By: Moritz (better.delete@this.not.tell), September 27, 2021 4:30 am
Room: Moderated Discussions
Mark Roulo (nothanks.delete@this.xxx.com) on September 22, 2021 3:40 pm wrote:
> You can *RUN* it but you don't get the price premium that you
> get when it is new. TSMC still runs (as an example) 65nm fabs.
> But the big money is made when the fab is shiny and new.
ATM it would seem that anyone with any fab can find a product that will match the process and sell. Profit is more of a productivity question than one of novelty.
> Part
> of Global Foundry's problem was that it kept being late to
> each node relative to TSMC and so couldn't charge the new-ness
> premium.
I see how that makes it unprofitable in a world of progress
as in decrease in cost per transistor with every new node and over time. That is my point, that is not the world we live in anymore.
A 320mm^2 die will use less power, but it need not be cheaper or higher performing than a 450mm^2 die. The fab can run the process longer because the new node is not attracting mid-range or mass product. It used to be that only a small die filled with logic could be fit in-between the defects but in the age of multicore binning and on-die SRAM monsters rules have changed.
The trend to stack ICs has not made them smaller, it only increased the manufacturing capacity.
It must have been obvious that we would need more wafer starts as fabs slowed to make more transistors per wafer.
> You can *RUN* it but you don't get the price premium that you
> get when it is new. TSMC still runs (as an example) 65nm fabs.
> But the big money is made when the fab is shiny and new.
ATM it would seem that anyone with any fab can find a product that will match the process and sell. Profit is more of a productivity question than one of novelty.
> Part
> of Global Foundry's problem was that it kept being late to
> each node relative to TSMC and so couldn't charge the new-ness
> premium.
I see how that makes it unprofitable in a world of progress
as in decrease in cost per transistor with every new node and over time. That is my point, that is not the world we live in anymore.
A 320mm^2 die will use less power, but it need not be cheaper or higher performing than a 450mm^2 die. The fab can run the process longer because the new node is not attracting mid-range or mass product. It used to be that only a small die filled with logic could be fit in-between the defects but in the age of multicore binning and on-die SRAM monsters rules have changed.
The trend to stack ICs has not made them smaller, it only increased the manufacturing capacity.
It must have been obvious that we would need more wafer starts as fabs slowed to make more transistors per wafer.
