China's biggest chipmaker to build colossal chip factory China's largest chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), has announced it will spend $8.87 billion on a new fabrication facility that will become China's largest such facility used for products other than memory. As outlined in a regulatory filing [PDF], the factory will offer "a production line …
So how large are these "colossal chips" - do we have an approved unit of measure?
Size: According to the article -- 12 inch equivalent (whatever that means).
Units: How about "Pizza Slices" or "Piz" for short? I reckon 12 inch equivalent might be about 6 Piz -- or not.
The 28 nm process was used in 2013 for the CPU in the XBox One (1.75 GHz AMD 8-core APU) with ~5,000,000,000 MOS transistors on 363 square mm of silicon at GlobalFoundries. And also in 2013 for the Apple A7 (1.3GHz dual core ARMv8-A) with 1,000,000,000 MOS transistors on 102 square mm of silicon at GlobalFoundries.
I do not know if I would call the above low-end microcontrollers. You can and probably would make low-end microcontrollers with a 28 nm process today, but if you are willing to accept a lower yield you can also produce higher spec chips. The above are not state of the art, but they are not total junk either.
TPM's on paper could have their primary seeds generated on the very first power on (but if the device looses power because the user decides this is taking too long and power cycles like you know they will, it would typically be bin time), but it saves manufacturing time (¥¥¥/€€€/£££/$$$) if the primary seeds are “squirt” it into the TPM in a vendor-specific process, which is absolutely allowed by the Trusted Computing Group and done by basically everyone who makes TPM's. These keys can typically NEVER be changed (unless the vendors allow it, if you find a vendor who does allow changing all the primary seeds, let me know). Which factory, in what country, do you trust are not keeping a copy of all EPS's (endorsement primary seed) in every device they ship ?
12-inch may not be a good call. The main shortage is in more mundane bread-and-butter chips (ever eaten a chip buttie on a cold winter's afternoon? Awesome!), and these are cheaper when churned out on 8-inch Frisbees. Piling 14 nm toys high and selling 'em relatively cheap, in a bid to saturate the market, is pitting them against the real 2-7 nm hotrods in a market which is less cost-conscious and expecting more modest growth anyway. It may prove to be a less than stellar idea.
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