[HN Gopher] AMD Expected to Become TSMC's Second Largest Customer
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AMD Expected to Become TSMC's Second Largest Customer
Author : rbanffy
Score : 76 points
Date : 2021-03-21 20:00 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.tomshardware.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.tomshardware.com)
| jonplackett wrote:
| If TSMCs march continues, how long will it be before Intel is
| forced to use them for all their performance chips? Will
| _everyone_ just have to switch to TSMC?
|
| And if that happens, how long will it be, with much less
| competition, for TSMC to get sloppy like Intel did, and
| everything stagnate again.
| christkv wrote:
| TSMC seems like the number one security guarantee for Taiwan.
| dnautics wrote:
| How does this change with TSMC opening a fab in arizona? (And
| Samsung in Austin)
| emteycz wrote:
| Well (and this is pure speculation), that branch of TSMC is
| an American company. As it will definitely be dependent on
| its mother corporation, making problems for that mother
| could make problems for that American company. So IMHO the
| USA would protect it.
| gsnedders wrote:
| The TSMC fab in Arizona as announced is 20k wafers/month,
| their total production is over a million a month. It's a
| tiny drop in the ocean.
| mamon wrote:
| How many American soldiers station in Taiwan? And more
| importantly: how many nukes?
|
| Since the answer to both is "zero" TSMC actually decreases
| Taiwan's security - it gives China a strong incentive to
| attack, with zero means to prevent it on US side.
| gruez wrote:
| >it gives China a strong incentive to attack
|
| That can be mitigated by planting bombs at the TMSC
| factory. If china attacks, they'll get end up with a
| rubble.
| mamon wrote:
| This mitigates only half of the problem - yes, China
| won't be able to use the factory for themselves, but if
| you take a closer look at the list of the largest TSMC
| customers from the article those are mostly American
| companies. Destroying TSMC factory would hurt the US
| disproportionately more than it would China. Which might
| matter in the current China-US trade war.
|
| Also "planting bombs at the factory" scenario is one of
| the reasons why all armies in the world have spies and
| special forces - you send your special ops soldiers
| before your main attack to take control of the facility
| and prevent initiating the self-destruction protocol. I'm
| not saying it always works, but China can take a
| calculated risk here, since they win either way.
| wwtrv wrote:
| And what would China win exactly? Even if they somehow
| miraculously manage to keep TSMC up and running they
| would not be able to export anything produced there to
| other countries and permanently loose access to all
| western IP.
|
| And the sanctions from US and other countries would
| massively outweigh any perceived economic benefits from
| invading Taiwan.
| Traster wrote:
| If China attacks Taiwan, those American customers are
| going to lose TSMC as a supplier either way.
| qwertox wrote:
| That would freeze the car and smartphone production
| worldwide. No country would like to see this.
| gruez wrote:
| And why would taiwan care about worldwide car/smartphone
| production when the PLA is marching towards their
| factory?
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Rubble, yes, but people that can rebuild it also.
|
| But most importantly, it would paralyze everyone except
| them economically, as they are the only country that
| can't use TSMC.
| wwtrv wrote:
| Why wouldn't those people just move to different
| countries? I'm sure that most countries in the west would
| be very happy to receive large number of highly qualified
| engineers for free.
|
| China can't really close them in labour camps and expect
| them to be very productive...
|
| I'm sure it would paralyze everyone economically, since
| China would just end up with a bunch of ruined factories
| with no staff and no way to replace most of the machines
| needed for fabrication (which are made in other
| countries).
|
| simple replicating everything TSMC is doing in China
| would be several magnitudes cheaper (if you factor in the
| economic outfall of a military invasion)
| [deleted]
| skissane wrote:
| > it would paralyze everyone except them economically
|
| It would cause a lot of economic damage to PRC too.
