YouSaid · the spoken record

Mark Liu

lines on the record: 77
first: 2021-08-31
most recent: 2021-08-31
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“The most advanced ones, for like if you're looking at the chips in your iPhone, you know, which uses TSMC's most advanced processes. Those have what's called an extreme ultraviolet lightography system. And to get that extreme ultraviolet light, what they do is they vaporize tin metal with a laser. When the vaporized tin is dropping, they hit the drops with another laser and it generates this plasma which emits this extreme ultraviolet light. It's crazy. And then it goes through this mirror system because you can't use lenses with extreme ultraviolet light. You have to use mirrors to focus it down into these little narrow patterns. I've actually been in the factory where”
2021-08-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Everything you need to know about the global chip shortage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, so that's even crazier, right? But there are these crazy manufacturing processes. In the silicon manufacturing process for the most advanced tool in a fab inside a fab, typically you'll have hundreds of different tools, actually in a large fab like one of TSMCs. You'll have thousands of these tools. And these tools are big machines that process these wafers and do various things. Most tools cost Starting with a couple million dollars to the most expensive tools are in excess of 150 million euros, right? So, you know, well over 150 million dollars for a single machine. That's for the lithography machine that actually prints the patterns on the wafer. And the lithography...”
2021-08-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Everything you need to know about the global chip shortage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Corning has the process where this molten glass that comes on two sides of a trough, overflows the trough, fuses below the trough, and then cools as the optically perfect sheet that's half millimeter thick, the width of the king-size bed. And then a robot grabs it while it's cooling and cuts it off with a diamond cover.”
2021-08-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Everything you need to know about the global chip shortage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, what they do is they melt it. So they have this giant vat of molten silica and then they take a crystal on this rod and they pull out something that looks kind of like a torpedo, but it'll be a giant ingot, which will be about a foot in diameter, 300 millimeters in diameter, and they'll pull it out of this molten vat. There are a lot of these high-tech manufacturing processes that just boggle the mind that people never see but that's what they do for silicon ingots. If you want to see something really crazy, it's like the flat panel display you and I are looking at each other on right now. Those are made with sheets of glass that are half millimeter thick size of the king-size bed typically. And those are cast in a single optically perfect sheet.”
2021-08-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Everything you need to know about the global chip shortage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think I'd ever pictured a silicon ingot before, but that's just a giant chunk of silicon that gets sliced. So like literally a giant rock goes into one side of a factory and slices of silicon that turns into chips come out the other side”
2021-08-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Everything you need to know about the global chip shortage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“the packaging factories there. After those chips are packaged, then they get sent to somebody else who will put them on circuit boards and sometimes assemble it all the way into the finished product. Sometimes it goes to somebody who puts them on circuit boards who then sends the boards to somebody else. So you have multiple tiers in the supply chain all the way from the raw silicon through the design and through the fab through the assembly and test and packaging to the boards and so on. So it's a long sequential process that crosses many national borders and that gives you lots of opportunity for things to go wrong when you have something like COVID come in.”
2021-08-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Everything you need to know about the global chip shortage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This microprocessor, you might have like 500 chips on them. Okay. If it's something like a controller for a car, you might have 4,000 chips on them because they don't take as much space. So then what they do is they take that wafer, ship it to usually Southeast Asia or China. And there are companies called outsourced assembly and test factories who will put these little probes on each chip and test which ones are good to make sure they're good and then the ones that are good they'll record in the computer and remember then they'll cut them apart and then they'll put them into packages. So that's another group of companies that do that. A lot of them are in Malaysia, Vietnam I just heard this morning that Vietnam is going to hard lockdown on COVID, right? So that's going to affect a lot of”
2021-08-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Everything you need to know about the global chip shortage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, you need to execute each step with very high yield, right? Because if you had 99% yield for the first step and 99% for the second step, you know, you and I would think, wow, that's pretty good, right? But if you take 99% yield through 700 steps by the time you're done, you'll get nothing at the end. It's workable. So you really need to have 99.99 plus percent yield on every step because it's really a drag when you get to the 690th step and then you have a low yield step and you have to throw out all the stuff that came before. So it's a very exacting process that takes many steps. And that's going to take 60 days plus to have the wafer go all the way through. Okay, so that's the work that is done by the fab. So now you have a way. Than has anywhere from”
2021-08-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Everything you need to know about the global chip shortage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then they'll lay down an interconnect network of little copper wires, which they also print on there to connect all those transistors. Now, in the older technologies, that's frequently 350 steps, which might take you 45 to 60 days to go from start to finish. And some of the newer technologies, like the most advanced chips that go into your new desktop computers, your notebook computers or your iPhones and so on, those will use as many as 700 plus steps. Now, when you think about a process that has”
2021-08-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Everything you need to know about the global chip shortage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the interconnections on that wafer. Now, that supply chain is fairly complex as well. You have somebody who makes the silicon inkit and then slices into wafers. And then those wafers go to these giant fabs, they're called, the factories that manufacture these chips are called fabs. So they go to the fabs. And inside the fab, what will happen is the manufacturer will in a multi-step process lay out a pattern of first the transistors on the silicon. And what they do is they'll do multiple steps of lithography and etch and deposition, right? They'll use a whole complex series of steps to build up layer-layer after layer of transistors. They'll use multiple layers to build it up.”
