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The machines are Dutch and the designs are made by the customer. The Taiwanese advantage is their government subsidised chip manufacturing. They aren’t wizards.
Global Foundries up in Buffalo, New York had the same exact Dutch equipment as them and couldn't get past 12nm.
Taiwan / TSMC is hitting 3nm today (a feat that even Intel and Samsung cannot accomplish yet), and is well on its way to 2nm designs.
They're fucking wizards who are 5+ years ahead of USA. Thank god they're allies of us. But they're severely kicking our ass in terms of yields, production, and even technology, using the same machines to ink smaller-and-smaller transistors to a degree impossible to us in the USA today.
The problem is by the time we figure out 3nm, TSMC will be at 2nm or better. They just consistently lead and are superior over us for the last 20 years or so.
nanometer is a marketing term now and doesn’t reflect actual sizes. Samsung were first with “3nm”.
America was doing “3nm” in 2018. You don’t seem to have any understanding of this issue.
From Wikipedia:
Also from Wikipedia:
And iPhones chose TSMC's 3nm, because TSMC is more than just 3nm, but also at a scale and price-point that Apple desires.
I'm talking about industry and manufacturing. Test labs doing one or two wafers back in 2018 doesn't matter compared to the millions-of-chips that roll off of Taiwan's production facilities.
No one in the USA can mass produce designs like this. Korea / Samsung is 2nd best, but still is slower at mass production than Taiwan.
Which brings us right back to my point. They aren’t wizards, they are simply benefiting from the enormous government investment into the extremely expensive chip manufacturing industry.
Their manufacturing efficiency is top tier, their government built facilities are top tier. However they weren’t first, they aren’t the only ones who can produce them and now that the US is interested in chip manufacturing again the new facilities will match TSMC in a few years.
Erm... You know how we're doing that right?
https://www.trendforce.com/news/2023/12/21/news-tsmcs-arizona-plant-rumored-for-q1-2024-trial-production-securing-orders-from-three-u-s-clients/
We just invited the Taiwanese to stay in Arizona. I don't expect Taiwan to give us their latest-and-greatest technologies. But this is still good for us in the great scheme of things.
But even USA's #1 chipmaker, Intel, has fallen behind Taiwan. USA's 3rd party manufacturer, GlobalFoundries, is 12nm and has no plan to go further. TSMC is still the only one who can help us with the CHIPS program, albeit by building a factory in Arizona but that's still Taiwanese controlled technology.
What Taiwanese technology? Name some.
Intel is building fabs, TSMC is moving away from Taiwan due to the geopolitical risks.
Uh huh....
TSMC is literally a Taiwan-sponsored company. Its the Taiwanese Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. They're 100% full bred Taiwanese executives, engineers, and scientists. Their literal geopolitical aim is the "Silicon Shield", the creation of such companies and processes to encourage other entities (like USA) to defend them.
There's a reason why AMD, Intel, NVidia, Apple, Samsung, and Qualcomm (aka: Snapdragon aka Android's #1 chip) are all made in TSMC aka Taiwan. Because they got better manufacturing technology than us. We literally cannot replicate their feats of production.
IE: Yields (percentage of completed chips without errors), costs, production node advancements (3nm vs 2nm), etc. etc.
You haven’t named a single technology.
iPhone chips M1. NVidia RTX 4080. AMD 7800 XTX.
Advanced FPGAs like Xilinx FPGAs used in the F-35 project.
USA literally can't make these chips. We design them, but only Taiwan has the advanced process nodes to actually make them physically. We send our designs to Taiwan, and they ship them back to us by boat.
Intel literally cannot make these chips in its Arizona, Texas, or Utah fabrication labs. Literally cannot make them. That's why Intel contracted TSMC to make the Intel Alchemist chips (!!!!). The other major advanced manufacturer, Global Foundries (Buffalo, New York) failed 10 years ago and cannot make anything more advanced than 12nm nodes (roughly Taiwan's 2016 era technology). USA advancement of chips stalled out a decade ago, we rely almost entirely on Taiwan...
Except for the few chips we're contracting out to Samsung instead, since Korea is the other place who can take these chip orders.
Which is all foundry investment. None of the technology needed belongs to Taiwan. Intel is ramping up for Intel 3 and are already doing high volume production on the Intel 4 using EUV.
Foundries are extremely expensive and everyone was happy to let Taiwan do the whole thing. Now with the geopolitical risk, investment is ramping up into chip foundries again. Once that is done the manufacturing will be mostly on par. Which is completely different to your first post about wizards and no one else can do it nonsense.
We are however going around in circles so I’ll likely leave it here.
Intel doesn't have the ability to accept orders from many other companies. One of Intel's few customers, Altera, was bought up by Intel.
There's a reason why I was talking about GlobalFoundries from Buffalo, New York. They were the last 3rd party fabricator of USA.
So no. Intel cannot make iPhones, even if they come a year or two later than TSMC's 3nm process (TSMC was making the 3nm iPhone 15 last year), it is meaningless in the scope of Apple or Qualcomm.
In any case, you're comparing Intel 2024 vs TSMC from the year 2022. TSMC is releasing 2nm this year and has been producing 3nm for the past 2 years consistently. Intel barely catches up, will NOT have the flexibility to take 3rd party designs from AMD, Apple or Qualcomm... and then immediately falls behind TSMC's 2nm process in just months.
Name a single factory in the USA that is capable of making a Snapdragon or iPhone M3. I dare you. All you've contributed is nonsense. Intel cannot make these chips. GlobalFoundaries cannot make these chips. TI can't make these chips.
CHIPS act isn't about "pulling ahead" of Taiwan. CHIPS act is just barely catching up to them if we perfectly execute over the next few years. And there are severe doubts if the USA is capable of doing so. I'm glad that we're trying to catchup in this important manufacturing race. But I fully admit we're behind and need further investments.
Name a factory anywhere in the world that competes with TSMC 3nm.
Aside from Samsung (aka: South Korea), who is truly the only 3rd party fabricator who accepts orders from other companies (ie: can support fabless companies like Apple or NVidia), and can provide the advanced process nodes to hit the iPhone M3 specs.
And remember, 3nm is a node that TSMC has been producing at scale for iPhones since 2022. We're reaching the 2nd year of TSMC's mass-production of 3nm and no other country in the world has mastered 3nm like Taiwan has. They are literally wizards. If you want the best and most advanced transistors, you go to TSMC. Period.
The actual research that you’re giving Taiwan credit for is US research. There’s a reason the US was able to tell the Dutch government “You can’t allow this hardware to go to China.”
The basic research for the Extreme Ultraviolet lithography was done at US DOE labs as a hedge against Japan dominating the world semiconductor supply. The US allowed a few companies in as part of the EUV-LLC private-public partnership, and ASML ended up buying out the other players who had the licenses from the US. The EU certainly had a hand in the research after the test bed was built proving it could work. https://www.sandia.gov/media/ultra.htm