[HN Gopher] Fire Destroys 300mm Line of Renesas' Naka Factory
___________________________________________________________________
Fire Destroys 300mm Line of Renesas' Naka Factory
Author : zdw
Score : 62 points
Date : 2021-03-23 18:23 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.eetasia.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.eetasia.com)
| [deleted]
| unwind wrote:
| As someone who has had to endure over a year of very close to the
| metal (in this case, imagine centuries old, gnarly, rusty random
| pot metal, maybe) development on a Renesas platform, I'm tempted
| to think "fewer Renesas products? Awesome!!" but obviously that
| would be childish.
|
| I'm sorry for all the people hurt by this, fire is no joke.
|
| Edit: added missing words.
| exmadscientist wrote:
| That is indeed a childish sentiment.
|
| And yet I completely agree with you. Probably because I've also
| experienced their products and their... unique... design-in
| challenges.
|
| My deepest sympathies to all the people impacted by this.
|
| My [extremely impolite words redacted] to the company.
| fra wrote:
| I'm with you. Renesas SuperH needs to go.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| What, you don't like having arithmetic _and_ logical left
| shifts? I thought orthogonality was a good idea :P
| post_break wrote:
| This is horrible. What keeps me up at night is thinking about
| TSMC. One company. Just needs an earth quake, fire, explosion,
| something and the whole world is crippled. I know we have
| samsung, intel, etc other fabs. But if TSMC ever went down it
| would make the thailand floods for hard drives look like a joke.
| an_opabinia wrote:
| Nothing would really happen. We'd keep using 2 year old
| processors from Intel, and pay more for them. The GPUs, whose
| price is high because of cryptocurrency, will not be missed.
| These auto manufacturers could pay a little more for a general
| purpose CPU instead of ASICs.
| post_break wrote:
| The stock market would crash guaranteed if Apple had no
| inventory of phones. AMD no gpus or cpus, etc. It wouldn't
| just be like oh sorry out of stock. It would touch every
| aspect of your life.
| jnwatson wrote:
| Auto manufacturers can't just put in a general purpose CPU.
| Embedded CPUs have functionality general purpose CPUs don't
| have. Not to mention it would take months to design new
| hardware and write new software.
|
| The chips being put into cars today were selected at least 5
| years ago.
| Matthias247 wrote:
| As someone having worked in the automative industry, I can
| confirm the latter part. It takes about 3-5 years from the
| start of a new design over going through all qualifications
| up to shipping a car with it. Even switching to a mostly
| compatible chip (same ISA, same pinout, etc) will take more
| than 1 year.
| gscott wrote:
| One Raspberry Pi in every car and problem solved.
| adamparsons wrote:
| I tried this years ago. Lets just say cars have a very
| unique set of constraints that general purpose dev boards
| will not survive.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| From an industrial/automotive/aerospace standpoint
| Raspberry Pi's are hot garbage.
| whatshisface wrote:
| It might even be a good investment to build a fab just to clean
| up in the event of a shortage. Kind of like how if anyone in
| Texas had the good foresight to winterize they could have made
| a year of profit in a few days...
| varispeed wrote:
| Someone should start a Kickstarter for a new fab :-)
| jacquesm wrote:
| At least you'd be able to buy some spares for a stepper, or
| maybe a set of manuals. It's a start.
| dnautics wrote:
| you mean like how TSMC is building a fab in arizona and
| samsung in texas?
| wavefunction wrote:
| As far as I know Samsung in Texas is not yet a done deal.
| They're requesting complete tax abatement for twenty years
| in addition to the inducements offered by local governments
| and I believe they're waiting to see if they can pull it
| off. Their current facilities in Austin have remained
| closed since the big snow storm.
| pradn wrote:
| But TSMC's Arizona plant will make 5nm chips in 2023, by
| which time 5nm wont be the leading-edge node - 3nm will be.
| It's nice to see some geodiversity however.
