Hopefully the new 910Cs are from SMIC. If they’re from TSMC still this is not going to be pretty for HUAWEI now that TSMC and the US have caught on. Maybe when HUAWEI designed the 910B they designed it for the TSMC process so they decided to stick with it but are pivoting to SMIC for the 910C.
Chinese semiconductor thread II
- Thread starter vincent
- Start date
There are very few companies in the world that can afford make this kind of big size die AI chips like these and they are very well known in the industry, so if the company is in China is likely to be refused by TSMC after 2022. So I find hard to believe that TSMC would take an order from an "unknown" company to make a chip which its die size this big that would put an strain in their machines and more when they have a shortage on capacity for this kind of big size AI dies, also TSMC is well known to work closely with their customers. Or either was an old order that was put in place before 2022 or an executive inside the company turned the eye in the other side.
Look, I already explained this, but highly regular chips such as AI chips can have malfunctioning cores disabled by laser cutting the contact traces for them. You make the chips, test them, disable the non-working cores, package, and there you have it. You can just bin the chips with more functioning cores and sell them for higher price, or you design chips with enough extra cores, that you will get the amount you want as working most of the time, knowing the defect rate you can guess how many non-working cores you will have and make it work.
It is not as much of a big deal making larger area chips as some people think.
It is not as much of a big deal making larger area chips as some people think.
TSMC has manufactured the original Ascend 910
There's no way they couldn't identify the similarities between Ascend 910 & Ascend 910B
Most likely an executive turned a blind eye