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本帖最后由 choi 于 9-11-2025 10:48 编辑
(5) Chipmaking in America | Intel's Last Hope; To survive, the once-mighty chipmaker must break itself apart. at page 50 (in "Business" section).
Note:
(a) Moore "predicted in 1965 that chips would get faster and cheaper with metronomic consistency."
English dictionary:
* metronome (n; Did You Know?: "Johann Maelzel [1772-1938; of Germany; last name spelled Mälzel in that country; while in England, applied patent from Poland Street, in the county of Middlesex] copied a pendulum design of Dietrich Winkel -a German who settled in Amsterdam and invented metronome in 1814 there], making Winkel the actual inventor. * * * The name of the invention itself is based on the [Ancient] Greek words [noun neuter μέτρον] m[é]tron, meaning 'measure [the English noun as a noun, not vern],' and [noun masculine νόμος] n[ó]mos, meaning 'law' ")
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/metronome
(pronunciation)
* The English adjective metronomic has the stress on the syllable "no."
(b) Regarding the heading "Pat on his back," or Intel's previous CEO Pat Gelsinger on current CEO Lip-bu Tan's back.
(i) The words "on one's back" can also be "used other than figuratively or idiomatically <I lay on my back, staring up at the clouds>"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/on_one%27s_back
(ii) on/off one's back (idiom): "used of someone who is always or frequently criticizing or telling a person what to do"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/ ... ff%20one%27s%20back
(A) The idiom arose in the nineteenth century from the literal imagery of a physical burden.
However, the idiom "monkey on one's back" or get the monkey "off one's back" has been used since the 1930s to mean that one is addicted to a narcotic. Still it may nonetheless mean "a burdensome problem": I was a graduate student in University of Illinois at Chicago studying biology. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign had a men's NCAA Division I (Big Ten conference) basketball team "Fighting Illini" coming out of stupor and looked promising. And a (female) biochemistry professor on the University's campus exclaimed, "The monkey is finally off their back." In the end, the team was ranked in AP poll as No 16 nationwide. See 1987–88 NCAA Division I men's basketball ranking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1987–88_NCAA_Division_I_men%27s_basketball_rankings
(B) To my knowledge, Gelsinger has not criticized Tan. After all, Gelsinger is a 敗軍之將 and knows that even if he defends HIMSELF, few will listen. On second thought after overnight rumination, I believe that heading should be given literal interpretation, that Gelsinger's LEGACY (not himself) was on Tan's back, dragging down intel and presenting Tan with few -- almost no -- viable options to revive Intel.
(iii) Gelsinger failed, not because of lack of trying.
(A) Jessica Timings, Busting ASML Myths. True or false? Test your knowledge about ASML. ASML, Feb 23, 2022
https://www.asml.com/en/news/stories/2022/busting-asml-myths
three consecutive Q&As:
"ASML is the only company that makes EUV (extreme ultraviolet) lithography technology.
TRUE. Unlike in the DUV (deep ultraviolet) lithography market, where ASML competes with other top-notch suppliers, ASML is currently the only lithography equipment supplier capable of producing EUV technology. * * *
"An ASML machine is all you need to make microchips.
FALSE. Making chips is a complex, long and expensive process. Our customers have spent years and invested billions building 'fabs' (fabrication plants), buying equipment and training employees to become experts in the complex field of semiconductor manufacturing. ASML's lithography machines form an important part of a chipmaker's production line, but they are not all that's required to produce microchips. Lithography – printing patterns on silicon wafers – is certainly a critical step in the chipmaking process, but it's just one of many!
"ASML is building a new kind of EUV lithography machine.
TRUE. In the semiconductor industry, innovation never stops. That's why we're building a next-generation EUV platform that increases the numerical aperture (NA) from 0.33 to 0.55. This means that the optics systems in the new machines will allow light with larger angles of incidence to hit the wafer, giving the system a higher resolution.
The EUV 0.55 NA platform, called EXE, is well on its way to production – we're planning the first shipments of these machines to customers for R&D purposes by the end of 2023, and we expect them to be used in high-volume manufacturing by 2025.
(B) "Samsung and TSMC were early adopters of EUV technology, introducing it in 2018 and 2019, respectively. Nikkei Asia, 2024.
But Intel was not far behind in receiving the EUV. See press release: EUV: The Most Precise, Complex Machine at Intel. Intel, Dec 11, 2021
https://download.intel.com/newsr ... achine-at-intel.pdf
("In Intel's second 'Behind this Door' video, take a sneak peek into fab D1X in Oregon to see what is likely the most complicated machine humans have built. An extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography system uses radically shorter wavelengths to project circuit patterns onto silicon wafers — wavelengths at 13.5 nanometers, or more than 10 times smaller than today’s lithography machines")
(C) In March 2022, Intel moved ASML's EUV machines from Oregon to its Fab 34 in Leixlip, Ireland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leixlip
(section 1 Name)
, a small town 10-mile air distance west of Dublin. More than that, Intel bought all of ASML's high-NA EUV machines for 2024.
Despite Intel's Sept 29, 2023 press release hailing "landmark" high-volume production of Intel 4 (4nm) with Fab 34's EUV, nothing came of it.
(D) ASML Ships First Parts of New High-End Machine to Intel US Plant. Bloomberg, Dec 22, 2023 (world's first EUV High-NA to Oregon)
(c) Ian Cutress holds a doctorate degree in computational chemistry from the University of Oxford, and is chief analyst with London-based "More Than Moore," a semiconductor consultancy.
(d) "New processes start buggy and improve only with volume."
I am clueless whether this sentence is true or not. However, TSMC seems to be obsessed with volume. If I were its owner, I would not care about market share but rather increase prices to customers, maybe in floating scale (instead of a flat rate among the same node) in the mode of Uber to especially charge successful customers more. Nvidia's profit margin is presently more than 80%, double that of TSMC.
(e) "Indeed, if Intel's shareholders would rather pocket the proceeds of a sale of the design arm, it is possible that a consortium of would-be foundry customers could be persuaded to invest instead. SoftBank has also reportedly expressed interest in acquiring Intel's manufacturing business."
The current shareholders of Intel own the entire company. Once Intel is split into two, the shareholders are legally entitled to the whole proceeds from the sale of the divested/ split-off arm (that is not under Intel name). In that case, The Economist suggests the future customers of the divested arm to invest in the newly created arm. Whether this will work or not, I do not know. But this is what the quotation wanted to say.
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