[HN Gopher] A big hurdle to fixing the chip shortage: substrates
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A big hurdle to fixing the chip shortage: substrates
Author : noir-york
Score : 66 points
Date : 2021-09-06 21:39 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| Robotbeat wrote:
| It's strange that this happened. Did COVID just cause everyone to
| stop investing for a bit, leading to all these downstream
| problems? Or was this gonna happen anyway?
| joe_the_user wrote:
| What I see as explanations of the chip shortage is a
| combination of factors.
|
| One immediate cause was that some manufacturers reduced their
| chip orders month in advance since they expected less demand
| but then the demand didn't decrease and they had to scramble,
| increasing general demand. Another immediate cause was that
| Covid has made some production lines shutdown or become
| unreliable.
|
| But the reason that now a year or more on, we have problems,
| seems require more explaining. Larger causes I've heard; The
| chip supply chain is extremely long, long enough so you get a
| whipsaw effect or anti-whipsaw effect. A whipsaw effect means
| by the time demand catches up with supply, it goes beyond it
| and manufacturers lose money. But what seems to be happening is
| an anti-whipsaw effect - suppliers are avoiding any panic
| measures to catch up with demand and so lose money but this
| means the catching up is a long process.
|
| This is something of a product of a highly capital intensive
| economy pushing manufacturers to only produce, invest and
| consume in a narrow range. Limiting investment in capital
| equipment is a way to make the investment you make is 100%
| utilized. Limiting consumption to the lowest priced items is a
| way to make sure all of your production is profitable. It seems
| like a new phenomena. Instead of a "deflationary spiral" these
| factors pushed to their extreme could result in a "decreasing
| production spiral" where physical continually declines despite
| demand. We're not there yet, of course but it seems like an
| interesting economic phenomena.
| dhenneberger wrote:
| It's a demand shock.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| The main thing, particularly for ABF substrates, is that remote
| work drove PC volumes way higher than anyone thought.
| davidw wrote:
| IIRC, some industries did stop or slow investing, foreseeing a
| dip in the economy. The dip proved to be briefer than expected
| though, which is good, but left people scrambling for
| inventory.
|
| The guy who runs my local bike shop is saying they still won't
| have enough bikes next year.
| danielodievich wrote:
| I just came back empty handed from bike shop trying to buy
| some spare tubes. No supply. I better not get too many flats!
| davidw wrote:
| If it's a MTB or gravel bike you may want to invest in a
| tubeless setup.
| frenchy wrote:
| A tubless setup definitely requires some supplies as as
| well.
| burnte wrote:
| It's poorly implemented JIT. People simplified Just In Time to
| mena "no inventory" and then when a disruption hit, it echoed
| up and down supply chains. JIT doesn't mean no inventory, it
| means managing inventory and your supply chain to ensure
| adequate iventory based on needs both current and forseen.
|
| One car example, you should ensure you have 4 times as many
| tires available as you do cars, because an imbalance there
| becomes either a constraint (too few tires) or a waste (too
| many tires). But it's not JUST making those numbers match, you
| have to forecast, how many cars and I going to build, are my
| supplies for the cars ok, look at normal fluctuations, and then
| also look at potential supply chain FAILURES and plan for them.
| Maybe it's easy to get brake pads but the lead time on tires is
| 4 months. Well then, I don't need to stock as many brake pads
| in case of a disruption, but I should definitely have enough
| tires to carry me through a potential disruption (maybe not 4
| months worth, maybe I stock 2 and slow down car production, or
| something).
|
| All these companies kept their shelves bare, and when some
| companies slowed orders, they didn't stop to think that the
| manufacturers they bought from would look for other customers
| to take up capacity. They acted like TSMC would sit there by
| the phone waiting for some customer to come back. No, they're
| in the business of selling chips, not in the business of
| servicing DumbCorp. No one planned for what might happen if
| they stopped ordering parts, they just expected the capacity to
| be there.
|
| I'm bringing 6 new sites online this year, and a 7th early in
| the new year. I just bought a bunch of network equipment for
| not just our existing sites, but the 7 to come. I looked at
| supply chain issues, and said to my CFO, this inventory is
| going to sit here for 6 months, but we get a larger quantity
| discount, and we'll get the new sites online faster and not
| worry about getting this equipment if we buy now. We COULD have
| saved that money now, but the advantages of having it when we
| need it is greater than having that money in the bank for 6
| more months.
