| ▲ | ac29 3 days ago |
| > It's the only chip manufacturer "left" in the US Global Foundries, Micron, and Texas Instruments all come to mind |
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| ▲ | adgjlsfhk1 3 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| GF hasn't gone past the 12nm node. TI is at 45nm. Micron is on relatively recent processes, but they make RAM, not logic (which are totally different processes). Intel is the only chip manufacturer left that is working in logic at anything like the leading edge. |
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| ▲ | chneu 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| GF is a few nodes behind. Micron doesn't make semiconductors, they mostly make flash and whatnot. TI doesn't have the capacity or knowledge to expand to Intel's size/capacity |
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| ▲ | tbrownaw 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > doesn't make semiconductors, they mostly make flash and whatnot Um. All that stuff is still semiconductors, just with different patterns printed on them. | | |
| ▲ | johnecheck 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | You're right but also wrong. Flash is just semiconductors etched in a different pattern than logic, but you don't print on semiconductors. Semiconductors are 'printed' on wafers via photolithography. | | |
| ▲ | kragen 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Intel's wafers are made of silicon, which is a semiconductor. Silicon on sapphire hasn't been widely used for a long time, if that's what you're thinking of. Photolithography prints resists on semiconductor wafers which are then used to pattern the next process step, such as wet etching, plasma etching, oxide growth, epitaxial polysilicon growth, ion implantation, etc. These mostly remove semiconductor from the wafer or alter its properties. | | |
| ▲ | johnecheck 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Interesting, I hadn't known that silicon is itself a semiconductor before all the circuits are added. Am I correct in saying that the etching process transforms a single semiconductor into billions? | | |
| ▲ | kragen 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | No, silicon is still just one semiconductor, just like water is just one liquid. The substrate is still just one piece of silicon, despite having many silicon semiconductor devices fabricated in it. Polysilicon layers may or may not be additional pieces of silicon. | |
| ▲ | 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | tbrownaw 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | The linked ppt here has a lot of details: https://fabweb.ece.illinois.edu/ |
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| ▲ | 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | bink 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > TI doesn't have the capacity or knowledge to expand to Intel's size/capacity I mean, they might if Intel were allowed to fail. | | |
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| ▲ | jongjong 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Yeah terrible position to be when your own government is investing in your competitors' company using your own tax dollars. As a software engineer, this isn't an entirely new concept. |
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| ▲ | kragen 3 days ago | parent [-] | | I think all three of those other companies are also getting CHIPS-act subsidies? | | |
| ▲ | jongjong 3 days ago | parent [-] | | I suppose it could be worse. Still, now the US has a vested interest in seeing Intel crush AMD and others. | | |
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| ▲ | onepointsixC 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| GF is a zombie company. Micron and TI are both far far away from leading edge. There is only one American company which is both developing and manufacturing leading edge nodes. |
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| ▲ | hangonhn 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| re: Micron - Memory is very different from logic chips. You vast number of repeating cells in memory. If any of them are bad you can just turn them off and bin them as lower capacity. You can do that to some extend with logic chips but not nearly as much as memory. |
