Re: “Advanced technologies” aren’t always needed
If by “advanced nodes”, you mean 3nm vs 7nm, then yes you are correct in your assessment. But smaller line width also brings massive price advantage, and bigger than is currently obvious. It’s certainly essential for DRAM. You *could* theoretically make DRAM a few nodes behind leading edge, but the price competitiveness would be unthinkable. But also:
The world has got used to making microntrollers on 28nm+, or even 45nm+, for a couple simple reasons….both of which are *going away*. First off, 45nm uses very old fabs and equipment whose capex has been fully amortised. It isn’t intrinsically cheap, but it is now, because otherwise it all gets thrown on the scrap heap. But increasingly the ratio of volume of microcontrollers to leading-edge increases we are moving to a world where we use loads more microcontrollers than
Biting the hand that feeds IT