|
| JIT means planning ahead, not just micromanaging inventory. Too
| many MBAs don't get that.
| runawaybottle wrote:
| Your description doesn't sound too different (if at all) from
| the face mask/ventilator shortage at the start of the
| pandemic. We didn't stock up, and everyone tried to JIT
| purchase the necessary equipment.
|
| Maybe we all have something to learn from Doomsday preppers.
| burnte wrote:
| > Maybe we all have something to learn from Doomsday
| preppers.
|
| A little, but really just implementing the Toyota
| Production System properly. You'll never be perfectly
| prepared for everything, but a lot of the mess over the
| past 18 months of supply chain problems could have been
| avoided. In my personal life, I am NOT a prepper, but the
| way I stock my house, I had no issues with toilet paper,
| meat, or other weird shortages. I look at what I have no,
| what I'll need adn when, and how things are going. I didn't
| look for TP when I was out, I looked for it a week or two
| ahead of time.
| philg_jr wrote:
| The developer of the O.MG cable has a good Twitter thread
| describing the issues.
|
| https://twitter.com/_mg_/status/1388321639524229120?s=21
| engineer_22 wrote:
| Unrolled thread:
|
| https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1388321639524229120.html
| contingencies wrote:
| This is a pretty good summary. Note on interpretation: it
| links to people expressing surprise about 12 months after
| the shit had hit the fan.
|
| IMHO a strong mitigation strategy includes (1) have control
| of your designs (be responsive to your business
| environment) (2) minimize vendor-specific components
| (replace sexy ICs with stock-components where possible) (3)
| keep tested alternatives on the books for major components
| (redundant supply chain) (4) cache parts where necessary
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| Chip investment was already down-shifted in 2019 because it was
| a down year based on historical semiconductor cycles.
|
| Then COVID triggered a collapse of nearly all JIT supply chains
| (not just medical). Try getting ANY industrial or consumer
| product - the supply chains are all broken right now. Some of
| this is China intentionally fxcking us. Some of it is over
| dependence on outsourcing. Most is due to inherent instability
| of JIT as a fundamental flaw that's long been ignored.
|
| Many supply chains have both short and long feedback loops to
| themselves. For example ALL the equipment required to increase
| semiconductor capacity always require the very same
| semiconductor supply chain capacity (chip making requires chips
| being made).
| cronix wrote:
| Let's say that all Banana growers were shut down for 8 months
| and during that time all existing supply was bought up that
| were sitting on store shelves. After they were allowed to start
| growing again, how long until you see a Banana in your local
| store? You better be there when they arrive, because everyone
| else who has been wanting Bananas is waiting too.
|
| On top of that, can the Banana grower even get all of the items
| needed to grow the same sized crop as last year? All of the
| fertilizers, etc.? Those companies have been shut down during
| this time too. Oh, you're not the only company who needs those
| exact same supplies and the Potato farmer down the road is
| trying to purchase it too? After you've grimaced that the price
| has risen due to short supply and you had to source the items
| from 3x as many suppliers as you used to, now, you're relieved
| that your Bananas are almost done growing. You call the
| trucking company to deliver them to the distributor, who you
| learn is short staffed and prices have risen in order to
| attract truckers who are now in short supply, and factor in the
| gas price increases. Every single segment of the economy that
| the Banana grower relied on is going through the same thing, at
| the same time.
|
| Making chips is several orders of magnitude harder/more complex
| than growing Bananas. Think about how many different companies
| products must be purchased to make a wafer. How many different
| highly specialized chemicals are used in addition to solid
| materials? If any single one of them is having supply or labor
| issues...
| nostrademons wrote:
| Also imagine that there are no truck drivers to drive the
| bananas from the plantations to your local stores, and no
| ships to bring fertilizer to the banana plantations. Even
| when they start growing again, it's going to be a while
| before you can get one.
|
| Supply chains in general are in shambles. We had mass COVID
| outbreaks at the ports that shut down unloading, as well as
| outbreaks at see. Truck drivers are quitting because it ain't
| worth their while anymore. Countries closed their borders.
| Patterns of consumer demand changed, so all the containers
| got stuck in North America.
