Free Republic

Chinese tech giant Huawei’s attempt to make semiconductors without American equipment has generated global headlines as the US-China tech war takes yet another turn. It is one more strong hint – if any were needed – that the US government is in the process of creating a competitor that it won’t be able to control while forcing American companies to abandon a massive market that until now has supported their sales, profits, economies of scale and stock prices. Geopolitics have overridden America’s past devotion to open markets and the situation is not likely to change anytime soon as long as...

Reading China’s Global Times newspaper is like tuning into the id of a bunch of 15-year-old boys eager to blow something up with M80s. The fact that all of this is state media which means it’s basically a thinly veiled account of whatever China’s propaganda department wants said is what makes it worrisome. Today the Global Times published a story which is clearly intended to read as a warning to Taiwanese chip maker TSMC.The CEO of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) reiterated at a technology symposium on Tuesday that its ultra-advanced 3-nanometer chip production technology will be put into mass...

Taiwan’s TSMC is the world’s leading manufacturer of silicon chips. It controls more than 90% of the world market for high-end chips. That’s obviously one reason China would love to see a “peaceful reunification” with the mainland happen, since it would effectively put China in charge of the pinnacle of the tech industry overnight. But as appealing as that might be, the reality is that TSMC isn’t dependent on China in the same way Germany is currently dependent on Russian energy.Pelosi’s itinerary included a visit with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s largest and most critical chip manufacturer. Its products...

A Hon Hai Technology Group company’s investment in China’s Tsinghua Unigroup has drawn the attention of Taiwanese regulators and raised new questions about semiconductor-related technology transfers to mainland China. Tsinghua Unigroup is China’s largest semiconductor company while Hon Hai Precision Industry, the core company of the Hon Hai Technology Group, is the world’s largest electronics contract manufacturer. Headquartered in Taipei, Hon Hai Precision Industry, also known as Foxconn, is best known as the primary assembler of Apple iPhones. Foxconn Industrial Internet, a Hon Hai subsidiary headquartered in Shenzhen and traded on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, recently invested in Tsinghua Unigroup...

NEW YORK – China’s semiconductor industry has lagged the US in patents and lagged South Korea and Taiwan in fabrication, but it hopes to leapfrog its competition by adopting revolutionary new chip design technologies. Advanced chips used in 5G smartphones and some workstations squeeze billions of transistors onto a fingernail-sized chip by shrinking the dimensions of the transistor itself to 3 to 5 nanometers. Most chips have gate widths of 28 nanometers and higher. Etching tiny circuits on silicon is enormously difficult. Only the Dutch manufacturer ASML makes the lithography machines that use the short wavelengths at the extreme end...

The most advanced category of mass-produced semiconductors — used in smartphones, military technology and much more — is known as 5 nm. A single company in Taiwan, known as TSMC, makes about 90 percent of them. U.S. factories make none. The U.S.’s struggles to keep pace in semiconductor manufacturing have already had economic downsides: Many jobs in the industry pay more than $100,000 a year, and the U.S. has lost out on them. Longer term, the situation also has the potential to cause a national security crisis: If China were to invade Taiwan and cut off exports of semiconductors, the...

STMicroelectronics and GlobalFoundries announced they have signed a memorandum of understanding to build a 300-mm semiconductor manufacturing facility that will help develop the fully depleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI) technology ecosystem. The new facility will represent a multi-billion–euro investment and is expected to create about 1,000 jobs. The jointly operated fab will support GlobalFoundries’ 22FDX FD-SOI process technology and STMicroelectronics’ technology roadmap down to 18 nm for automotive, industrial, IoT, and communications infrastructure applications, companies said. The facility, which will be adjacent to STMicroelectronics’ existing 300-mm manufacturing site in Crolles, France, is set to reach full capacity by 2026, with up to...

The company which is Apple’s most important chip supplier, said it expects revenue to be between $19.8 billion and $20.6 billion in the third quarter, surging from $14.8 billion in the same period last year. However, TSMC CEO CC Wei said that some of the company’s capital expenditure would be “pushed out into 2023.” He cited “greater challenges in the supply chains” which is extending delivery times for some chipmaking equipment. The strong results and outlook but caution on spending highlights the careful path chipmakers are walking at a time of concern about rising prices and the impact on consumer...

When you think about national security, you probably don’t immediately think about semiconductors. These tiny chips are the “brains” enabling all the computational capabilities and data storage that we take for granted today. Chips power virtually every sector of the economy – including data centers, automotive, healthcare, banking, and agriculture. As a consequence of their widespread use, semiconductors have grown to become a $555 billion global industry, and are the world’s fourth most traded product. Semiconductor manufacturing and advanced packaging have been cited frequently as one of the main critical supply chain priorities for the nation. A steady source of...

Russian companies have been plunged into a technological crisis by western sanctions that have created severe bottlenecks in the supply of semiconductors, electrical equipment and the hardware needed to power the nation’s data centres. Most of the world’s largest chip manufacturers, including Intel, Samsung, TSMC and Qualcomm, have halted business to Russia entirely after the US, UK and Europe imposed export controls on products using chips made or designed in the US or Europe. This has created a shortfall in the type of larger, low-end chips that go into the production of cars, household appliances and military equipment. Supplies of...

