Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) will produce 3 nanometer chips at its second, still-under-construction plant in Kumamoto, Japan, the company announced Thursday.
Oh they want to… There are quite a few chip fabs around the world… there are very few that can manufacture at this size, along the bleeding edge of the numerous technologies necessary to do so.
Having the knowledge required to build the fab, the actual hardware required to manufacture them, and the skilled personnel to operate it all are hard to do. This is not something that you can toss together in a cave from scraps like Iron Man.
And a lot of that is by design with companies and governments trying to guarantee sovereignty by tightly controlling where these can be manufactured. The idea that enemies are less likely to try to take over/colonize a smaller country (like Taiwan) if the global chip manufacturing apparatus can be destroyed in minutes to prevent it from falling into enemy hands.
We had global foundries, among a myriad of other fabs. We have unions and labour laws, that’s bad for margins and CEO pay, we lost bleeding edge nodes due to corporate greed and US intervention.
GlobalFoundries is still in Dresden, but the smallest process they have there is 12nm. They’re just not at the forefront anymore and focus on other market segments.
Oh they want to… There are quite a few chip fabs around the world… there are very few that can manufacture at this size, along the bleeding edge of the numerous technologies necessary to do so.
Having the knowledge required to build the fab, the actual hardware required to manufacture them, and the skilled personnel to operate it all are hard to do. This is not something that you can toss together in a cave from scraps like Iron Man.
And a lot of that is by design with companies and governments trying to guarantee sovereignty by tightly controlling where these can be manufactured. The idea that enemies are less likely to try to take over/colonize a smaller country (like Taiwan) if the global chip manufacturing apparatus can be destroyed in minutes to prevent it from falling into enemy hands.
I don’t understand why there aren’t more EU fabs, as the EUV machines are made there.
Building the machines and running them are two different skillsets. Like building a race car vs driving one.
TSMC is building in Europe too, specifically in Dresden, Germany, but it’s afaik a 20nm fab mostly for automotive chips.
We had global foundries, among a myriad of other fabs. We have unions and labour laws, that’s bad for margins and CEO pay, we lost bleeding edge nodes due to corporate greed and US intervention.
GlobalFoundries is still in Dresden, but the smallest process they have there is 12nm. They’re just not at the forefront anymore and focus on other market segments.
I know, that’s why I said bleeding edge nodes.