|
| Chips are the most obvious manifestation of this because the
| supply chains for them are long and complex, but we're going
| to see it in many other products as well once inventory
| buffers run out.
| avs733 wrote:
| Chips are also obvious because they are a discrete thing
| that is at the end of one long supply chain and then
| beginning of other long supply chains.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Also imagine that there are no truck drivers to drive the
| bananas from the plantations to your local stores, and no
| ships to bring fertilizer to the banana plantations.
|
| In the UK, the situation is even worse: because there is an
| acute shortage of truckers to truck pigs from farms to
| slaughterhouses and a lack of butchers, 100k pigs are set
| to be killed and burned - they simply grow each day, and
| butchers have limits on how big/heavy the pigs may be:
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9958663/Farms-
| set-k...
|
| Turns out, no one but immigrants wanting to send or set
| aside money for their home country wants to do the job for
| the wage the companies are paying. And companies can't pay
| better wages because customers are conditioned on cheap
| meat. And politicians haven't done _anything_ to curb that
| because tolerating rising food prices is one of the fastest
| ways of not getting reelected.
|
| Brexit really hit at the worst possible time, and now
| innocent pigs have to suffer for society's failures. What a
| damn tragic waste.
| jaywalk wrote:
| > now innocent pigs have to suffer for society's
| failures.
|
| They were going to be killed no matter what. I don't
| think it matters much to the pig what happens after it's
| dead.
| autoexec wrote:
| It should matter to us when the inevitable killing of the
| animal (along with the environmental harm incurred by
| raising it) take place without any benefit to us. Our
| society has decided those terrible costs are worth it in
| exchange for bacon and hot dogs. When these animals are
| raised and wasted they'll have suffered for nothing and
| the rest of us will suffer for it.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Yes but it's a huge waste of resources that only the
| farmer is paying for. They paid to house, feed,
| innoculate, etc those pigs. Killing them to burn them
| realizes no profit for them.
| vkou wrote:
| Countries have closed their borders to casual travel, but
| not to shipping.
| thehappypm wrote:
| China, notably, closes ports to end outbreaks.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I don't think it's that the fabs were shut down because of
| covid, but rather because automotive manufacturers (and
| presumably others) forecasted record low sales for 2020 and
| canceled all of their chip orders such that chip suppliers
| and upstream fabs had to lay off staff and so on. As I
| understand it, this was what reduced fab capacity, not "fabs
| were closing to avoid the risk of covid".
|
| On the flip side, rather than demand _decreasing_ as auto
| manufacturers expected, it actually _spiked_ , and automotive
| manufacturers demanded _more_ chips and were willing to pay
| $$$ for it. So other industries that use chips and accurately
| forecasted their demand were now bidding against automotive
| manufacturers for that fab capacity.
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| Auto makers and others are part of the problems with
| forecasted demand, but there are also larger supply chain
| issues. Basically every part of the industry, going back to
| raw materials, is having similar shortages; either because
| people shut down for COVID or because they, too,
| underestimated demand during the pandemic.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I suspect it has a lot more to do with failing to
| properly forecast in general, whether overestimation or
| underestimation. Supply chains are finely tuned for life
| as usual and they take a long time to recalibrate.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _Let 's say that all Banana growers were shut down for 8
| months and during that time all existing supply was bought up
| that were sitting on store shelves._
|
| -- But chip manufacturers didn't shut down. That's even close
| to the immediate cause, which was that the anticipation of
| changed future demand on the part of other manufacturers lead
| to them decreasing and change future orders. If you're going
| to ELI5("explain this to me like a five year old"), at least
| give some reasonably analogous situation, jeesh.
|
| I mean, I think people understand that supply takes some time
| to catch up with demand when you have a complex,
| interdependent economy. But the adjustment to this shock has
| taken longer than seems reasonable or seems like happened in
| the past so more data than X has to adjust for Y which has to
| adjust for Z is appropriate.
| detaro wrote:
| Not that massively, but various plants had to shut down at
| various times, which really isn't helping matters. It's not
| just "misjudged demand", that would be relatively easy to
| fix or be limited to few sectors if everything otherwise
| ran at needed capacity.
| MarkSweep wrote:
| Some fabs did shutdown this year. One in Japan due to a
| fire and some in Texas due to power loss. I think both are
| back up and running, but it did not help to lose
| production.
