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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ibnanv" data-source="post: 21024953" data-attributes="member: 218596">TSMC announces plans for $16 billion foundry to push the envelope on 5nm, 3nm process nodes.                                                                                                        <img src="https://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/TSMC-Fab-640x353.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />                                                                                                                                                                                      We’ve talked several times this year about TSMC’s  plans to aggressively take back the market share it has lost to Samsung  at 14nm, but the company isn’t just planning to ramp next-generation  process nodes as quickly as possible. TSMC announced it will build a  $15.7 billion foundry facility focused on the upcoming 5nm and 3nm  process nodes. Given how long it takes to build next-generation fabs,  that’s not surprising — it takes time to line up permits and permissions  to build on a site, and several years of construction before any fab  opens for business. Even once a facility is running some volume, it can  take 9-12 months to bring the entire fabrication plant fully online.“We’re  asking the government to help us find a plot that is large enough and  has convenient access so we can build an advanced chip plant to  manufacture 5-nanometer and 3nm chips,” TSMC spokesperson Elizabeth Sun  told the Nikkei Asian Review.As  foundry node shrinks have become more difficult, fewer and fewer  companies have attempted them. The list below is from 2011, but it  illustrates the point well. As of that year, there were 19 companies  with production capacity at 130nm and just four companies at 20/22nm  (GlobalFoundries eventually joined this group, bringing the total to  five).<img src="https://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/2011-01-17_Mfg.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />There  are currently four foundries offering 14/16nm technology as well —  Samsung, TSMC, GlobalFoundries, and Intel. As Nikkei Asian Review points  out, pure-play foundries like TSMC are now dependent on a tiny number  of customers to drive the bulk of their revenue, with ~16% of TSMC’s  revenue coming from Apple and 16% from Qualcomm. In the old days,  graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia helped drive the early adopter cycle,  but that hasn’t been true for several years. Mobile devices, not GPUs,  are driving foundries to newer process nodes, and that’s one reason why  we’ve seen Teams Red and Green skipping the interim nodes that are tuned  for mobile products and their yearly cadences but don’t deliver much in  the way of improvements for high-powered silicon. As costs continue to  rise with each successive foundry generation, it’s going to be harder  and harder to find companies willing to invest in cutting-edge  technology — so much so, that some companies are actively looking for  ways to enhance older nodes as a way to entice firms to adopt them.TSMC  currently plans to introduce 7nm technology by Q1 2018, while Samsung  has said it will ship 7nm by the end of that year. Intel, meanwhile,  will ship 10nm technology by the back half of next year. As always, keep  two things in mind: Foundry plans and introductions can and do change,  and you can’t compare process nodes  between companies simply by the number in front of the “nm.” Generally  speaking, Intel’s process nodes have smaller feature sizes than their  counterparts at TSMC/GloFo/Samsung. Intel is still talking up its plans  to push into the client foundry business, at least with a handful of  customers, but there’s basically no link between the name attached to a  node and any specific feature size within the SoC.As of this  writing, the 7nm planned by Samsung and TSMC is expected to be generally  comparable to what Intel is calling 10nm, though that could change as  more data on specific feature sizes becomes available. TSMC has already  begun risk production on 10nm, and Samsung has multiple 10nm launches planned for 2017 as well. Qualcomm is partnering  with Samsung at the 10nm node, though they may have switched back to  TSMC at 7nm to take advantage of the earlier launch window.Presumably this facility will be outfitted with EUV  from the start, since we’ve previously heard that TSMC wants to  introduce next-generation lithography at that node. Of course, it’s  anyone’s guess as to whether EUV will be practically ready to roll or  not. We’ve seen positive signs this year, but extreme ultraviolet  lithography is running more then a decade behind its original timelines  for deployment.</blockquote>

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