Discussion Leading Edge Foundry Node advances (TSMC, Samsung Foundry, Intel)

Page 113 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

DisEnchantment

Golden Member
Mar 3, 2017
1,615
5,865
136
TSMC's N7 EUV is now in its second year of production and N5 is contributing to revenue for TSMC this quarter. N3 is scheduled for 2022 and I believe they have a good chance to reach that target.


N7 performance is more or less understood.


This year and next year TSMC is mainly increasing capacity to meet demands.

For Samsung the nodes are basically the same from 7LPP to 4 LPE, they just add incremental scaling boosters while the bulk of the tech is the same.

Samsung is already shipping 7LPP and will ship 6LPP in H2. Hopefully they fix any issues if at all.
They have two more intermediate nodes in between before going to 3GAE, most likely 5LPE will ship next year but for 4LPE it will probably be back to back with 3GAA since 3GAA is a parallel development with 7LPP enhancements.




Samsung's 3GAA will go for HVM in 2022 most likely, similar timeframe to TSMC's N3.
There are major differences in how the transistor will be fabricated due to the GAA but density for sure Samsung will be behind N3.
But there might be advantages for Samsung with regards to power and performance, so it may be better suited for some applications.
But for now we don't know how much of this is true and we can only rely on the marketing material.

This year there should be a lot more available wafers due to lack of demand from Smartphone vendors and increased capacity from TSMC and Samsung.
Lots of SoCs which dont need to be top end will be fabbed with N7 or 7LPP/6LPP instead of N5, so there will be lots of wafers around.

Most of the current 7nm designs are far from the advertized density from TSMC and Samsung. There is still potential for density increase compared to currently shipping products.
N5 is going to be the leading foundry node for the next couple of years.

For a lot of fabless companies out there, the processes and capacity available are quite good.
 

Hitman928

Diamond Member
Apr 15, 2012
5,339
8,100
136
Because it's basically the unwritten rule for incredibly designs. Expect later than earlier, almost always. For the few times they got it earlier, many other times they did not. It's still basically Apple ramping their lineup.

What?

Not necessarily. Intel 3 may be a smaller change but Sierra Forest is just half a year behind. They got design side problems as well. An extreme example would be using Sapphire Rapids to say Intel 7 lead times are 2 years or something.

If Intel actually gets SRF out in volume by 1H24, that will be great work for Intel. It's still just a '+' node but it will still probably be the only one of their 5 nodes in 4 years that is able to actually ramp on time. Intel 4, 20a, and 18a are all 1 year or more from manufacturing ready to HVM. Last I heard though, SRF QSs still weren't out which puts some doubt on that timeline. It was a couple of months ago though, so it's possible they are out now and can meet their roadmap.
 

Doug S

Platinum Member
Feb 8, 2020
2,284
3,553
136
It's a very daring bet to assume that the combined forces of Microsoft, Google, AMD, Intel and Tenstorrent won't be able to challenge and diminish Nvidia's role in the AI space. Sure they must've some of the brightest people on the planet but not ALL of the brightest people on the planet. Someone on the other side making a big enough breakthrough in AI and then patenting it could easily put Nvidia's market leading position in peril.

Sure that can happen but not overnight. Let's say someone (doesn't matter who) announces new shiny that beats Nvidia's price/performance by 2x. How long until it is available? How long after first shipments will it take to meet demand? How much change is required on the software side? It would be several years before it had a major impact on Nvidia's sales. Sure, such an announcement would hit Nvidia's stock price, but it would recover as people realized "they are still going to be selling all they can make for the next several years until this new thing is available and able to meet demand, and Nvidia may have something in the pipeline that beats it before then".

Nvidia won't own the AI market to the extent they do today forever, and it might collapse under the weight of its hype like it has in the past. There are always risks.

Like I said, I wish I had bought a lot more NVDA when I did, but since I didn't the size of my "bet" (the original purchsae) was barely six figures. Had I been "daring" it would have been closer to seven, but I didn't foresee the major AI hype cycle that's happened since. Had I been that daring before I'm sure I'd be more cautious now and doing some serious profit taking to insure I came out well ahead no matter what happened to it down the road.
 