|
| https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2021/03/30/20
| 0...
|
| https://www.statesman.com/story/business/2021/04/30/austin-
| f...
| vidanay wrote:
| A closer analogy might be that all of the banana growers
| were told they should grow mangos, so the plowed under the
| banana trees and planted mangos.
| stagger87 wrote:
| Don't forget people panic buying extra bananas so they have
| inventory in case banana production shuts down again.
| contingencies wrote:
| This is now the main problem.
| fidesomnes wrote:
| Supply change disruption before a major war.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/EdmX9
| [deleted]
| lovich wrote:
| >Now major chip companies are resorting to unusual tactics. They
| are placing orders far in advance and prepaying so that substrate
| companies have ample cash to build more factories. Some are
| committing to buying the entire supply of new production lines to
| give their suppliers confidence to invest.
|
| If the chip makers are investing this much money into the
| substrate businesses, why aren't they just purchasing some of
| these companies wholesale?
| azemetre wrote:
| It costs over $5 billion dollars to build a single fab. I can
| only assume the more complicated chips costs 3-4 times more.
|
| It also takes over three years to build the plant itself. We
| aren't even talking about the people you'd even need to employ,
| design, and run the place (highly specialized labor).
|
| This is such a huge burdensome cost. It's not even a guarantee
| that that such an investment would even make sense once 5-years
| pass.
|
| I do think there should be more fabs and having them located in
| one area of the world is already playing out to be a
| geopolitical nightmare. It's obviously going to become a
| national security issue for nearly every industrialized country
| on earth over the next decade if not sooner.
| [deleted]
| lovich wrote:
| In the article it says they are committing to buying the
| entire production lines output. Isn't that just committing to
| spending as much money as building the factories + the profit
| of the vendor, but with no control over the actual production
| ?
| andrewxdiamond wrote:
| It's very unlikely that the deal says "we will buy
| everything you sell us no matter what." It's probably a
| typical purchasing agreement with tolerances and QA, just
| paid in advance.
|
| Thus there is still a lot of risk being taken on by the
| fabs. The production could go sour, geopolitics could
| change, resources might be unavailable, etc.
|
| The purchasing companies are externalizing all of this risk
| by purchasing the products instead of the company.
| hfktktnfkgk wrote:
| The chip companies also know that they will definitely buy
| electricity in the future, yet they are not buying power
| plants.
|
| In a sense, buying the future substrate production is just a
| future substrate contract.
|
| Do you know how building a power plant is financed today?
| Basically someone buys 10 years of gas futures, sells 10 years
| of equivalent electricity futures, and uses the profit (since
| electricity is more expensive than gas) to build the power
| plant that will turn the bought gas into the sold electricity.
| petra wrote:
| Buying a company is much more expensive than paying for a
| manufacturing line.
| cure wrote:
| From TFA:
|
| > By 2025, she foresees demand for around 185 million square feet
| of advanced substrate manufacturing space against about 145
| million square feet built.
|
| It's curious that the production capacity for substrate is
| expressed in terms of manufacturing space. Is that an industry-
| specific quirk?
| usui wrote:
| Lol every time I see the word "feet" I'm reminded that this
| article isn't targeted to anyone but Americans, even when
| talking about manufacturing lines in Asia. My East Asian bias
| is showing but in all my experience I absolutely have never had
| to use those units in a serious professional context. Any time
| I see a technically-sounding article use units like "feet" and
| "football fields" I subconsciously find it very difficult to
| take anything afterward seriously.
|
| I admit it's irrational since units are arbitrary and
| orthogonal anyway, but it seems... forced. Is it really
| necessary to use those units in a technical context in order to
| relate to your readers?
|
| EDIT: Lots of America-centric people are jumping onto me for
| this initial comment, stating that WSJ is built for its /true/
| target audience, /Americans/. What sparked my comment was the
| fact I was reading this article in Japanese. The aforementioned
| numbers and graph are expressed in feet, so this kind of forced
| conversion across industry domain and language barrier seemed
| contrived and got me started on this train of thought.
|
| https://jp.wsj.com/articles/the-chip-shortage-has-made-a-sta...
| burkaman wrote:
| Yes, it is necessary to use language that is familiar to most
| of your audience when writing something.
