How to Build a $20B Semiconductor Fab (2024)
4 days ago
- Semiconductors have driven technological progress for decades, enabling PCs, internet, mobile phones, and AI.
- Moore’s Law made transistors exponentially cheaper and smaller, but fab costs have skyrocketed to $10–$25 billion.
- Modern fabs require extreme precision (nanometer-scale features), ultra-clean environments, and complex multi-layer manufacturing processes.
- Key manufacturing steps include layering, patterning (photolithography), doping, and heating, repeated thousands of times.
- Fabs consist of cleanrooms, sub-fabs for support equipment, and massive HVAC, vibration control, and chemical handling systems.
- About 70–80% of fab cost is equipment, with lithography machines alone costing up to $400 million each.
- Rising costs have shifted the industry to a fabless model, with only TSMC, Samsung, and Intel operating leading-edge nodes.