Silicon is way outside my wheelhouse, so genuine question: why not mention power consumption? In the data center, is this not one of the most important metrics?
For data centers, it will help a lot. More compute for same power.
How about "longer battery life".
Also "lower cost".
Or sacrificing those on the alter of more compute running more complex things.
For instance, GK104 on 28nm was 3.5 billion transistors. AD104 today is 35 billion. Is Nvidia really paying 10x as much for an AD104 die as a GK104 die?
What google turns up when I google this is this statement by google [1], which attributes the low point to 28nm (as of 2023)... and I tend to agree with the person you are responding to that that doesn't pass the sniff test...
[1] https://www.semiconductor-digest.com/moores-law-indeed-stopp...
There's significant demand for older process nodes and we constantly see new chips designed for older nodes, and those companies are usually saving money by doing so (it's rare for a new chip to require such high production volumes that it couldn't be made with the production capacity of leading-edge fabs).
Intel and AMD have both been selling for years chiplet-based processors that mix old and newer fab processes, using older cheaper nodes to make the parts of the processor that see little benefit from the latest and greatest nodes (eg. IO controllers) while using the newer nodes only for the performance-critical CPU cores. (Numerous small chiplets vs one large chip also helps with yields, but we don't see as many designs doing lots of chiplets on the same node.)
My phone dies much faster when I am using it, but admittedly screen usage means I can't prove that's chip power consumption.
VR headsets get noticeably hot in use, and I'm all but certain that that is largely chip power usage.
Macbook airs are the same speed as macbook pros until they thermally throttle, because the chips use too much power.
This claim just doesn't pass the smell test.
Why wouldn’t you want lower power usage?
It'll be beneficial to DRAM chips, allowing for higher density memory. And it'll be beneficial to GPGPUs, allowing for more GPU processors in a package.
SRAM is probably the the worst example as it scales poorly with process shrinks. There are tricks still left in the bag to deal with this, like GAA, but caches and SRAM cells are not the headline here. It's power and general transistor density.
If TSMC over invests in US factories then they could be taken over under imminent domain if Taiwan was no longer independent. So they have to keep a large portion of manufacturing domestic to Taiwan for lessened geopolitical risk.
Fabs run at BSL3. Get that dirty, and you have a whole lot of expensive scrap metal.
Incidentally, they don't operate at BSL3 - that's a standard for biosafety that has more to do with protecting the outside world from the lab rather than vice-versa. Fabs operate in accordance with ISO 14644.
I used to work for a company that made steppers.
Pretty hairy stuff.
And you are correct. I have found “BSL3” conjures up the most appropriate images, though.
You can see this with SMIC and their inability to get modern lithography systems from the only leading edge vendor ASML. Sure, you can create your own vendors to replace such companies, but they are unlikely to ever catch up to the leading edge or even be only a generation or two behind the leading edge despite massive investments.
With non-leading edge equipment & processes you have to make compromises like making much larger chips so you can get the same compute in a low power profile. This drives up the initial cost of every device you make and you run into throughput issues like what Huawei has experienced where they cannot produce enough ships to ship their flagship ship phones at a reasonable price and simultaneously keep them in stock.
Instead you get boutique products that sell out practically immediately because there were so few units that were able to be manufactured.
https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2024/05/21/asml_kill_switch/
It seems very unlikely to me that between KMT loyalist troops and angry mobs that China would simply be allowed to take Taiwan without violence, and that nobody would decide to use TSMC as a hostage.
See the Swiss strategy, where every bridge and tunnel has its explosives pre-placed when it was built.
I was thrown off by your statement, so here are some numbers: a modern chip like Nvidia's GH100 manufactured at a 5 nm process is 80 billion gates in 814 mm². That means a gate is 100 nm wide which is the width of 500 silicon atoms. On a 2D area that's 250k atoms. I don't know the thickness but assuming it's also 500 atoms then a gate has a volume of 125 million atoms.
So I guess you get your "8 orders of magnitude" difference if you compare the three-dimensional volume (7 atoms vs 125 million). But on one dimension it's only 2 orders of magnitude (7 atoms vs 500). And the semiconductor industry measures progress on one dimension so to me the "2 orders of magnitude" seems the more relevant comparison to make.
Even if it's possible to build transistors that are 1.4nm in size (or smaller), that is not what "1.4nm" means in the context of this announcement. I get that this can be confusing, it's just a case of smoke and mirrors because Moore's Law is already dead and semiconductor manufacturers don't want to spook investors. The performance gains are still real, but the reasons for getting them are no longer as simple as shrinking transistor size.