|
| If they attack Taiwan, definitely the US and its allies
| will retaliate. They'd likely place trade sanctions on
| PRC which would damage much of it export businesses. They
| might even consider a naval blockade of PRC.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| My (non-expert) view on this:
|
| If China attacks Taiwan (and the TSMC fabs are destroyed),
| _everyone_ loses, including China. In the short term, it
| would probably hurt the West more, but once fabs in the
| West start spinning up, China would risk being embargoed
| from the most efficient chips, putting them far behind
| until they can catch up. (All the lithography machines seem
| to be coming from ASML in the Netherlands).
|
| This may change in 5 years or so when China has caught up
| more, and is less dependent on TSMC chips. And China has
| patience. They'll deal with Hong Kong and Xinjiang first,
| ensure independence, _then_ invade.
| reincarnate0x14 wrote:
| There are, and have been, US troops unofficially stationed
| in Taiwan the whole time even after the official bases were
| closed in the 70s. The US recently expanded the footprint
| of AIT, their technically-not-an-embassy facility in Taipei
| and built another in Kaohsiung. US personnel are present in
| some capacity at basically all ROC air force bases and at
| the over-the-horizon radar facilities used to monitor east
| Asia.
|
| This has been an open secret for decades, recently causing
| a bit of a laugh when a US serviceman was in the background
| of a publicity photo of president Tsai Ing-wen touring a
| radar installation.
|
| US policy of not deliberately provoking China over the
| Taiwan issue doesn't mean the US hasn't maintained a policy
| of nuclear deterrence over Taiwan since the Eisenhower
| administration. The PRC and US are well aware, and have
| extensively war-gamed, that a US/China military
| confrontation will very likely escalate to nuclear war. The
| US sailing a carrier or cruiser through the strait every
| time the PRC makes loud noises is reaffirming the status
| quo.
| reader_mode wrote:
| > Will everyone just have to switch to TSMC?
|
| Did you read the article ? AMD is going up as a % because a lot
| of customers are switching to Samsung (and Huawei sanctions)
| arnaudsm wrote:
| The fact that AMD had the best-performing CPU by a 2x factor
| for the past 4 years probably plays a role too.
| theferalrobot wrote:
| That seems at least a bit hyperbolic - AMD has pushed intel
| a lot in the past four years but it wasn't until the past
| year or so that they have potentially started outperforming
| Intel (depending on workload) in what is likely to be a
| 'who has released more recently' kind of competition for a
| while.
|
| https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-
| hierarchy,4312.html
|
| Latest benches have AMD and Intel winning in about the same
| number of tests.
| garmaine wrote:
| I'm out of the loop. How does Huawei (PRC) sanctions end up
| negatively affecting TSMC (ROC) sales?
| Macha wrote:
| TSMC's second largest customer _was_ Huawei. The US
| sanctions led to TSMC no longer selling to Huawaei.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| Huawei end up having to use SMIC, so less business for
| TSMC.
| CodeArtisan wrote:
| >how long will it be before Intel is forced to use them for all
| their performance chips?
|
| One year?
| https://www.trendforce.com/presscenter/news/20210113-10651.h...
| tedunangst wrote:
| TSMC will probably have a second largest customer even if their
| process development stagnates.
| stefan_ wrote:
| TLDR: AMD is becoming a bigger customer to TSMC because others
| are rightly hedging their bets with manufacturing at Samsung.
| dralley wrote:
| AMD is (rumored to be) as well
| https://www.gizmochina.com/2021/02/02/amd-outsource-gpu-apu-...
| CyberRage wrote:
| AMD's success is great for the industry.
|
| x86 and GPU competition is much needed with complete dominance
| from Intel and Nvidia.
| lanevorockz wrote:
| Why we can't build chip factories in the west ? It seems we are
| bound to have our capacity limited by a few factories that can
| build all electronics we need. Nobody see the lack of
| availability of chips around ? I guess Asia is indeed the new
| axis of world power.
| zokier wrote:
| There is one planned to be built in US
| https://www.anandtech.com/show/15803/tsmc-build-5nm-fab-in-a...
|
| Also GloFo has fabs "in the west"
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GlobalFoundries#Fabrication_fa...
| axaxs wrote:
| GloFo has more or less given up on cutting edge node design,
| if I recall.
| mhh__ wrote:
| 75% of Intel's production in US based, no?
