So, we all know about the AKM fire destroying a significant part of the semiconductor industry for more than a year. This factory obviously made more than just our beloved AKM DACs.
The reason why we didn’t see these chips simply made by other foundries is that these chips are predominantly mixed-signal and analog ICs. The analog part of them is very complex to make and highly tailored to the foundries' production processes. That is also why after the rebuild, they didn’t start outputting the old chips again: new iterations had to be made to work with the new equipment.
Analog IC design is also very reliant on the process mode size. Usually, they pick larger process modes, because the smaller you go, the harder it is to design. Obviously, a smaller process node is not always needed, but with the every high degree of integration we see in SOCs and smartphone chips, this is a hot topic.
The following video gives a good overview of why that is, and what’s going to happen in the future to make small process mode mixed-signal IC a reality. Quite interesting! And obviously, it involved AI
If you like this video, you may like his other videos as well, very informative. It’s often about semiconductors, but not exclusively.
The reason why we didn’t see these chips simply made by other foundries is that these chips are predominantly mixed-signal and analog ICs. The analog part of them is very complex to make and highly tailored to the foundries' production processes. That is also why after the rebuild, they didn’t start outputting the old chips again: new iterations had to be made to work with the new equipment.
Analog IC design is also very reliant on the process mode size. Usually, they pick larger process modes, because the smaller you go, the harder it is to design. Obviously, a smaller process node is not always needed, but with the every high degree of integration we see in SOCs and smartphone chips, this is a hot topic.
The following video gives a good overview of why that is, and what’s going to happen in the future to make small process mode mixed-signal IC a reality. Quite interesting! And obviously, it involved AI
If you like this video, you may like his other videos as well, very informative. It’s often about semiconductors, but not exclusively.
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