|
| In any case, TSMC is dependent on ASML, which has a
| monopoly on leading-edge EUV tech.
|
| There is a decent amount of competition at older nodes,
| like > 40nm. So we'll still be able to make some chips if
| TSMC completely goes out of business, but obviously it wont
| scale to the demand and will seriously hamper business,
| science, and government.
| dnautics wrote:
| I'm comparing against GP's suggestion "to build a fab".
| Point is, SMC and TSMC fabs will be online faster than a
| direct fab investment.
|
| > science
|
| I believe science has access to more compute than it
| needs. I could be wrong now, but last I checked, a few
| years ago, the huge computational clusters (both public
| and private, e.g. @ pharma companies) were under-
| utilized, especially on legacy-hardware-that-is-still-
| pretty-damn-good, and scrambling to find ways to engage
| with outside clients to fill out capacity.
| vasco wrote:
| You make it sound like anyone with the will can just take
| ASML product and create a leading fab. If that was the
| case Intel wouldn't be in the mess it is in.
| pradn wrote:
| I'm not saying ASML -> cutting-edge capacity, but the
| opposite. Having cutting-edge capacity probably means
| you're dependent on ASML.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I think they have a Chinese move against Taiwan more on the
| mind than an earthquake or other natural disaster.
| protomyth wrote:
| I would imagine that some DoD plan states that all those
| fabs in Taiwan get blown up upon invasion.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Some military planners thinks the Chinese will not invade
| but will enforce a maritime blockade around the island to
| force the issue.
|
| Ships would be inspected and food and medicine will be
| allowed through but all trade goods will be blocked.
|
| But that is all depended on the US and it's allies having
| a stomach for a naval confrontation or that the Chinese
| mainland umbrella of long range missiles and air defense
| can be an effective deterrent against that.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That would do it.
| protomyth wrote:
| Thinking about it, I would expect some kidnap...
| immigration to the US of some personnel would probably
| happen.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Makes you wonder if those buildings would be rigged
| already. Conspiracy level stuff, for sure but it is such
| a strategic asset. In WWII bridges that were still in
| daily use in Europe were already mined well before the
| territory changed control with the leavers trying to deny
| the new arrivals the use of the bridges.
| protomyth wrote:
| In the modern era, it probably is just gathering precise
| positioning for a missile launch. I expect some computer
| wiping will be in the cards too. That might be the modern
| version of rigging the buildings already.
|
| Given what a strategic asset they are, I would expect its
| not really "conspiracy level stuff" on various plans.
| After all, the US had attack plans for the UK between the
| world wars.
| post_break wrote:
| I thought I remember watching a video about TSMC and the
| buildings are all rigged to blow should China invade.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if TSM has self-destruct features
| built into their operations as a deterrent, or at least a
| plan to let the USAF bomb the hell out of the foundries
| if China invaded. The former might be a bit too risky :)
| dnautics wrote:
| *and South Korea. Maybe not an explicit attack, but if
| there is supply chain disruption due to tensions between
| china and japan not having contested sealanes (getting
| out of SK could be at risk) in your chip pipeline is
| probably a good thing.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Kind of like how if anyone in Texas had the good foresight
| to winterize they could have made a year of profit in a few
| days...
|
| Hmm. When would this foresighted person have made their
| preparations? What would installation have cost? What would
| maintenance have cost? More or less than a year's worth of
| profits?
| mschaef wrote:
| > What would installation have cost? What would maintenance
| have cost? More or less than a year's worth of profits?
|
| Power that's selling right now for $25/MWh was selling at
| the $9,000/MWh cap. A 36,000% increase in price can surely
| pay for enough to, say, keep your pressure sensing
| equipment from freezing over. (Which is why the 1,280MW
| STNP Unit 1 went offline at a $11.5MM/hour+expenses cost.)
|
| Not to mention the lives and property damage that might
| have been spared.
|
| > When would this foresighted person have made their
| preparations?
