Trump administration hits Taiwan with a 32% tariff

[hansioux]

@comfy123

Asia’s dominance isn’t about inventing the future, it’s about mastering someone else’s blueprint better than anyone else.

That’s basically the blueprint of every Asian semiconductor industry overtaking the US though.

I’m not one of those people that think Intel has no shot though. My past post on the matter can speak to this.

TSMC’s US Engineers are “Babies” Say Taiwanese

Intel chose the supposedly more advanced SAQP lithography technology, and that ended up with very unstable yield, while TSMC kept on perfecting the tried and true EUV technology. Every time physical limitations impose on continued scaling using the old technology presents an opportunity for the board to be shuffled. Intel was ahead all the way up to 14nm when they chose the wrong path to go forward. That doesn’t mean their original choice won’t be the right one down the road, or they won’t p…

However, I guess now the question is whether they can last until they pick the right technology again.

It’s also worth noting that Samsung also went with a similar EUV approach, but they couldn’t get their yield up, and they have the entire nation behind them. So there’s more to just picking the right lithograhpic technology.

The game changer right now is AI. NVIDIA has cuLitho, that can work backwards to predict what the mask should look like for advanced nodes. That might dramatically improve yield for Samsung and Intel. So yeah, the next few years is anyone’s game.