| genewitch wrote:
| The difference between 185 million ft^2 and whatever you pick
| doesn't matter. It may as well be in hectares or "multiples
| of some lake somewhere", it's a massive number.
|
| You have, and are probably using right now, a voice
| controlled computer that can convert anything to anything
| else, by just asking.
|
| Is it really worth typing this every time an American site
| uses American language? We all get it, Americans with their
| imperial units, ha ha.
| usui wrote:
| I think you might have missed that I already stated that
| it's an irrational thing to complain about because units in
| nature are arbitrary, but given that no one uses these
| units for the topic at hand, why use them at all? Just for
| relatability?
|
| > It may as well be in hectares or "multiples of some lake
| somewhere", it's a massive number.
|
| We're saying the same thing but arguing for the opposite.
| Like I said, no one in a technical capacity uses these
| units seriously. So then if the number is so conceptually
| massively big and the units don't matter, why go through
| the extra forced effort of converting to imperial? Just use
| the units that the specifications come in and the numbers
| that the factories use?
|
| The more you play with vast unit conversions like this, the
| more you risk losing information across sources/citations.
| What if I want to do my own research later on? It's more
| work if I'm searching for specific numbers on Google. We
| also know just how terrible Google Search results are
| getting nowadays, so...
|
| > We all get it, Americans with their imperial units, ha
| ha.
|
| I think this is an uncharitable interpretation of my
| comment. I'm not trying to make fun of Americans, I'm
| trying to understand what the extra efort is worth for?
| [deleted]
| cptskippy wrote:
| > I'm not trying to make fun of Americans, I'm trying to
| understand what the extra efort is worth for?
|
| Quit being dishonest. You're not trying to understand
| because it's really fucking easy to understand.
|
| If you really truly want an answer, it's relatablity.
|
| If you ask the vast majority of Americans how many
| centimeters are in a foot, you'll get blank stares. If
| you ask them how long 30 centimeters are you'll get blank
| stares. If you ask them how long a foot is they'll hold
| up their hands about a foot apart.
|
| Americans use imperial units because it's what they used
| daily, what they're familiar with, and what they know.
| It's really not that hard to understand.
|
| Think about if you had to switch from Metric to Imperial.
| Just think about all the wonky units and how overwhelming
| it would be. That's how Americans think about the Metric
| system.
|
| But it's easy you say, everything is 100 up or down. So?
| That doesn't help with the simple fact that it's
| completely unrelatable.
| usui wrote:
| > Quit being dishonest. You're not trying to understand
| because it's really fucking easy to understand.
|
| Again, being very disingenuous. I'm sorry that it's so
| offensive to you that I was reading the article in
| Japanese and found it very strange that imperial units
| were leaking across not only domain topics
| (semiconductors), but language itself. If you ask me,
| it's more obtrusive this way than the other way around. I
| thought it wouldn't be too much of an ask to use the
| original units that the entire industry uses
|
| This touts a certain kind of agenda that Americans should
| be pandered to, and I think your aggressive tone reflects
| that.
|
| I hope you're aware that a very well-supported Japanese
| edition of The Wall Street Journal exists, and its target
| audience is Japanese readers. It usually handles
| localization extremely well. I was reading the non-
| English article and saw it was using imperial units both
| in the text and graphs and I had to do a double take.
| This is the entire reason why I found it interesting.
|
| https://jp.wsj.com/articles/the-chip-shortage-has-made-a-
| sta...
|
| As previously mentioned, the scale is massively big. Does
| the WSJ think its viewers will perceive 17,187,062 square
| meters as small?
| cptskippy wrote:
| > I'm sorry that it's so offensive to you
|
| Let's clarify. You're sorry that I find your insults
| offensive?
|
| > Lol every time I see the word "feet" I'm reminded that
| this article isn't targeted to anyone but Americans
|
| > I absolutely have never had to use those units in a
| serious professional context.
|
| > Any time I see a technically-sounding article use units
| like "feet" and "football fields" I subconsciously find
| it very difficult to take anything afterward seriously.
|
| You basically said "the American units of measure are
| unprofessional and I can't take anyone seriously when
| they use them" and you wonder why that might be
| offensive?
|
| You're reading an American newspaper about things topical
| to Americans. Are you reading it for laughs then? I don't
| understand.
|
| It's ok to not like the Imperial system, most Americans
| hate it too. And we're stuck with it until momentum can
| built to change that fact. But what you're exhibiting is
| elitism and snobbery.