|
| As far as _when_, maybe after the 2011 TX cold snap that
| took generation offline for similar reasons. Or the one in
| 1989.
| whatshisface wrote:
| I don't have the links handy (we're talking niche blogs run
| by industry insiders) but the final calculation was that
| producers missed out big and got caught in a very
| irrational position.
| jhayward wrote:
| > _Kind of like how if anyone in Texas had the good foresight
| to winterize they could have made a year of profit in a few
| days._
|
| This fundamentally mis-states the situation in Texas during
| the recent cold catastrophe. Gas suppliers that had
| winterized had their electricity cut off and could not
| pressurize their distribution. Generators who had winterized
| had their gas supply curtailed. And so on.
|
| It was a systemic failure by the PUCT and the RRC, who are
| the regulators. Ultimately, the Governor who appoints those
| boards and the Legislature who grants their authorities
| failed.
|
| It wasn't some yahoo generator too dumb to winterize,
| although there were plenty who didn't find it financially
| convenient to do so.
| pwdisswordfish0 wrote:
| Having worked in the semiconductor industry, it would be good
| investment for Apple, Google, or Microsoft to get into
| fabbing stuff for themselves and others just on the basis of
| being able to outcompete everyone else in operational
| efficiency. There's a killing to be made from low-hanging
| fruit all over the place, at least for anyone who's able to
| front costs of opening or acquiring a billion dollar fab.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > it would be good investment for Apple, Google, or
| Microsoft to get into fabbing stuff for themselves and
| others just on the basis of being able to outcompete
| everyone else in operational efficiency.
|
| They can try...
|
| Surely they have cash, and so did the Chinese who were
| signing 10 digit cheques for anybody claiming to be able to
| setup a modern fab.
|
| Running a fab is not like running a cat video website, or
| making a cookie cutter electronics from reference designs.
|
| On other hand, if there is a company which can turn off the
| lights on a dotcom companies like them, it will be a big
| fab business.
|
| TSMC's Morris Chang's integrity, and softness, completely
| uncharacteristic to the big ambition, ego, and
| testosterone-driver semi industry, were what made TSMC
| stood out. Dirty play in the semi industry was everywhere
| in nineties.
|
| People who are taking over TSMC from Chang may not share
| his adherence to morals bordering on altruism.
|
| P.S. Saying what that industry was is by no means a meme.
| Early silicon valley businesses would've given a heart
| attack to any modern politically correct business exec.
| Stuff like this was rather common:
|
| https://www.autodesk.com/products/eagle/blog/wp-
| content/uplo...
|
| https://www.autodesk.com/products/eagle/blog/wp-
| content/uplo...
|
| Just read some memories of Fairchild Semi "alums." Stories
| of men from semiconductor companies stealing each other's
| wives _in the most literal sense_ , gallons of expensive
| liquors, contraband Cuban cigars, break-ins into labs, and
| fisticuffs at business meetings were the world of the
| valley back then.
| pwdisswordfish0 wrote:
| > Running a fab is not like running a cat video website,
| or making a cookie cutter electronics from reference
| designs.
|
| You're squaring up against a stickman. The companies
| cited are not fly-by-night startups "running a cat video
| website". Dave Cutler got his start on the factory floor,
| working out better processes for a toilet paper
| manufacturer. Apple has plenty of hardware chops and the
| vertical integration bug. Google shook up telecoms by
| scaring the shit out of the industry incumbents (although
| they could have stood to get their hands dirtier, Cutler-
| style, and stay in the game).
|
| Although none of this is necessary. The fruit hangs so
| low here that all it would really take is someone half
| competent who can see the enormous gains to be had by
| just not doing so many things in the dumbest way
| possible. This isn't bleeding edge stuff. We're talking
| catching up on things that that wouldn't even be
| considered state-of-the-art 25 years ago. Hell, they
| could start just by drastically cutting back on how many
| hires they source from the defense industry and have had
| their minds warped by (and numb to) the bureaucracy and
| bottomless budgets from that world.