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| Some. Not that much as in the 1980s. Notice that most of the
| floorspace is Arizona, Oregon or overseas.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_manufacturing_si.
| ..
|
| Back in the day I worked at Fab 2 but that's ancient history.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Interesting that their current 3DXPoint/3DNand fab is in
| China and a 10nm fab is in Israel.
|
| The US just gives away secrets now?
| arnaudsm wrote:
| Fortunately EU is finally putting money on the table :
|
| "EU Signs EUR145B Declaration to Develop Next Gen Processors
| and 2nm Technology "
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25602950
| varispeed wrote:
| This is tax payer money that people had to forcibly part with
| to use to fund private businesses that will not share their
| profits with those people. Is that correct? Why people cannot
| directly buy shares in European semiconductor companies and
| then profit like other shareholders do, but it has to go
| through bureaucratic channels (and bureaucrats also take
| their cut for facilitating this bureaucracy)?
| i_have_an_idea wrote:
| Because the European innovation ecosystem is terribly
| broken and our politicians think regulation is the solution
| to all problems.
| dnautics wrote:
| We can, TSMC opening a fab in arizona and Samsung opening a fab
| in Austin.
| tester756 wrote:
| West was or even is sleeping on Asia
|
| Ask average IT person about big IT companies and nobody says
| anything about Asia, which is scary as fuck.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| Asia has been the primary axis for semiconductors since the
| mid-1990s when Silicon Valley ceased to be about any silicon.
| That's when the entire industrial ebbed out of the USA.
|
| Were you not paying attention as all the jobs were lost?? Did
| you not notice the changes?
|
| It used to be that 90% of all semiconductor companies were
| based in Silicon Valley, hence the same. Driving around the
| Valley was a near-religious experience as you saw EVERY company
| name you ever heard of and there was their building.
|
| That no longer exists. And even social media companies are
| remotely as plentiful today. There's no comparison.
|
| The only hope now is:
|
| * TSMC is building a fab in Phoenix * Samsung is building a fab
| in one of three areas: Phoenix, Austin or Malta - they haven't
| decided yet * GF is building another fab in Malta
|
| NONE of this will EVER be in California ever again let alone
| Silicon Valley, however. It's no longer economically viable
| there.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Yep. When I was growing up I lived across the street from a
| superfund site in San Jose. And there's still an active
| superfund site in the middle of Palo Alto.
| trynumber9 wrote:
| Samsung already said Austin, not far from their other fab in
| Austin: https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/3/22311825/samsung-
| texas-aus...
| Kliment wrote:
| We have lots and lots of chip factories in the West. A very
| important one just lost thousands and thousands of wafers
| because the Texas power grid went tits up, and it set the
| companies using it back by months. There's foundries being
| built all over the world. TSMC just happens to be the first to
| have an extremely expensive, extremely difficult process down
| to a reliable production setup, so all the orders that
| absolutely have to be on that process are going to them. They
| also happen to employ most of the world's expertise in leading-
| edge lithography tech. But if you look beyond the absolute
| pinnacle of production processes, and into the >100nm range,
| there are literally hundreds of foundries around the world,
| many of them in the US and Germany for example, churning out
| what was top-of-the-line a decade ago.
| mrh0057 wrote:
| We can and do make chip fabs in the US. Intel choose a
| different process for its 10nm than TSMC 7nm. It hasn't worked
| and instead of switching to a similar process the other
| foundries use they doubled down repeatedly. It's the perfect
| example of sunk cost fallacy.
| samfisher83 wrote:
| Semiconductor manufacturing is pretty dirty. Lots of toxic
| chemicals.
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-06-15/american-...
| varispeed wrote:
| The problem are high taxes (for employees) which means it is
| expensive to retain talent plus mountains of bureaucracy and
| more taxes.
| kartheepan wrote:
| Interesting fight between TSMC and Samsung as foundry of choice
| for semiconductors.
|
| Global Foundries have skipped a step.
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