Reactions: Tlh97 and SpudLobby

DavidC1

Member
Dec 29, 2023
175
238
76
If Intel actually gets SRF out in volume by 1H24, that will be great work for Intel. It's still just a '+' node but it will still probably be the only one of their 5 nodes in 4 years that is able to actually ramp on time. Intel 4, 20a, and 18a are all 1 year or more from manufacturing ready to HVM. Last I heard though, SRF QSs still weren't out which puts some doubt on that timeline. It was a couple of months ago though, so it's possible they are out now and can meet their roadmap.
They just announced Xeon 6 E-core based Sierra Forest shipping in Q2.
 

Curious_Inquirer

Junior Member
Sep 5, 2022
17
51
51
Pretty interesting thread on SemiWiki about how Apple might use Advanced Semiconductor Packaging. https://semiwiki.com/forum/index.ph...which-might-be-used-on-apple’s-m4-chip.20034/

Apple will reportedly use SoIC with Hybrid molding (thermoplastic carbon fiber board composite molding technology). The company is currently conducting a small-scale trial production and will reportedly start mass production in 2025. The company is expected to use this next-generation packaging method in its next generation of AI-powered Apple Silicon or the M4 chip.

TSMC’s SoIC is the industry’s first high-density 3D chip stacking technology which enables heterogenous integration of chips with different sizes using Chip-on-Wafer packaging. This innovative packaging method was first introduced in 2018. Reportedly, the planned advanced packaging facility in Chiayi, Taiwan will not only include two CoWoS (Chip on Wafer on Substrate) plants but also an SoIC facility.

Notably, AMD is TSMC’s first customer to adopt SoIC technology. The company used this SoIC tech along with CoWoS on the Instinct MI300 AI accelerator chips, designed for data centers.

As per Mark Gurman, Apple has officially commenced the development of the M4 chip, which will likely debut with the next-generation MacBook Pro. As TrendForce noted, there’s a possibility that Apple will switch to a 2nm process node for the M4 chip.

Regarding the release of the next Apple Silicon, we can see nearly a one and a half year gap between each of the previous iterations. The Apple M1 was released back in November 2020, the M2 was released in June 2022, and the M3 chip was released towards the end of October (a bit earlier) last year. So we can expect Apple to release the M4 chip in the first half of next year.”
Source: Gizmochina

Edit: added the source.
 

Doug S

Platinum Member
Feb 8, 2020
2,284
3,553
136
Greater flexibility and higher memory bandwidth and lower latency due to it being packaged much closer to the logic chip.

Apple is ALREADY using CoWoS, this is just a variation on that. They can't get "much closer to the logic chip" as it is already practically touching the edge where the memory controller lives.
 

SpudLobby

Senior member
May 18, 2022
601
371
96
I don’t even understand what “closer to the chip” meant in context here. If talking about DRAM which I assume he was, that doesn’t make sense in any meaningful way, yeah.
 

Doug S

Platinum Member
Feb 8, 2020
2,284
3,553
136
Maybe someone has already linked this when it came out a couple weeks ago and I missed it, but I found it interesting. A little less optimistic than Ian's article about Intel's foundry. The comparison between their estimate that Intel 4 has run about 20k wafers TOTAL since their much ballyhooed "manufacturing ready" date while TSMC produces over twice that per month just for Apple is pretty stark.

This is why I question what Intel's claims about "manufacturing ready" even mean. A rather small botique chiplet running 1500 wafers a month does not qualify as "volume" in my book. Until they are pushing out an order of magnitude more than that per month with 18A I won't consider foundry level "volume" to even started - and it'll still be an order of magnitude less than what TSMC reaches when it is in full mass production with N3 by the end of this year (supposedly 150k wpm)

If Intel is right that it needs $25-$30b of capex to build 10k wpm, the $120b they say they have to spend only gets them to 50k wpm best case. That's barely enough to handle just Apple, so I guess we shouldn't hold out breath for them to get Apple as a customer until sometime beyond the 10A generation in the 2030s at the absolute earliest.

https://www.semianalysis.com/p/is-intel-back-foundry-and-product
 

Hitman928

Diamond Member
Apr 15, 2012
5,339
8,100
136
What abt AMD? It seems even they aren't using TSMC N2 in late 2025 either. So the question is, if both Apple & AMD aren't using TSMC N2 in late 2025, then who is?

