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At what size of transistor does semiconductor manufacturing become practical for independent manufacture? (lemm.ee)

submitted 11 months ago by Kalcifer@lemm.ee to c/askelectronics@discuss.tchncs.de

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Currently, only one company in the world -- ASML -- has the technological capability necessary for the creation of photolithography machines which are sufficient for the production of modern semiconductor devices. What I'm wondering is at what point does semiconductor manufacturing become practical, or even feesible for small organizations, or independents? One must be able to surpass the cost of the machines, and the resources necessary to manufacture them. I presume that a company like ASML is also extremely picky -- willfully, or by regulation, or otherwise -- about who they lend their technology to.

I'm not sure if this is the right community for this sort of post. Please let me know if not, and if there is a more suitable place to put it.

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[–] agressivelyPassive@feddit.de 0 points 11 months ago

Realistically, you can't really compete in a market where ASML is the monopolist. Not because ASML is an ass, but simply because building just a single factory costs billions. Intel regularly invests 10 billion or more in just a single factory that doesn't even have all the necessary tools in-house to produce a chip end to end.

Smaller manufacturers usually serve the long tail, that is rather old process nodes for use cases where bleeding edge performance isn't needed. Bosch for example had its own manufacturing branch.