How to build a $20B semiconductor fab

I have been listening to Kai Ryssdal's Marketplace on NPR/KQED the last few days on my commute home from work.

The topic for the last several days was on the CHIPS And Science Act and the new Semiconductor Fabs being built by TSMC and Intel in Phoenx, AZ.

It will be several years before the plants already being constructed will go into production but there is a whole ecosystem of current construction, education of the future workforce that will need to be hired in the future. Not to mention all the ancilliary companies that are needed to support these gigantic plants in the area.

The dollars from CHIPS Act are not only bringing in the manufacturing plants but will be essential to bring this lost capability back to the US in the scale needed both from an economic and national security perspective.

It was great listening to the show and the impact the CHIPS Act on people's lives already happening now and in the future.

For anyone interested the links to the specific shows are available as podcasts here.

https://www.npr.org/podcasts/381444600/marketplace

Somewhat related: a high school student creating his own semiconductor fav in his parent’s garage on a "budget".

https://youtube.com/watch?v=IS5ycm7VfXg

It’s a thoroughly interesting video, but I’m a bit disappointed he never took his idea any further than he did. I’d really love to see something like a 6502 being made at home.

I've been to a number of big construction sites for business purposes. When I hear, "this is a $40 million dollar project" and when I see all these workmen, equipment and materials moving around, I think, so this is what $40 million dollars in motion looks like.

At what point will current fabrication plants reach their limit? Is it a supply issue? Or maybe a resource constraint?

Similarly, a fab will use very large amounts of ultrapure water for wafer cleaning and CMP, along with the regular water for things like chillers for process cooling. A large fab can use millions of gallons of ultrapure water a day, as much as a town of 50,000 people, and producing it requires its own specialized plant.

This is wild. All of this water so companies can create chips that will ultimately be used to …

pump out “advanced” chat bots.

I really hope all of this sacrifice is worth it in the end. Climate change is accelerating the loss of drinkable water around the planet.

If the best we could do is a slightly better chat bot, then we are doomed.

So, semi-related question.

Is Intel buying any EUV machines from ASML. Not asking about High-NA machines, but regular EUV machines?

I can't find the answer online although I do see that the New Ireland Fab seems to be in the regular EUV range.

Fascinating article, thanks.

> (There is a Moore’s Second Law, also known as Rock’s Law, which posits that the cost of a semiconductor fab doubles every four years.)

If this were to hold, then in under 30 years a single fab would cost more than three trillion dollars, which itself implies a hard upper bound on node improvements by way of economic considerations.

One part really jumped out at me:

    Thus only a very small number of companies (currently TSMC, Samsung, and Intel) attempt to operate leading-edge nodes, and the industry has shifted to a “fabless” model where companies like Apple and Nvidia design their chips but have them manufactured by “foundries” like TSMC. By pooling the orders of many different chip companies, the foundries can achieve the scale necessary to afford cutting edge fabs.

The stated tolerances of typical manufacturing processes seem to be off by at least an order of magnitude. Not that it does make sense to give a tolerance number without some magnitude it applies to, nonetheless, 0.125mm stated tolerance of CNC machining is ridiculous.

Step 1. Acquire $20b

Step 2. Build the $20b semiconductor fab

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/how-to-draw-an-owl

For comparison, the cost to build the World Trade Center was $2 Billion.

BTW, having spent 35 years in the semiconductor industry, this is the best 'layman's' description of what goes into chip fabrication I have seen. A perfect blend of description and illustration without over simplifying.

Excellent and fascinating article. I knew semiconductor fabs were incredibly complex but this article still blew my mind.

What a fascinating article. It truly blows my mind just how advanced humans have become. When playing angry birds on an iPhone we tend to forget the insane amount of research, resources, and specialized expertise that has made all the modern tech world possible.

I’d also highly recommend the book Chip Wars by Chris Miller for anyone looking for a deeper dive into the history and current dilemmas of the semiconductor industry

Absolutely fascinating, thank you for sharing! I just want to order new phones computers laptops and servers left and right now.

First, attempt to build a $10 billion dollar fab.

CHM(computer history museum) have conducted an oral history interview with TSMC found Morris Chang in 2007. Chang told his personal Odyssey in this interview, from inner China to Taiwan, studying and working at US, PhD application refused by MIT, but luckily he choose a fast rocket track in the industry, after he accumulated enough wealth, industry insight, connections etc... He returned to Taiwan to found TMSC, else is the story. Also he compared Asian and American engineering styles:

"I think the Asian engineers tend to be more methodical, they tend to be more studious, more orderly engineers; whereas, the U.S. engineers tend to be more innovative, but they tend not to be as methodical and orderly as the Asian engineers. ......

On the other hand, I also think that one group can accompany another group, you know. You can have an innovative group but not so methodical and so on, and then you can have a methodical group maybe not very innovative accompanying each other. "

https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/20...

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