Comment on Why are so many countries in the world “developing” and poor, while essentially only Western countries have a high standard of living?

• dragontamer@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Global Foundries up in Buffalo, New York had the same exact equipment 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.

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  • kbotc@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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. www.sandia.gov/media/ultra.htm

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  • beatle@aussie.zone ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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:

    The term “3 nanometer” has no direct relation to any actual physical feature (such as gate length, metal pitch or gate pitch) of the transistors. According to the projections contained in the 2021 update of the International Roadmap for Devices and Systems published by IEEE Standards Association Industry Connection, a 3 nm node is expected to have a contacted gate pitch of 48 nanometers and a tightest metal pitch of 24 nanometers.

    Also from Wikipedia:

    South Korean chipmaker Samsung started shipping its 3 nm gate all around (GAA) process, named 3GAA, in mid-2022. On 29 December 2022, Taiwanese chip manufacturer TSMC announced that volume production using its 3 nm semiconductor node termed N3 is under way with good yields.

    In early 2018, IMEC (Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre) and Cadence stated they had taped out 3 nm test chips, using extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) and 193 nm immersion lithography.

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    • dragontamer@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      nanometer is a marketing term now and doesn’t reflect actual sizes. Samsung were first with “3nm”.

      And iPhones chose TSMC’s 3nm, because TSMC is more than just 3nm, but also at a scale and price-point that Apple desires.

      America was doing “3nm” in 2018

      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.

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      • beatle@aussie.zone ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        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.

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