TSMC Conference Call Notes

[DanielNenni]

I was actually in Taiwan for this:

REMOVED

I also spoke with some of the guys at Fab 12 about expansion projects for 40nm and 28nm. Rained all week but other than that it was a good trip.

Cheers,

So it looks like you're just going to continue blowing off what you were warned about.
This makes four ADDITIONAL times we have had to remove self promotional links to your site after TWO moderators warned you about it. You can have one link to your site in your sig, and that's it.
You cannot post links within posts to your site. You cannot direct members to click the link or refer to the link in your sig.

See you in a week.
Anandtech Moderator - Keysplayr

 

[ronnn]

28nm starting in June is good news for both nvidia and ati

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

And good news for us as well.

“We have been building capacity as fast as we could and the result is still that demand is 30 per cent greater than supply”

“TSMC’s plants are likely to continue to run at full capacity for the next year”

“In the very short term [over the next nine to 12 months], it makes no sense to ask our customers to give us more orders [because of the lack of capacity]“

Gee, wonder why. Maybe that's because of your crappy 40nm process with horrible yields that's running late?

 

[DanielNenni]

And good news for us as well.


Gee, wonder why. Maybe that's because of your crappy 40nm process with horrible yields that's running late?

That's harsh. Look at the percentage of revenue for 40nm = 14% and climbing. Expect that to be 20% next quarter.

FPGA and GPU people design using beta process models, that's why they call it bleeding edge man. They take risks, sometimes they yield and sometimes they don't. You know those 40nm fab people work around the clock to fix product yielding problems so show some respect.

 

[digitaldurandal]

Didn't a moderator already tell you not to directly link your blog before? Are you dense?

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

That's harsh. Look at the percentage of revenue for 40nm = 14% and climbing. Expect that to be 20% next quarter.

How does TSMC's revenue have anything to do with their yields?

FPGA and GPU people design using beta process models, that's why they call it bleeding edge man. They take risks, sometimes they yield and sometimes they don't. You know those 40nm fab people work around the clock to fix product yielding problems so show some respect.

I give them respect for the 65 and 55nm processes. Why should I give them respect for something that doesn't work like they said it would?

 

[DanielNenni]

How does TSMC's revenue have anything to do with their yields?


I give them respect for the 65 and 55nm processes. Why should I give them respect for something that doesn't work like they said it would?

55nm was no better. I worked on 55nm yield with a GPU company. The problem with half nodes is that you really only get one shot at it. Next design is a new node, lather, rinse, repeat.

If TSMC says to double the VIAs to yield and the customer submits a design with 4 BILLION single VIAs it's TSMC's fault?

Process variability hit 40nm hard. I did several blogs on it. TSMC now has variability built into the process models. 28nm will be even worse since transistor density has increased. It's a process.

 

[bryanW1995]

Didn't a moderator already tell you not to directly link your blog before? Are you dense?

hey, get off his back. As his bio states: "Daniel is intelligent, clever, charming, humble, and a pleasure to work with."

 

[Alex@Nosound]

28nm starting in June is good news for both nvidia and ati

Dunno thought GF where running 28nm for ATI.

 

[Soulkeeper]

excellent read, thank you

 

[DanielNenni]

hey, get off his back. As his bio states: "Daniel is intelligent, clever, charming, humble, and a pleasure to work with."

It should say "Daniel has more money than you so he really does not care what you think."

 

[ronnn]

It should say "Daniel has more money than you so he really does not care what you think."

So why have a blog? Or is just a money thing?

 

[Borealis7]

e-peen. he does it for attention the blog does have pretty graphs though...

 

[DanielNenni]

e-peen. he does it for attention the blog does have pretty graphs though...

Exactly. I need those blog views!

A side benefit is all the research required has made me smarter than you common folk.

It also gives me access to semiconductor industry executives and if they are not truthful they will suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous blog misfortunes!

 

[A_Dying_Wren]

Exactly. I need those blog views!

A side benefit is all the research required has made me smarter than you common folk.

It also gives me access to semiconductor industry executives and if they are not truthful they will suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous blog misfortunes!

Idk... it's one thing to post a helpful link which just so happens to be your own site and another to brag about it and your alleged superiority. See you in a week indeed.

On topic, I don't care what profits TSMC is making but they've really screwed up 40nm and the graphics market. I certainly hope global foundries will be a more than viable competitor soon.

 

[Sylvanas]

It should say "Daniel has more money than you so he really does not care what you think."
A side benefit is all the research required has made me smarter than you common folk.

It sounds like you can't handle criticism and don't know how to respond so instead you say something that makes you look even more stupid with childish retorts.

It also gives me access to semiconductor industry executives and if they are not truthful they will suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous blog misfortunes!

Hate to break it to you but no executives are going to care about some random Internet blogger.

 

[DanielNenni]

It sounds like you can't handle criticism and don't know how to respond so instead you say something that makes you look even more stupid with childish retorts.

Hate to break it to you but no executives are going to care about some random Internet blogger.

It's humor... banter......... I'm a funny guy.

Hey, I'm surprised as much as you are, but yes semiconductor executives give bloggers access. It's all in my blog that I can't post. Once you hit 100k+ views people take you seriously.

My blog can also be found on Design & Reuse, EuroAsia Semiconductor, SoC Design, and a few other semiconductor news aggregators.