The 0.34 nm gate-length side-wall monolayer MoS2 transistor device structure and characterization. Credit: Nature (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04323-3A team of researchers working at Tsinghua University in China has created a sub-1-nm gate in a MoS2 transistor. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group outlines how they created the super tiny gate and explains why they believe it will be difficult for anyone to beat their record. For most of the history of microcomputing, Moore's Law has held up—researchers and engineers have managed to double the speed and capability of computers regularly by reducing the size of their components....

Apple, Qualcomm, and Intel design chips, but when it comes to making them, the World Relies on One Chip Maker in Taiwan , Leaving Everyone Vulnerable. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. TSM’s chips are everywhere, though most consumers don’t know it. The company makes almost all of the world’s most sophisticated chips, and many of the simpler ones, too. They’re in billions of products with built-in electronics, including iPhones, personal computers and cars—all without any obvious sign they came from TSMC, which does the manufacturing for better-known companies that design them, like Apple Inc. and Qualcomm Inc. Its technology is so...

KEY POINTS: Apple revenue fell short of Wall Street expectations in its fiscal fourth quarter on Thursday, which Apple CEO Tim Cook attributed to larger-than-expected supply constraints. Apple’s overall revenue was still up 29% on an annual basis and each of its product categories grew on an annual basis. Apple hasn’t provided official guidance since the start of the pandemic, but Cook said Apple expects “solid year-over-year revenue growth” in the December quarter despite the fact Apple will face worse supply constraints. _____________________________________________________________________ Apple revenue fell short of Wall Street expectations in its fiscal fourth quarter on Thursday, which Apple...

WSJ reports Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is scheduled to make a major “economic announcement” on Tuesday at 5 pm local time concerning new plans for a massive semiconductor plant in Taylor, Texas. South Korean tech giant, Samsung Electronics Co., is doubling down in Texas with another facility, about 30 miles from its manufacturing hub in Austin. The new Taylor facility will cost a whopping $17 billion and create 1,800 jobs. Chip production wouldn’t start until the second half of 2024. WSJ said officials in Taylor incentivized Samsung by giving them “property-tax breaks of up to 92.5% for the first ten...

As the world grapples with an ongoing chip shortage, a quiet giant among chipmakers has committed to investing $100 billion over three years to ramp up production. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company may not be a household name, but with a market value of over $550 billion, it’s one of the world’s 10 most valuable companies. Now, it’s leveraging its considerable resources to bring the world’s most advanced chip manufacturing back to U.S. soil. CNBC got an exclusive tour of the $12 billion fabrication plant, or fab, outside Phoenix, Arizona, where TSMC will start making 5-nanometer chips in 2024. The company...

Intel .. on Friday broke ground on two new factories in Arizona as part of its turnaround plan to become a major manufacturer of chips for outside customers. The $20 billion plants - dubbed Fab 52 and Fab 62 - will bring the total number of Intel factories at its campus in Chandler, Arizona, to six. They will house Intel's most advanced chipmaking technology and play a central role in the Santa Clara, California-based company's effort to regain its lead in making the smallest, fastest chips by 2025, after having fallen behind rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing ... deepening its manufacturing...

The great computer chip shortage of 2021 will likely get worse before it gets better. This conclusion was reached following brief study and anecdotal review. Moreover, while COVID lockdowns may have initially triggered the shortage, several decades of shortsighted decisions and simmering geopolitical tensions make it much more than a matter of fixing a few broken links in the supply chain. Here’s why… The world’s top two leading chip companies are Taiwan’s TSMC and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics. These two Asian firms, combined, control more than 70 percent of the semiconductor manufacturing market. The U.S., which was once a leader,...

According to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo and reported by MacRumors, the iPhone 13 may come with a feature which will allow you to place satellite calls using the smartphone. If this is true, users will be able to make calls and send messages in areas lacking connectivity.Traditionally, satellite phones allow you to place calls by radio through orbiting satellites instead of terrestrial cell sites, as cellphones do.One of the main advantages of using a satellite phone is its ability to place calls in most geographic locations on the Earth’s surface as the device is not limited to areas covered by...

July 26 (Reuters) - Intel Corp (INTC.O) said on Monday its factories will start building Qualcomm Inc (QCOM.O) chips and laid out a roadmap to expand its new foundry business to catch rivals such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (2330.TW) and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (005930.KS) by 2025. Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) will be another new customer for the foundry chip business, said Intel, which for decades held the lead in technology for manufacturing the smallest, fastest computing chips. But Intel has lost that lead to TSMC and Samsung, whose manufacturing services have helped Intel's rivals Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD.O)...

In 1965, Gordon Moore published a short informal paper, Cramming more components onto integrated circuits. In it, he noted [PDF] that in three years, the optimal cost per component on a chip had dropped by a factor of 10, while the optimal number had increased by the same factor, from 10 to 100. Based on not much more but these few data points and his knowledge of silicon chip development – he was head of R&D at Fairchild Semiconductors, the company that was to seed Silicon Valley – he said that for the next decade, component counts by area could...