As for the true physical limits of transistor sizes, there are problems like quantum tunnelling that we aren't likely to overcome, so even if you can build a gate with 7 atoms, that doesn't mean it'll work effectively. Also note that "gate" does not necessarily mean "transistor".
People have said this for decades. Jim Keller believes otherwise and brought receipts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIG9ztQw2Gc
"Moore's Law is already dead"
That's clearly false, have a quick look at this chart: https://semiconductor.substack.com/p/the-relentless-pursuit-...
> TSMC's A14 is brand-new process technology that is based on the company's 2nd Generation GAAFET nanosheet transistors and new standard cell architecture to enable performance, power, and scaling advantages. TSMC expects its A14 to deliver a 10% to 15% performance improvement at the same power and complexity, a 25% to 30% lower power consumption at the same frequency as well as transistor count, and 20% - 23% higher transistor density (for mixed chip design and logic, respectively), compared to N2. Since A14 is an all-new node, it will require new IPs, optimizations, and EDA software than N2P (which leverages N2 IP) as well as A16, which is N2P with backside power delivery.
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/tsmc-unveils-1-4n...
I think America doesn't manufacture semiconductors because it is a very unclean process, full of nasty chemicals. It's expensive to make semiconductors and deal with the clean-up. There are less environmental restrictions and cheaper labor in other parts of the world.
There are a bunch of Superfund sites around Mountain View, CA that serve as a reminder about the US Semiconductor industry - Fairchild Semiconductor, Intel, National Semiconductor, Monolithic Memories, and Raytheon to name a few.
Nobody in the U.S. really wants that in their back yard. Of course we've seen the same kind of thing from fracking, and everything else that rightly should be regulated or banned.
What happens now with a defunded and purposefully dysfunctional EPA is anyone's guess. Maybe manufacturers will exploit the political climate to further destroy the environment to make a few more million or billion dollars.
Press (X) to doubt.
According to https://steveblank.com/2009/04/27/the-secret-history-of-sili... and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo the creation of Silicon Valley had more to do with academic expertise in radio research and Department of Defense funding circa World War II. Corporations were the "second wave".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley
"Silicon Valley" describes the period between the late 1960s and mid/late 1990s (and still to this day to some extent). It has nothing to do with what went on there around World War II. Yes, semiconductor corporations created "Silicon Valley".
Before that time it may have been a sort of "Vacuum Tube Valley", but that does not have the same ring to it. And around WW2 there was tech going on everywhere, not just around Mountain View.
And of course, this is before the mega defense contractors that exist now. The military absolutely fucking hates those megacorps and does still try and actively fund new small business entrants to military contracting. The problem is mega corps buy them up as the US is owned by them.
If you were Taiwanese this would worry you?
It makes complete sense for Taiwan to invest in maintaining it’s “silicon shield” even as china tries to catch up with fabrication on the mainland.
China can comfortably make chips that might be the equivalent of 5 year old Taiwanese ones. Last time I checked, that’s extremely viable.
No military general ever is going to say, “we can’t invade, we’re half a decade behind!”
ranger_danger•4h ago
1over137•4h ago
barbazoo•4h ago
They might build factories outside Taiwan you never know.
1over137•4h ago
flounder3•4h ago
From the article:
.. so it's interesting that they are moving forward with domestic 1.4nm given the geopolitical climate.bgnn•3h ago
consumer451•3h ago
indolering•2h ago
andsoitis•3h ago
But also:
At the TSMC second-quarter earnings conference and conference call on Thursday, TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said that after the completion of the company’s US$165 billion investment in the US, “about 30 percent of our 2-nanometer and more advanced capacity will be located in Arizona, creating an independent leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing cluster in the US.”
The Arizona investment includes six advanced wafer manufacturing fabs, two advanced packaging fabs and a major research and development center.
esseph•3h ago
nine_k•3h ago
LeifCarrotson•2h ago
But unless it's cheaper to do so, or they're required by law to do so, they're just going to pump cleaner starting water out of the drinking supply and use that.
And good luck finding a city or state government that's not so desperate for big industry and tech jobs to arrive that they will hold their feet to the fire and demand they cut water use.
andsoitis•2h ago
pj_mukh•2h ago
I wish they’d take the next step with the defense treaty to move even more capacity (esp for the highest grade stuff) to stateside.
coolspot•53m ago