Cheers,

 

[DanielNenni]

On topic, I don't care what profits TSMC is making but they've really screwed up 40nm and the graphics market. I certainly hope global foundries will be a more than viable competitor soon.

So it is TSMC's fault? How is that? How is it that other designs yield on TSMC 40nm but not Nvidia?

TSMC is happy to take the blame because it is part of the Taiwanese culture. TSMC is customer centric to a fault. Nvidia did a bad design. They put 4B+ single vias on Fermi. Doubling vias has been in practice since .13 micron. To save power/space you go single via and take the yield hit. That is not TSMCs decision.

TSMC owns the 40nm market and will probably own 28nm. If GFI is going to be competitive they will have to buy capacity. Rumor has it GFI will buy the IBM fabs. GFI hopes to one day ship 100k+ 28nm wafers. TSMC today can ship 200k+ 40/28nm wafers and will have another Gigafab (100k+) wafers online the end of next year.

So, Nvidia will stay with TSMC. ATI will use TSMC at 28nm and second source at GFI 28nm. S3 will stay with TSMC 40nm.

I will be in Taiwan next week. What else do you want to know about TSMC or UMC?

 

[ZimZum]

So it is TSMC's fault? How is that? How is it that other designs yield on TSMC 40nm but not Nvidia?

Didn't ATI also have yield issues in the beginning?

 

[brybir]

So it is TSMC's fault? How is that? How is it that other designs yield on TSMC 40nm but not Nvidia?

TSMC is happy to take the blame because it is part of the Taiwanese culture. TSMC is customer centric to a fault. Nvidia did a bad design. They put 4B+ single vias on Fermi. Doubling vias has been in practice since .13 micron. To save power/space you go single via and take the yield hit. That is not TSMCs decision.

TSMC owns the 40nm market and will probably own 28nm. If GFI is going to be competitive they will have to buy capacity. Rumor has it GFI will buy the IBM fabs. GFI hopes to one day ship 100k+ 28nm wafers. TSMC today can ship 200k+ 40/28nm wafers and will have another Gigafab (100k+) wafers online the end of next year.

So, Nvidia will stay with TSMC. ATI will use TSMC at 28nm and second source at GFI 28nm. S3 will stay with TSMC 40nm.

I will be in Taiwan next week. What else do you want to know about TSMC or UMC?

Looks like GFI will be closing the gap with TSMC if this is true:

Chian said GlobalFoundries was not so far behind TSMC and that soon to be announced capacity expansions would close the gap. "Does that include TSMC's third 100K wafer fab?" Penn asked "The numbers will be comparable," said Chian." http://www.dvhardware.net/article42659.html

And then looking at this:

"With these plans in place, global leading-edge capacity is expected to expand to 1.6 million 300mm wafers annually by 2014. This will be supplemented by 2.2 million 200mm wafers annually.... for a total of 5.8 million 200mm equivalents.

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1186/2/

Seems from these various sources GFI is indeed massively increasing its capacity by both opening new fabs (the one in NY coming online 2012) and perhaps by purchasing other fabs (IBM?). So, while it will remain smaller than TSMC for the time being, it appears they are being aggressive and smart with the ramp in both capacity and time to market. They already won the 28nm A9 Multicore contract among many others and certainly have a very ready and willing large customer (AMD), so I am pretty sure that they will do well as they grow. TSMC does indeed have a very strong competitor that is extremely well financed and staffed by some of the best engineering talent in the world. It will be a good fight to watch and hopefully will help fuel future innovation that benefits all of us.

 

[DanielNenni]

Looks like GFI will be closing the gap with TSMC if this is true:

Chian said GlobalFoundries was not so far behind TSMC and that soon to be announced capacity expansions would close the gap. "Does that include TSMC's third 100K wafer fab?" Penn asked "The numbers will be comparable," said Chian." http://www.dvhardware.net/article42659.html

I know Mojy, he is one of the top executives in the semiconductor industry. He was at Altera, VP of Technology. If you want to know why Altera did NOT have yield problems at TSMC 40nm that would be Mojy. TSMC absolutely wet themselves when he went to Global.

I did a comparative blog on total foundry capacity between TSMC, SMIC, UMC, and Global but I can't post a link or I will get another time-out.

Just look at 300MM capacity which is primarily 40nm and 28nm moving forward:

Global has two 300MM fabs, one in Dresden (AMD) and one in Singapore (Chartered). Combined they can do 100K wafers per month today. The one in New York being built will do 40k wafers per month for a total of 140k.

TSMC has two Gigafabs (Fab 12 & 14) that can produce 200k+ wafers per month. I have been in Fab 12 and let me tell you it is HUGE and completely automated. GigaFab 15 will be online the end of 2011 and will bring another 100k+ wafers per month for a total of 300k+.

TSMC builds fabs at half the cost, in half the time, and only needs to run them at 40% capacity to break even. That will be hard to beat. GlobalFoundries is going to have to go on another buying spree to catch up for sure.

I doubt that the IBM fabs are an option. IBM does most all of the US government military semiconductor work. Top secret, RAD hard stuff etc..... Give DOD semiconductor manufacturing contracts to a company controlled by the United Arab Emirates? Probably not.

GlobalFoundries equity partnering with UMC or SMIC is much more probable.