Was recently reading some non-authoritative news that TSMC is also having yield issues on their 3nm. From the sound of it probably not as bad as Samsung. Taken together this doesn't look good for Intel's optimism toward catching up in just a few years.
Which is why those news are clickbait title. For a node that is expected to enter volume production by the end of 2022 / early 2023, having yield issue in Q1 2022 is completely normal. Compared to Samsung which is still having yield issues now on their current 5nm / 4nm node.
These are likely only around 80-100mm^2 (likely because it’s impossible to find die size numbers for recent snapdragon processors — reviewers need to solve this).
Abysmal would be damning their process with faint praise. I wonder if Samsung is even turning a profit or just trying to offset losses.
This has been the case for sometime, I pointed it out way back in 2017 on SemiWiki. They are fine on mature node though, this is only a problem on leading edge.
But credit where credit are due, Samsung didn't give up. Leading edge is hard, and that is saying the least. If you have been wondering where those Samsung NAND and DRAM profits gone, Foundry services. And if you have been asking why TSMC just doesn't hike price. Samsung has been keeping them at bay some what. And if you think TSMC is a monopoly and has no competition. You should spend a weekend doing more reading on Semi-Conductor industry.
https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/technology_node#Leading_edge_tr...
US and the west place a lot of strategic importance in Taiwan so they may come to the defense, but it is unlikely to be defendable for long.
We are seemingly moving towards another Cold War: China and Russia vs US and NATO.
First, we have TSMC working on building in the US, that should be continued and accelerated if possible.
Second, work with Taiwan to force TSMC to split itself into a US and Taiwan division. The US division will be granted all the same intellectual property and will be IPO'd (with TSMC retaining a super majority ownership position; if China ever gets ahold of TSMC, we'd simply force the parent to sell its majority ownership position on national security grounds). But how will Taiwan force that outcome on TSMC? Nation states have fun ways to make things like that happen when it comes to their domestic corporations. But why would Taiwan do that? The same reason they're getting TSMC to build fabs in the US (which is a political move): because we're asking nicely and the US is the only thing keeping Taiwan an independent liberal democracy. TSMC is so big and strategically important, they're a political entity as far as Taiwan is concerned, they're even more outsized vs Taiwan than Samsung is vs South Korea.
What’s plan B?
