In the same part of the world regularly threatened by the same toltalitarian scumbags threatening Taiwan? Less neat.

What do you do when a bugs in the way?? Can real tech support be reached from home

heat is a bigger problem

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US should drop a glow worm into Beijing if they try it

> Feels inherently dishonest.

It is dishonest, but it also stems from the fact that people got so focused on the numbers that they kept shrinking them because otherwise people wouldn't think there are improvements. If I remember correctly, the number itself was never actually super accurate as the different processes would measure things differently.

Process node is just a marketing name

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Intel also has a fab in Hillsboro - but I haven’t heard plans for it.

The eventual goal with the new C-suite at Intel - they want to be a contract supplier. Many of the current IC companies who make important components or even whole systems like Qualcomm, Marvell, Nvidia, AMD and Apple don’t have their own fabs - TSMC and Samsung are doing that. I can see Apple and Intel becoming frenemies, much like the Apple-Samsung relationship. Companies that do work with the military or critical infrastructure might be compelled to have chips fabbed in the US as a matter of national security.

The article used it wrong. 2nm is the size of the chip manufacturing process, not the size of the chipset itself.

I don't think there are any N2 plants planned.

It’s still a relevant metric

Take over what?

If the west relies less on Taiwan and semiconductor production is diversified, supply chains becomes more robust.

I would argue yes, chips manufactured in Japan gives China less economic leverage, but it’s complicated.

Well, money buys all the things that drive progress. But time is another factor.

I don’t think that’s true. Nm (logic gage size) has to do with transistor density. And it is one of several important factors in performance.

I think the average density coming out of a foundry is somewhere between 7 and 14. A foundry i visited in the Texas is pushing 12 nm. Intel and AMD do 7 and 5nm respectively.

2nm is nearing the physical limit. And will serve as a bottle neck in future design. It’s pretty neat. It’s only a few atoms wide.

What’s “Intel 18A” then? Not 18 Angstroms?

So you don’t talk to passengers or listen to the radio/music?

Yeah, I thought I read this, that the obvious next step is to just build the wafers in a 3D architecture, but it’s super complicated to fabricate.

These are run by the upper echelon of the Pentagon and others in DoD who WOULD take those things and others you (myself, and the public) dont know about into account.

Normally nm means nano meter, it used to be very important to have smaller and smaller sizes for a variety of reasons which improved speed of computers. Ability to produce chips at a smaller nm meant drastic performance improvements like 15 years ago

Well, they didn't. In reality the 2nm process has an expected gate size of around 45nm.

That doesn't mean they aren't finding cool ways to make the chips even more compact. Lots of less known terms like GAAFET. (some kind of vertical 3D transitors)

But the main issue with all of this, is that the prices to manufacture a single chip is higher and higher. Since now it's not a matter of size, but also of fabrication complexity and time.

If I were to guess, we'll get slowly stuck in 2025-2030 era regarding our current technology. I think this will be when we'll need to use alternatives, more power efficient ARM architecture, which is what Apple is already using for its M1 and M2 chips.

I feel like these simulations never account for the advantage that absolute technological supremacy has. Similar to how with Russia the West would run out of shells in a very short amount of time, but who needs shells when they can not even begin to counter America’s full Air Force.

Yup. The Intel plant in Chandler is currently undergoing a $20B expansion. That’s in addition to the new TSMC plant.

Samsung is also building a huge semiconductor plant in Texas.

IBM has been in Japan for a while - the ThinkPad was designed at their Japanese operations. Lenovo has since bought out those facilities. I think they have a silicon fab there and the PowerPC architecture they developed along with Motorola was used heavily by the Japanese automakers and in gaming consoles.

Dexter Filkins talked about this on NPR Fresh Air recently. From memory a bit ago but basically as an island lots of things are imported, including the means of energy production. The island could be without power within a week or so of a blockade at the cost of 0 Chinese lives.

Elsewhere in the interview its mentioned that in war games the US simulates in an escalation that the US loses. One official stated we (the US) simply don't have the industrial base to manage a sustained conflict against the Chinese.