Interesting analysis on staying competitive in semiconductor manufacturing.
“The dotted black lines toward the bottom show the estimated cost of building a leading edge fab (the lower line) and a line showing double that number (the upper line). Our thesis is that companies whose annual revenue fall between those two lines are at risk of falling off the Moore’s Law treadmill.“
TSMC came close once. Samsung looks close now (though this doesn’t include the rest of the group subsidising the fab). It also shows that Intel’s plans to offer fab services need to succeed.
