Automotive Chip Shortage is as much about the "type of chips" as it is about overall capacity

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, RedRound2 said:

And I never said to use 5nm or even 7nm. Probably 22nm/32nm is good enough and is still be prooduced at good numbers for low end electronics.

Just keep in mind this criticism, the source of the story comments, is from Intel who up until now did not sell any foundry services and was purely internal usage only. Now Intel is starting a new foundry services business unit and making this available to external customers. Intel is first and foremost a leading edge foundry so they do not have any silicon processes used by the automotive industry except for autonomous driving processors.

 

So lets put Intel's comments in to some context, they are wanting customers however some of the largest silicon chip users in the world would not be able to use Intel foundry services because they all use a majority of 45nm and up, something Intel just can't service. Intel has a vested interest in raising this type of criticism which doesn't actually make it inherently valid.

 

Sure you can't just keep using old silicon processes forever but a microcontroller that controls automatic engine start/stop hardly needs to be on anything smaller than 90nm, or w/e is used I don't actually know. I do know there isn't any benefit using 28nm for it. There is some level of logic to Intel's comments however that's not the reason they are saying it, the reason they are saying it is because they want/need those customers and a little bit of public pressure/shame might just get them that even if their comments aren't strictly valid.

 

Intel has a total of 4 silicon fabrication facilities that can do nodes greater than 45nm, out of 17 total. One of these 4 is dedicated to VNAND so that leave 3 facilities that could service the automotive industry, if those even have capacity at all to do that.

 

So who stands to gain from getting the automotive industry to start adopting 45nm and below silicon processes? Intel or automotive makers?

 

Why would the automotive industry adopt 45nm and below processes just to appease Intel's new business unit when they themselves standing nothing to gain by doing it and in doing so restrict themselves to a tenth of the chip supply capacity than they had before?

 

Transitioning to 22nm/32nm processes would lead to massive shortages, worse than now, because there is actually so little of that compared to 45nm and higher.

 

1 hour ago, RedRound2 said:

In fact because Tesla used better nodes, they were able to avoid a lot of the issue.

They avoided the issue because Ford/GM/VW each sneeze more vehicles than Tesla makes in a year. Each one of these produce 3-4 times as many cars in a single month than Tesla does in a year, do you not think this is a large factor?

[igormp]

On 9/26/2021 at 4:28 AM, RedRound2 said:

Global chip shortage aside, they wouldn't face the extra shortages pertaining to using the old node, genius

The main problem here is the global chip shortage, if it weren't for that there wouldn't be any news.

On 9/26/2021 at 4:28 AM, RedRound2 said:

Probably 22nm/32nm is good enough and is still be prooduced at good numbers for low end electronics.

It's produced in a way smaller scale than other 40nm+. Heck, even the latest µC from Raspberry is based on a M0+ fabbed on 40nm because there's no reason to go for anything more expensive.

22nm/32nm is mostly being phased out because, if you need the performance/lower power consumption, then you go for newer nodes, otherwise you keep using 40nm+ (which accounts for almost 40% of global node production).

On 9/26/2021 at 4:28 AM, RedRound2 said:

Sticking with ancient technology because there is scale and is cheap is not the reason to always stick with it. We have to take in accound of the changing technological landscape

Sure, then let's keep using what's being used the most at reasonable prices:

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