|
| > if there is a company which can turn off the lights on
| a dotcom companies like them, it will be a big fab
| business
|
| Not a chance. The semiconductor industry, perversely, has
| _no idea_ how to put computers to use, and the leadership
| and organizational structures are aligned against that
| kind of achievement ever coming from within (or being
| airdropped in by a leadership hire who cuts across the
| lanes from another industry) and making the top-down
| sweeping changes that would be required.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > Not a chance. The semiconductor industry, perversely,
| has no idea how to put computers to use, and the
| leadership and organizational structures are aligned
| against that kind of achievement ever coming from within
| (or being airdropped in by a leadership hire who cuts
| across the lanes from another industry) and making the
| necessary top-down sweeping changes).
|
| I've seen attitudes like this in the industry many times,
| and every time such "bright idea man" comes, a previously
| well faring company dies.
|
| Take a look at Sun Micro, people now will never believe
| that they once had ambitions to "corner" the
| server/internet market the very same way those bright
| "financial strategist" boys suggesting chip companies to
| "go undercut this, and that, and we will own the
| Internet!"
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _if anyone in Texas had the good foresight to winterize
| they could have made a year of profit in a few days_
|
| Price gouging laws generally discourage this business model.
| refulgentis wrote:
| You can sleep a _little_ better: the narrative around this
| ended up being focused around TSMC, but it's simply because
| that's the most visible part of the chain, they're first to a
| new node and all the newest gadgets need the newest node, so
| all the newest gadgets are on TSMC. They're not solely
| responsible for like 90% of chips or anything.
| genmud wrote:
| TSMC might not be responsible for 90% of the chips, but
| estimates are they account for 28% of the mature market [1].
| They don't only do new nodes, but older nodes as well.
| Between them and UMC (also Taiwan based), those 2 companies
| account for 41% of all modern IC production. Micron and
| Powerchip are also big fabs out in Taiwan and if someone were
| to say that 50-60% of all 45nm+ ICs were made in Taiwan I
| would not be surprised.
|
| If there was a geopolitical struggle and the fabs in Taiwan
| were impacted for months or years, we would see the effects
| of that for years or even decades. Its why China, US and EU
| are all trying to build some more resiliency in the supply
| chain. Its also why Taiwan has resisted allowing
| tech/expertise to leave, since the amount of leverage they
| have lets them punch way above their weight and makes them
| such a strategic partner to the rest of the world.
|
| [1] https://semiwiki.com/forum/index.php?threads/tsmc-has-
| the-la....
| post_break wrote:
| As someone with a new phone, managed to find an nvidia card
| at msrp, and who likes computers made by team red, no sorry,
| I'm still not going to sleep good at night. You tell the
| population they cant get new iPhones, you watch the anarchy.
| Not just plebs, but the stock market react to Apple saying no
| new iPhones, actually no iPhones in stock at all. It would be
| devastating not from a "I can't have the shiny new gadget
| waaa".
| refulgentis wrote:
| Apple can quell the stock market crash, depression, and
| ensuing national mental health crisis by going back to what
| they were doing, industry standard practice, dual sourcing
| from Samsung fabs.
|
| AMD/Team Red...well, same thing. They're not due to be on
| the TSMC node you're worried about until 2022 at the _very_
| earliest
| wtallis wrote:
| TSMC is also a bit more geographically diverse than a lot of
| people assume. Their largest fabs are split between three
| different cities in Taiwan, so a fire isn't going to knock
| them all offline. And their smaller or less-advanced fabs
| include several more locations. So it's not quite like the
| semiconductor industry has put all their eggs in one basket,
| even for leading-edge logic nodes.
| jacquesm wrote:
| From a geo-political perspective Taiwan is one basket, and
| not the strongest basket either.