2021-08-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Everything you need to know about the global chip shortage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Allow you to stitch together your chip with known good blocks of logic and then you design the stuff that you need to customize, then you send it off to the foundry or the factory that's going to make this chip. So that's actually a very complex supply chain as well. You have a tool manufacturer. You have IP blocks and stuff like that. Okay, so that's the design part. Now the actual manufacturing starts with a silicon wafer and here what you have is you have somebody who makes a single crystal of silicon in a giant ingot and then they slice it into the most advanced or 300 millimeter diameter, about 12 inch diameter wafers. When they slice it and polish those wafers, those are a perfect crystal. And then what they'll do is they will pattern the transistor.”
2021-08-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Everything you need to know about the global chip shortage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Associated with that. Because if you're going to design a chip with 2 billion transistors, the likelihood of you're getting every one of those connected in the right place correct the first time is frankly zero. So what people do these days in modern chip design is they use pre-designed blocks and they're called intellectual property blocks or IP blocks which are known to work. It's like, oh, I want to build a controller chip, right? So I am going to license a processing unit design from maybe somebody like ARM in the UK who's very popular. Maybe I need a USB interface. Okay, so I'll get a USB IP block, which I'll license. Okay, and the software tool suppliers have all these libraries that”
2021-08-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Everything you need to know about the global chip shortage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There are really two parts. There's the design part, and the design part involves engineers laying out a circuit which will have transistors and it'll have lots of other components connected in a particular way. And the way they'll do it these days, they'll work on computers and they'll design the chip using computer software, which will give you a file which they can send to the manufacturer. Now, that design can go from relatively simple designs, which are these days hundreds or thousands of transistors, to the most complex ones will have 2 billion transistors in a single chip design, right? So when you get to those more complex design aspects, there's also a supply.”
2021-08-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Everything you need to know about the global chip shortage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let's start even farther back. We talk about chips, it makes them feel like a commodity. There are obviously lots and lots of different kinds of chips at lots and lots of different process nodes from different fabs and vendors. But just at a basic level, how are chips made? Where do they come from? And what is the supply chain to get to a chip? Because when we talk about a car, it's not like they're just throwing microcontrollers inside the engine bay, right? They have to like assemble them onto computing products, onto boards and put those in the cars. But how do we get to a chip first?”
2021-08-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Everything you need to know about the global chip shortage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, because an auto plant is a very expensive asset. You've got hundreds of millions of dollars tied up in that. And what you want to do is you want to keep it running. For example, if you're an automaker like one of the big three in Detroit and you don't have parts, those lines are usually producing about one vehicle per minute. So I think the average selling price for a vehicle now is over $40,000 recently. Okay, so that means every minute they're losing $40,000 in sales. So that's a lot. Okay. So what they do is they'll take those vehicles out, park them in the field somewhere, and hope when the chips come in, I can quickly go put them back in. But still, when you do that, then you have to bring them back into the factory. And sometimes you're going to have to disassemble something to go put the chip in. Sometimes you can be buried way in the engine compartment.”
2021-08-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Everything you need to know about the global chip shortage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's a story the other day about Ford building its trucks minus some ships, putting them in a parking lot and just waiting and then reinstalling the chips because they might as well just run the plants.”
2021-08-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Everything you need to know about the global chip shortage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“From building the product. If you are a product manufacturer, you often talk about, is this product clear to build? Do I have all the components I need to build it? That's where we're seeing the troubles now because one ship is short or several chips are short.”
2021-08-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Everything you need to know about the global chip shortage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Microprocessor chips, they're these little controller chips because it's cheaper to do them with chips than it is to do with mechanical linkages and stuff like that. So chips are all over the place. And then when you see a complex product like a car where you can say maybe consume a hundred plus controller chips and all kinds of other chips in that vehicle, what you are now faced with is I only need to be short one of those chips and then I can't make the vehicle. And that's really the problem, right? It's not a problem that the bulk of the chips are short. It's just some of them and the sum varies depending on the time of day, the week, the month, and whatever and what other people are buying. So it's that problem where we're having these shortages that are preventing manufacturers.”
