You can tell that it originates from within the semiconductor industry by the generally chaotic presentation (e.g. the "stuff everything in and add arrows" layout of the slides and picking a bunch of arbitrary, jarring, and unnecessary colors)—on top of the already-dubious decision to use PowerPoint to explain these ideas in the first place (out of a reflex—read: crutch).
Does this seem a little outdated to anyone else? Like, ImgTec haven't really existed as a top tier player for almost a decade, and AFAIK Apple doesn't license Ip cores from ARM, but the ISA itself.<p>Also, I feel like this diagram is just weird. The pyramid makes no sense to me, I always think of it in terms of physical and logical, you have the physical - the Materials, WFE, Fabs, and logical - IP Cores, and Fabless Semis, with the EDA tools somewhat providing the integration. The logical organisation of the pyramid makes no sense to me.
Missing from this article, and rather important in the current supply chain issues situation, is packaging (testing, dicing, packaging into the chip package e.g. BGA, QFN, SOIC etc).
Packaging is generally done at separate factories from the fabs. A vast proportion of packaging factories are in China, something to keep in mind in the context of "trade wars": <a href="https://www.marketresearchreports.com/blog/2019/04/24/top-10-osat-companies-world" rel="nofollow">https://www.marketresearchreports.com/blog/2019/04/24/top-10...</a>
Interesting information but I'm not sure about the accuracy of their chart depicting the leading edge node manufacturers. Until the last few years, Intel was ahead of TSMC and Samsung (Intel's 14nm process was equivalent to TSMC's 10-7nm from my understanding). So if Intel is excluded from the current leading edge manufacturers, shouldn't others be removed from the graph for the early 2010's?
This is nicely done, despite some nitpicks in the comments; it should be interpreted as giving a qualitative picture. The recent development not mentioned is that China is launching a massive effort to bootstrap its own EDA industry, and they've poached a number of stars from the big three, with very generous signing bonuses. This is to get around sanctions, which are starting to bite.
With how critical semiconductors are, I'm really surprised having nationally owned fabs, even a few nodes behind, isn't a priority for big governments.
Not mentioned in the article: almost all semiconductors used outside of computers and cell phones are produced on old processes - 40nm and up. Fabs for these are cheap - maybe in the $1 billion range - but no one builds them because of low profit margins. Instead these mostly get built in fabs that used to be cutting-edge, long ago.<p>Maybe the automakers could pay a little bit more for these chips, and it would become profitable to build fabs for them again. But everyone knows that the moment people forget the semiconductor shortage, automakers will try to drive the profit on those chips back to zero again, and whoever built one of those fabs will be left holding the bag. Basically the automakers and/or Wall Street would rather forgo the sale of an entire car than pay a buck or two in profit to someone else for the chips that go into that car.<p>The best term I've heard for something like this is "end-stage capitalism".
Infographic is outdated and borderline propaganda.<p>The war with China has started. SMIC is shut to outsiders. Hong Kong fell to China. Taiwan is expected to fall next.<p>So what's going down? Everyone getting into the chip game because they must.<p>Europe’s Chip Act, Infineon is building chips in Germany<p>Chips for USA Act hasn't quite passed yet. Biden issued an executive order that is unchallenged by anyone. US sanctioned SMIC.<p>Samsung will be building a fab in Taylor Texas near to Austin. Intel will be building 2 fabs in Arizona(RISCV!)<p>Samsung obviously also building much more in Korea.<p>TSMC is building a fab in Japan with Sony. Everyone hoping the fabs in taiwan don't fall. Really good chance those fabs will be destroyed if China moves on them.<p>India is blowing up big time with fabs.<p>The number of secret fabs is surprising as well. Tons of them popping up in the midwest, primarily sourcing for the automotive industry. Makes sense to keep them quiet because it seems there's lots of fabs catching fire or being hacked and shutdown. Oh the nature of war...
Can someone please explain RISC to me?<p>I gather that it is a direct competitor to ARM.<p>By extension it competes with Intel and AMD [and NVidia?] - as phones swallow the world, Both Apple and MS have ARM desktop OS's, and the big boys like Adobe are rewriting for ARM.<p>But I don't see how RISC has any hope, as ARM is already everywhere, and so much software has been written, and is being converted to being ARM compatible.<p>In fact, I don't see how x64 has any real future!<p>What am I missing with both AMD and RISC? How does RISC get such good press?<p>And - OT - how anyone choose a name which projects the concept of being risky ;)