| BostonEnginerd wrote:
| Especially in the automotive sector which is mostly using
| relatively ancient processes.
| baybal2 wrote:
| TSMC alone is >50% of all semiconductors. Add other Taiwanese
| foundries, and you will get in between 60% and 70%.
|
| Add the fact that many globally single vendor members of
| semiconductor supply chain are also in Taiwan, including many
| consumables.
|
| Yes, it's very close to truth.
| throwei4u243 wrote:
| Not to mention the PLA and the turning of mainland back to
| Maoist policies. Taiwan's critical role is the tech sector is
| IMO a deterrent bigger than Nuclear weapons at this point, and
| its invasion may well be a casus belli in the coming years.
| [deleted]
| Nokinside wrote:
| Taiwan is currently having a drought. Water supply to TSMC has
| been limited. TSMC scrambling to secure enough water. Fabs are
| chemical plants that require lots of water.
|
| TSMC Signs Deal For More Than 100 Water Tankers As Taiwan
| Drought Expected To Worsen https://wccftech.com/tsmc-signs-
| deal-for-more-than-100-water...
| jandrese wrote:
| Ouch. Automakers were already struggling with chip supply. This
| is going to shut down production lines.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Since cars generally have a large physical space for chips and
| ample power, why don't automakers just use chips from older
| fabs?
| baybal2 wrote:
| Redesign, and re-certify a car selling at less than 10%
| markup.
|
| You will be underwater for the car's entire remaining
| lifetime on the market.
| digikata wrote:
| Not Toyota, but I don't know how large their mitigation buffer
| was set to. Seems like they took the logistical risk analysis
| more seriously than other makers.
|
| https://www.autoblog.com/2021/03/09/toyota-how-it-avoided-se...
| [deleted]
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> Automakers were already struggling with chip supply_
|
| TBH, that is their own fault.
|
| When the pandemic started a year ago, they chickened out
| thinking people won't have money to buy anymore cars and halted
| production, cancelling orders for semiconductors. Then, when
| the demand for cars exploded, since nobody wanted to be on a
| subway/bus full of people carrying a contagious virus, they
| wanted their chips to resume production, but the semiconductor
| fabs have already allocated the wafer capacity the automakers
| have just freed up to other industries that were booming.
|
| The automakers basically sold both their kidneys to the
| pawnshop for a quick buck and are now trying to buy them back
| during a kidney shortage.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| I'm not sure we should be so quick to fault them. The
| unemployment rate when the pandemic really started building
| up steam was absolutely staggering so a lot of people quite
| reasonably expected a severe recession along with severe
| contraction of consumer demand to follow. That we didn't
| experience one is a minor miracle (and printing of a
| ridiculous amount of money).
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Yes you can, and here's why.
|
| The high unemployment rate during the pandemic was(and
| still is) mostly formed of people working in the service
| industry, travel, minimum wage earners and people with
| little to no skills and those people were having a rough
| time even before the pandemic so they were never on the
| automakers' radar of customers would buy a new car, not in
| a million years. Those people can only afford to buy used.
|
| On the other hand, the typical new car buyer, the middle
| classer and above, saw little unemployment, on the
| contrary, many have seen their best years yet, which is why
| the demand for new cars (among other things) exploded.
| tlb wrote:
| Entirely predictable (in retrospect). The (in mice) of
| economic predictions.
| genmud wrote:
| You absolutely should be quick to fault them... They cut
| off nearly all orders from suppliers anticipating an
| economic downturn and had no risk mitigation strategy if
| they were to resume production. In essence they left the
| line at a concert after hearing rumors the band wasn't
| going to show.
|
| Now they know the concert is definitely on, they want their
| place in the line back and the manufacturers told them to
| pound sand, since there are tons more people paying more
| money than they are.
|
| Automotive manufacturers think they have much more weight
| than they actually do when it comes to purchasing
| electronic components. They definitely came to a rude
| awakening when the chip fabs and manufacturers told them to
| go to the back of the line.