2021-08-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Everything you need to know about the global chip shortage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When we talk about chips, there's actually a huge range of different chips. Everything from the microprocessor chips that go into your notebook computer to the chips that go into your phone or chips that go into your Sony, PlayStation console or your TV set, or your car or your refrigerator or what have you. Now, people tend to think of, well, you know, so in my phone, I have a phone chip or two, well, actually, there are dozens and dozens of chips within a phone in an automobile, a modern car. You might have a hundred plus different chips for controlling a lot of things like the engine or all the things on the dashboard, you know, all the console, the navigation system.”
2021-08-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Everything you need to know about the global chip shortage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I feel like there's a lot of supply chain stuff around the pandemic. You and I could talk about before the show, we were just talking about toilet paper shortages. But I want to talk about something that is a little more near and dear to the Verge, which is the ongoing ship shortage, which does not appear to be ending anytime soon and indeed doesn't seem like anyone can forecast when it will end. So just take a step back for everyone. Describe what the chip shortage is and what's going on.”
2021-08-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Everything you need to know about the global chip shortage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of that is just the basics, figuring out why we ran out of chips and where we're going to get more is a lot deeper, but it is fascinating. Okay, what is she? Here we go. Dr. Willie She, you're a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School. Welcome to Decoder.”
2021-08-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Everything you need to know about the global chip shortage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Started out as the spinoff of the manufacturing operations of advanced micro devices, or AMD. AMD uses global foundries for a lot of chips, but it also outsources its most advanced chips to Taiwan semiconductor.”
2021-08-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Everything you need to know about the global chip shortage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Outsourced the manufacturer of those to companies like TSMC for many years or to others as well. So you have TSMC, Intel, then you have Samsung. Samsung is the global leader in the memory chip segment, but they also are a leader in these so-called logic chips like TSMC and Intel make. They have an enormous memory chip business. They also have foundry services. They are mostly in Korea, but they also have a large fab in Austin, Texas. I should mention TSMC has a fab in Nanjing, China, but it's relatively small. But TSMC is also building a new fab in Phoenix, Arizona. So those are the big three. Then you have other players, including Global Foundries. Global Foundries”
2021-08-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Everything you need to know about the global chip shortage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The big players in the industry are Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, TSMC, who was actually the first company to pioneer this foundry model where we will manufacture the chips for others. Their main facilities are in Taiwan, in three science parks. Their headquarters is in the Sinchu Science Park in northern Taiwan, and then they have other fabs in two other science parks as well. Another very large player, of course, is Intel. Intel historically has been what's called an integrated device manufacturer. In other words, they design their chips, microprocessors, predominantly, and they manufacture them themselves. Intel also makes a lot of ancillary chips that you also need when you're assembling a PC, for example. By and large, it has”
2021-08-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Everything you need to know about the global chip shortage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Very simplified basics. Companies that make chips that other people design are called foundries. An individual chip factory is called a fab. That's where silicon goes in one side and a chip goes out the other. Those chips are sent to be packaged or turned into a usable product at another facility. Chips themselves are made of silicon and fundamentally they contain transistors, which store tiny amounts of electricity that correspond to the ones and zeros of binary code. Faster chips need more transistors to fit more transistors on a chip, you need smaller process nodes. For example, the A13 bionic chip in the iPhone 11 used a 7 nm process and had 8.5 billion transistors. The iPhone 12's A14 uses a state-of-the-art five nm process node and contains 11.8 billion transistors. You got it? You can run it back if you need to.”
2021-08-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Everything you need to know about the global chip shortage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Can even manufacture the cars at all. Game consoles like the PS5 and Xbox Series X are impossible to find. And even things like microwaves and refrigerators are impacted because they contain simple controller chips. So we realized it was time to figure out what caused the chip shortage, why that happened, and how we're going to get out of it. My guess today is Dr. Willie She. He's a professor of management practices at the Harvard Business School. He's an expert on chips and semiconductors. He spent years working at companies like IBM and Silicon Graphics. And he's also an expert in supply chains, how things go from raw materials to finished products in stores. Willie's the guy that grocery stores and paper companies called in March 2020 when there was a run on toilet paper. If anyone's going to explain this thing, it's going to be Willie. But to talk about the chip shortage, we've got to start with some vocabulary. So let's start with some”
2021-08-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Everything you need to know about the global chip shortage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Neil I Patel, editor in chief of the Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. Today's episode is about an enormous problem that requires enormous ideas to solve and enormous amounts of money. The chip shortage. One of the things we try really hard to do on Decoder every week is connect themes across our interviews. There are just some problems and ideas that come up over and over again. And the chip shortage comes up in almost every episode we've done. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the demand for microchips has far exceeded supply, causing problems in every industry that relies on computers. You know that every industry relies on computers. Right now, major carmakers have unfinished cars sitting in parking lots waiting for chips to be installed. And that's when they”
2021-08-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Everything you need to know about the global chip shortage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT