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Re:TSMC: 3nm EUV Development Progress Going Well by lawrenceyan on Friday September 20, 2019 @11:29PM (#21033308)
I would rank it probably as: 1) TSMC 2) Samsung 3) Intel

AMD now divested into Global Foundries used to be on there as well, but they're pretty much dead in the water at this point. Both AMD and Nvidia use TSMC now actually. It's kind of funny that Intel is the only remaining foundry within the United States at this point except for maybe Texas Instruments, which lets be honest, doesn't really count.

Re:TSMC: 3nm EUV Development Progress Going Well by throwaway2048 on Saturday September 21, 2019 @12:14AM (#21033472)
Global foundries still does plenty of production, most chip production doesn't occur at cutting edge nodes.
Re:TSMC: 3nm EUV Development Progress Going Well by stjohnswarts on Saturday September 21, 2019 @01:16AM (#21033647)
You're exactly right. There's a lot of money to be made outside of 3/7/10nm. I'm not sure why geeks get hooked on having the smallest/biggest or nothing and assuming anything else is failure
Re:TSMC: 3nm EUV Development Progress Going Well by rowanG077 on Sunday September 22, 2019 @01:42PM (#21042695)
It's because it's immensely cool what humanity can continue to achieve.
Re:TSMC: 3nm EUV Development Progress Going Well by jdietrich on Saturday September 21, 2019 @02:42AM (#21033891)
>most chip production doesn't occur at cutting edge nodes

Of course, but the margins are much better on cutting-edge nodes. Being second-to-market on a node doesn't save you much on capital costs, but you have to compete harder on wafer pricing. TSMC have about 5x the revenues of GF and the gap is widening.

Re:TSMC: 3nm EUV Development Progress Going Well by baybal2 on Saturday September 21, 2019 @04:03AM (#21034097)
> Of course, but the margins are much better on cutting-edge nodes.

No, not anymore for at least a decade, and this is the very reason GloFo bailed out on the "Arms Race." Extreme capex with uncertain payback times looked very scary to their investors.

TSMC 7FF will only break even next year.

Re:TSMC: 3nm EUV Development Progress Going Well by kingosticks on Saturday September 21, 2019 @07:52AM (#21034761)
>TSMC 7FF will only break even next year.

I've no idea if that's true but assuming it is, then from next year it's pure profit and they are the big fish in a pond of 2 (or 3?) fish with no new fish in sight. People will be using this process for years and years to come. With so little competition at 7nm and the high barriers to entry (even over time) they can surely maintain their margins for much longer than at previous nodes. I'm not saying bailing wasn't the right decision for Global Foundries and the risk might be higher now, but so the rewards.

Re:TSMC: 3nm EUV Development Progress Going Well by PeCaN on Saturday September 21, 2019 @05:49AM (#21034397)
I don't think Texas Instruments deserves to be counted out. Their revenue last year was greater than Nvidia. Given that the margins on microcontrollers and DSPs are not nearly as large as on GPUs, they're shipping a lot of chips.

Granted I have no idea what their process node is, which they don't advertise anywhere presumably because people buying microcontrollers and DSPs do not really care about an arbitrary silicon feature size number. It's probably not cutting edge, but they're a big foundry regardless.

GlobalFoundaries is definitely not dead either. They even do 14nm which is hardly very outdated (and is probably the last practical node anyway).

Re:TSMC: 3nm EUV Development Progress Going Well by magicalhippo on Saturday September 21, 2019 @06:38AM (#21034539)
ON Semiconductor has 700nm down to 180nm for hire in the US.

https://www.onsemi.com/PowerSolutions/content.do?id=18397

https://www.onsemi.com/PowerSolutions/content.do?id=16678

ST has been boasting about their new STM32G series as being their first 90nm product, though I doubt it'll start a nm race in the microcontroller world...

https://blog.st.com/stm32g0-mainstream-90-nm-mcu/

Re:TSMC: 3nm EUV Development Progress Going Well by baybal2 on Saturday September 21, 2019 @08:10AM (#21034835)
There are plenty of 40nm MCUs already
Re:TSMC: 3nm EUV Development Progress Going Well by magicalhippo on Saturday September 21, 2019 @09:01AM (#21035096)
I see Renesas has some[1], got any pointers to some others? Would be interesting to compare specs.

[1]: https://www.renesas.com/jp/en/about/press-center/news/2018/n...

Re:TSMC: 3nm EUV Development Progress Going Well by baybal2 on Saturday September 21, 2019 @09:23AM (#21035222)
ESP32, gigadevices, some nuvotons

Correction, gigadevices are still at 55

Re:TSMC: 3nm EUV Development Progress Going Well by magicalhippo on Saturday September 21, 2019 @01:39PM (#21036732)
Well there ya go. Been using the ESP32 for a while, yet blissfully ignorant of it being a 40nm device. Though I guess that explains how they can get all that SRAM in at that price point?
Re:TSMC: 3nm EUV Development Progress Going Well by evancox100 on Saturday September 21, 2019 @09:52AM (#21035370)
The word "foundry" refers specifically to a company that manufactures others' chip designs for them, such as TSMC. Intel discontinued it's foundry business AFAIK.

The more general word would be "fab", which is any semiconductor manufacturing facility.

Re:TSMC: 3nm EUV Development Progress Going Well by lawrenceyan on Saturday September 21, 2019 @07:22PM (#21038537)
Oh wow, I wasn't aware of that. Intel really has fallen quite low. I worry about it's future as AMD, Nvidia, and TSMC pull away at it from all sides.
Re:TSMC: 3nm EUV Development Progress Going Well by therealcamino on Saturday September 21, 2019 @11:19AM (#21035861)
> It's kind of funny that Intel is the only remaining foundry within the United States at this point

Samsung Austin is in Texas.