|
| For reference, the entire automotive market in 2020 spent
| 38 billion on semiconductors. Apple alone spent 53 billion
| in 2020.
|
| If you are going to prioritize something, who do you think
| is going to get special treatment?
| centimeter wrote:
| It was really difficult for me to buy a new car last year.
| Customized orders are totally impossible right now. Whatever
| they might have in stock (or have arriving soon), that's what
| you can choose from.
| yabones wrote:
| Already has... I know some people who work IT for a large
| automotive facility in Ontario that have been laid off for 3-4
| weeks already.
|
| It really feels like nobody appreciated just how critical to
| all aspects of our lives semiconductors have become - tiny
| little chips have caused heavy industry to grind to a halt in
| some places.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Nothing like industry heavyweights offloading their mistakes
| onto the common folk.
| raarts wrote:
| As I read elsewhere (don't have the link) this is supposed to be
| the #2 chip supplier for the automotive industry, and the #1 and
| #3 closed down because of the Texas Power outage and are still
| not operational.
|
| Anyone know more?
| Kliment wrote:
| You read it here:
| https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Tech/Semiconductors/Chip-st...
|
| Some more details on the NXP texas fuckup:
| https://outline.com/rfBWzn
| tlb wrote:
| > because the facilities were completely shut down, clean
| rooms were flooded with particles and every piece of
| equipment was contaminated
|
| Ouch. That suggests that they didn't have backup power for
| the positive pressure ventilation system. I hope adding that
| is on someone's todo list for next time.
| [deleted]
| mzs wrote:
| I believe this is the same fire reported on two or three days
| ago. Here are some photos:
| https://www.autoforum.cz/predstaveni/zly-sen-automobilek-hne...
| dgrin91 wrote:
| I'm not super familiar with this space and am a bit confused -
| why is this big on automakers and not other chip consumers? Also
| 300mm seems kind of big for chips? What am I missing?
| mzs wrote:
| Because that's where they make the 300mm wafers they use for
| their engine MCUs:
| https://www.renesas.com/us/en/products/microcontrollers-micr...
| barbegal wrote:
| This should of course be 300nm not 300mm referring to nominal
| feature size on the silicon.
|
| Edit: I'm wrong 300mm refers to the wafer size and the later
| reference in the article to 200nm should be 200mm.
| philipkglass wrote:
| 300 mm is correct. It refers to the wafer size.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wafer_(electronics)#Standard_w...
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Are we sure that it's not 300mm, referring to size of the
| wafer? Although I'm not sure automotive silicon normally takes
| place in 300mm fabs...
| andrewflnr wrote:
| They use 200nm later in the article, but wikipedia[0] says
| that 300mm is a standard wafer size, and fabs are classified
| by the diameter of wafer, so you might be right. I assumed it
| was the feature size before, too.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wafer_(electronics)
| terramex wrote:
| No, 300mm is correct and refers to physical size of whole
| silicon wafer[1]. 300mm (commonly known as 12") is currently
| the biggest class of silicon wafers.
|
| Naka factory was producing 300mm wafers using 28nm process [2].
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wafer_(electronics)#Standard_w...
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat...
| skunkworker wrote:
| Are you sure? It's a 300mm wafer fab.
|
| Here's another article that outlines their current fab wafer
| size.
|
| https://www.eetimes.com/renesas-to-expand-300-mm-fab-in-90-6...
| centimeter wrote:
| It's confusing because they refer to "200nm" in the same
| article.
| waiseristy wrote:
| We as a society are going to have to reckon with how fragile our
| silicon supply chain is eventually... It seems like every other
| year we hear about a fab fire here, or a fab flooding there, and
| then seeing prices rise by 200% for months.
| ISL wrote:
| I think that reckoning has already begun. The number of
| countries requiring that fabs be built locally continues to
| grow.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-03-24 23:01 UTC)