| usui wrote:
| > Let's clarify. You're sorry that I find your insults
| offensive?
|
| > You basically said "the American units of measure are
| unprofessional and I can't take anyone seriously when
| they use them" and you wonder why that might be
| offensive?
|
| > Are you reading it for laughs then? I don't understand.
|
| I tried to make it clear that I was describing my own
| experiences and biases, and I admitted that the units
| (when taken alone, by themselves) are arbitrary, and so
| it's irrational to harbor this subconscious, yet you
| still seem fully set on being offended rather than taking
| my descriptions at face value.
|
| I think in the future your conversations could go better
| if you put less effort into deconstructing people's
| ulterior motives.
|
| > It's ok to not like the Imperial system, most Americans
| hate it too. And we're stuck with it until momentum can
| built to change that fact. But what you're exhibiting is
| elitism and snobbery.
|
| Sure, sounds good.
| VortexDream wrote:
| I don't understand why you're being so antagonistic. Cut
| it out.
| q-big wrote:
| > If you really truly want an answer, it's relatablity.
|
| > If you ask the vast majority of Americans how many
| centimeters are in a foot, you'll get blank stares. If
| you ask them how long 30 centimeters are you'll get blank
| stares. If you ask them how long a foot is they'll hold
| up their hands about a foot apart.
|
| > Americans use imperial units because it's what they
| used daily, what they're familiar with, and what they
| know. It's really not that hard to understand.
|
| xkcd has a comic to make metric units more relatable:
| https://xkcd.com/526/
| cptskippy wrote:
| > why use them at all? Just for relatability?
|
| Yes. Was that hard?
|
| The WSJ didn't write this article for you, it isn't an
| industry rag. This is like complaining that their
| scientific articles try to dumb it down for a layman's
| depth.
|
| A football field or soccer field is a perfectly
| reasonable unit of measure when you're simply trying to
| convey "a lot" to someone.
| trangus_1985 wrote:
| I don't particularly agree with the parent comment, but
| you are being oddly aggressive over something that is a
| real problem - communicating things is hard and it's a
| useful topic to consider in a world that increasingly
| runs on text-based communication.
| elefanten wrote:
| Yes, in short it's for relatability. You're talking about
| a general circulation newspaper -- and one of the very
| biggest at that.
|
| At the end of the day, their customer is the general
| _American_ news consumer, and what they read has to make
| sense to _them_.
|
| A technical or industry-aware American probably won't go
| to WSJ first for their technical / industry news.
| [deleted]
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Funny, because it's about 1700Ha, what is a perfectly
| relatable number, or, if you like your numbers small,
| 1.7km^2. That's around the size of a district.
| cvs268 wrote:
| You sir/madam, have mastered the art of saying a lot and yet
| saying nothing.
| smoldesu wrote:
| "On one occasion, as Master Foo was traveling to a conference
| with a few of his senior disciples, he was accosted by a
| hardware designer.
|
| The hardware designer said: "It is rumored that you are a great
| programmer. How many lines of code do you write per year?"
|
| Master Foo replied with a question: "How many square inches of
| silicon do you lay out per year?"
|
| "Why...we hardware designers never measure our work in that
| way," the man said.
|
| "And why not?" Master Foo inquired.
|
| "If we did so," the hardware designer replied, "we would be
| tempted to design chips so large that they cannot be fabricated
| - and, if they were fabricated, their overwhelming complexity
| would make it be impossible to generate proper test vectors for
| them."
|
| Master Foo smiled, and bowed to the hardware designer.
|
| In that moment, the hardware designer achieved enlightenment."
|
| - Master Foo and the Hardware Designer:
| http://catb.org/esr/writings/unix-koans/index.html
| cartoonworld wrote:
| Seems reasonable, semi is fabbed with a lithographic process,
| the # of devices on the wafer isn't necessarily tightly coupled
| with size, has variable resolution and defects.
|
| The work unit is completed wafers that later get binned into
| different device quality levels.
|
| Makes sense when your biz is to blast plasma over mm2 of
| silicon
| evancox100 wrote:
| What you're saying seems to make sense if they were referring
| to output in terms of total area of substrates produced, but
| instead sounds like TFA is talking about manufacturing floor
| space
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