7 korrents from this piece
Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.
Our reading
The same law that made chips cheaper made the factories that produce them enormously more expensive.
Their wordsThese enormous costs are ultimately due to the same factor that has steadily driven down the cost of semiconductors: Moore’s Law, the observation that the number of components on an integrated circuit tends to double every two years.
Their wordsFab construction time in the US has increased from just over 650 days on average in the 1990s to over 900 days on average in the 2010s, compared to around 600-700 days in Asian countries, in part because of increasingly stringent environmental review processes.
Their wordsRoughly 70-80% of the cost of a new fab will be the process tools that go in it.
Our reading
Lithography machines alone cost about as much as the entire building put up to house them.
Their wordsThe cost of lithography machines is often estimated as 20% of the cost of a new fab, which means that lithography tools can cost as much as the entire fab facility itself.
Our reading
Every new process node makes a fab about 30 per cent more expensive to build than the one before it.
Their wordsFor modern semiconductor fabs, each new process node increases fab cost by about 30%.
Their wordsBut as fab costs increased, it became more and more burdensome for manufacturers to operate cutting edge manufacturing facilities due to the high costs, and fewer manufacturers had the production volume to spread those costs over.
Their wordsThe second is that producing semiconductors requires almost unfathomable levels of precision.