Thread

1. HPsquared · 1790346004 · focus · HN ↗

   Semiconductor fabs involve a lot of hazardous chemicals, process changes and high energy consumption. Exactly the kind of thing European regulations tend to deter or slow down. Which is somewhat fine if there is nowhere else to build it, but if other places are easier, well...

   1. whateverboat · 1790464221 · focus · HN ↗

      Life cycle of the fab is 3-5 years, an opimistic estimate of slow down in europe due to all the paper work is 2-3 years, so then you would rather not build the plant.

      1. Dylan16807 · 1790487271 · focus · HN ↗

         How? I thought there was still tons of demand for every node that has launched in the last 15+ years.

         1. eternauta3k · 1790489147 · focus · HN ↗

            Yes, and many applications don't need / work on the latest node.
         2. crote · 1790530254 · focus · HN ↗

            The problem is that constructing a cutting-edge fab is stupidly expensive, and you can only pay for it by selling chips at quite a premium - and nobody is paying a premium for 5-year-old CPUs.

            So that brand-new fab has to pay for itself within the first 3-5 years, or it'll simply never pay for itself. But indeed, once it has paid off its initial construction costs it'll happily keep running for another 10+ years, churning out pure profit.

            An additional problem here is that the costs have been rapidly increasing as the nodes have gotten more advanced. The tech for something like, say, the 40nm node is now mature enough that building new fabs isn't too expensive, so there's a decent market for building new ancient fabs for cheap mass production. But with EUV everything has gotten so complicated that there's no reasonable way to make it cheaper as it matures, and scale-wise you're well into the diminishing returns for everything which isn't logic. It is very much doubtful whether building brand-new 7nm-and-smaller fabs for mass production will ever make economic sense.

            1. Dylan16807 · 1790551567 · focus · HN ↗

               CPUs and GPUs a node or two old aren't really cheap compared to the cutting edge, though. If the fab's selling price has dropped a ton, are Intel and Amd and nVidia all making an extra big profit on the older models they're still selling?

               1. whateverboat · 1791016119 · focus · HN ↗

                  yes, hugely so.

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