10 dispatches
The rise of Asia as a force to be reckoned with in large scale manufacturing of critical components like batteries, solar panels, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and semiconductors has left US and European governments seeking to catch up with a bit of a dilemma. These activities largely moved to Asia because financially-motivated management teams in the West (correctly) recognized...
Strong regional industrial ecosystems like Silicon Valley (tech), Boston (life science), and Taiwan (semiconductors) are fascinating. Their creation is rare and requires local talent, easy access to supply chains and distribution, academic & government support, business success, and a good amount of luck. But, once set in place, they can be remarkably difficult to unseat.
Historically, Intel has (1) designed and (2) manufactured its chips that it sells (primarily into computer and server systems). It prided itself on having the most advanced (1) designs and (2) manufacturing technology, keeping both close to its chest. In the late 90s/00s, semiconductor companies increasingly embraced the “fabless model”, whereby they would only do the (1)...
Once upon a time, the hottest thing in chip design was “system-on-a-chip” (SOC). The idea is that you’d get the best cost and performance out of a chip by combining more parts into one piece of silicon. This would result in smaller area (less silicon = less cost) and faster performance (closer parts = faster communication) and resulted in more and more chips integrating more...
Intel has been interested in entering the foundry (semiconductor contract manufacturing) space for a long time. For years, Intel proudly boasted of being at the forefront of semiconductor technology — being first to market with the FinFET and smaller and smaller process geometries. So it’s interesting how, with the exception of the RibbonFET (the successor to the FinFET),...
While much attention is (rightly) focused on the role of TSMC (and its rivals Samsung and Intel) in “leading edge” semiconductor technology, the opportunity at the so-called “lagging edge” — older semiconductor process technologies which continue to be used — is oftentimes completely ignored. The reality of the foundry model is that fab capacity is expensive to build and so...
Every standard products company (like NVIDIA) eventually gets lured by the prospect of gaining large volumes and high margins of a custom products business. And every custom products business wishes they could get into standard products to cut their dependency on a small handful of customers and pursue larger volumes.
Silicon nerd 🤓 that I am, I have gone through multiple cycles of excited-then-disappointed for Windows-on-ARM, especially considering the success of ChromeOS with ARM, the Apple M1/M2 (Apple’s own ARM silicon which now powers its laptops), and AWS Graviton (Amazon’s own ARM chip for its cloud computing services).
The 2022 CHIPS and Science Act earmarked hundreds of billions in subsidies and tax credits to bolster a U.S. domestic semiconductor (and especially semiconductor manufacturing) industry. If it works, it will dramatically reposition the U.S. in the global semiconductor value chain (especially relative to China).
I have followed TSMC very closely since I started my career in the semiconductor industry. A brilliant combination of bold business bet (by founder Morris Chang), industry tailwinds (with the rise of fabless semiconductor model), forward-thinking from the Taiwanese government (who helped launch TSMC), and technological progress, it’s been fascinating to see the company enter...