TSMC doesn’t count revenue until products are shipped to customers, which is a few months after receiving the design for tapeout. So, if TSMC is saying N2 revenue starts in Q1 or Q2 of 2026, that means the design company sent the design for tapeout in late 2025 or very early 2026, right around when TSMC is scheduled to go HVM on N2.
 

Ajay

Lifer
Jan 8, 2001
15,484
7,883
136

From TSMC call. It seems Apple is not the first customer on N2 this time.
Last rumor I saw were for A19 to be on N2P with backside power. Don't really know. That would mean N2P would have high enough volume for Apple (probably for A19 Pro) by Q2 2026 - which seems unlikely. So maybe Apple isn't first, but will be using it, just a quarter behind AMD or whoever else.
 

jur

Junior Member
Nov 23, 2016
18
4
81
Intel to use direct self assembly + high-NA euv for 14A process: https://www.semianalysis.com/p/intels-14a-magic-bullet-directed
Apparently this is why Intel is buying all these high NA tools. According to the link, Intel could scale M0 metal pitch all the way to ~20nm, which seems again very aggressive (down from 36nm in 18A). If other structures scale accordingly, this could result in large density increase... Let's hope they don't repeat 10nm fiasco. Imo, a much less risky approach would be to use DSA + low-NA EUV tool (M0 could still come down to ~30nm + they could use the same tools as for Intel 3 and 18A).
 
sale-70-410-exam    | Exam-200-125-pdf    | we-sale-70-410-exam    | hot-sale-70-410-exam    | Latest-exam-700-603-Dumps    | Dumps-98-363-exams-date    | Certs-200-125-date    | Dumps-300-075-exams-date    | hot-sale-book-C8010-726-book    | Hot-Sale-200-310-Exam    | Exam-Description-200-310-dumps?    | hot-sale-book-200-125-book    | Latest-Updated-300-209-Exam    | Dumps-210-260-exams-date    | Download-200-125-Exam-PDF    | Exam-Description-300-101-dumps    | Certs-300-101-date    | Hot-Sale-300-075-Exam    | Latest-exam-200-125-Dumps    | Exam-Description-200-125-dumps    | Latest-Updated-300-075-Exam    | hot-sale-book-210-260-book    | Dumps-200-901-exams-date    | Certs-200-901-date    | Latest-exam-1Z0-062-Dumps    | Hot-Sale-1Z0-062-Exam    | Certs-CSSLP-date    | 100%-Pass-70-383-Exams    | Latest-JN0-360-real-exam-questions    | 100%-Pass-4A0-100-Real-Exam-Questions    | Dumps-300-135-exams-date    | Passed-200-105-Tech-Exams    | Latest-Updated-200-310-Exam    | Download-300-070-Exam-PDF    | Hot-Sale-JN0-360-Exam    | 100%-Pass-JN0-360-Exams    | 100%-Pass-JN0-360-Real-Exam-Questions    | Dumps-JN0-360-exams-date    | Exam-Description-1Z0-876-dumps    | Latest-exam-1Z0-876-Dumps    | Dumps-HPE0-Y53-exams-date    | 2017-Latest-HPE0-Y53-Exam    | 100%-Pass-HPE0-Y53-Real-Exam-Questions    | Pass-4A0-100-Exam    | Latest-4A0-100-Questions    | Dumps-98-365-exams-date    | 2017-Latest-98-365-Exam    | 100%-Pass-VCS-254-Exams    | 2017-Latest-VCS-273-Exam    | Dumps-200-355-exams-date    | 2017-Latest-300-320-Exam    | Pass-300-101-Exam    | 100%-Pass-300-115-Exams    |
http://www.portvapes.co.uk/    | http://www.portvapes.co.uk/    |