US seems way cheaper than all the lost revenue from product sitting because it's missing one component.
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There are plenty of fabs in the US (Intel, Samsung, Micron, Global Foundries, and the handful of really legacy node ones), however a logic fab isn't the same as a memory fab. So Micron's fabs can't produce the logic chips that TSMC does. Global Foundries (which is a logic fab company) literally had all the money in the world (owned by Abu Dhabi) and they couldn't build a strong enough engineering culture to compete with TSMC (they ended up licensing processes from Samsung for their newer nodes).