Hello Everyone,
Today I ran about two interesting articles (they are unfortunately in Hungarian, but they may be found in English somewhere, or use a translator):
https://index.hu/gazdasag/2020/05/15/a_feher_haz_fokozza_a_nyomast_a_huaweir... https://index.hu/techtud/2020/05/18/huawei_egyesult_allamok_amerika_keresked...
Short warp-up: 1. USA government practically bans domestic and overseas licensees and users of US semiconductor IP and technology (including fab equipment) worldwide to do business with the Chinese, 2. Huawei's supplier TSMC stops accepting orders from Huawei, 3. TSMC opens new fab and relocates R+D to the USA for USD12bn.
The bad side is that (besides the apparent restart of the Cold War) our experience with HKUST's CMP machine (no spare parts) may become the new global norm in the near future.
The good side is that the bad side may undermine trust in the reliablity of US suppliers and devaluate their IP, while up-rating the value and importance of the open-source, worldwidely distributed silicon ecosystem that is not bound to to any corporation bound to a government (e.g. Kyrin is more or less based on ARM, whose licensing and subjection to US export control is an attack surface, while its direct competitor RISC-V is free of such restrictions), as companies may perceive either the US may say "You are the next who is locked out", or their non-US supplier may say next " I lock You out".
Regards, Ferenc
That was the writing on the wall.
Not only the bleeding edge availability now put to doubt, even seemingly routine 90nm+ tapeouts on mature nodes are only hanging by 3-4 fabs if you need volume. The industry needs a 300mm wafer solution for high volume 90-180nm parts, but as everybody went chasing the bleeding edge, not much capacity is remaining on "legacy" nodes. 200mm doesn't cut it for popular ICs that don't benefit a lot economically from advanced nodes.
So now, they not only left without latest nodes, but have to go to Taiwan even for making something like the simplest MCUs, discrete logic, and 74 series parts. No need to mention that the situation with specialty fabs would be even worse.
On Tue, May 19, 2020 at 2:06 AM Éger Ferenc eegerferenc@gmail.com wrote:
Hello Everyone,
Today I ran about two interesting articles (they are unfortunately in Hungarian, but they may be found in English somewhere, or use a translator):
https://index.hu/gazdasag/2020/05/15/a_feher_haz_fokozza_a_nyomast_a_huaweir... https://index.hu/techtud/2020/05/18/huawei_egyesult_allamok_amerika_keresked...
Short warp-up:
- USA government practically bans domestic and overseas licensees and users of US semiconductor IP and technology (including fab equipment) worldwide to do business with the Chinese,
- Huawei's supplier TSMC stops accepting orders from Huawei,
- TSMC opens new fab and relocates R+D to the USA for USD12bn.
The bad side is that (besides the apparent restart of the Cold War) our experience with HKUST's CMP machine (no spare parts) may become the new global norm in the near future.
The good side is that the bad side may undermine trust in the reliablity of US suppliers and devaluate their IP, while up-rating the value and importance of the open-source, worldwidely distributed silicon ecosystem that is not bound to to any corporation bound to a government (e.g. Kyrin is more or less based on ARM, whose licensing and subjection to US export control is an attack surface, while its direct competitor RISC-V is free of such restrictions), as companies may perceive either the US may say "You are the next who is locked out", or their non-US supplier may say next " I lock You out".
Regards, Ferenc
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