fabfabfab

We had them at a fab. About $85k + accessories at the time (~ 7 years ago).

Grug develop doctor's appointment website, grug use jQuery + Flask/Django.

Grug try develop Notion or Google Sheets competitor, grug use React/Vue framework.

Speaking of purity, the first thing Hacker News would do is try to run SAP on a Kubernetes cluster, refactor crucial bits in Rust and shard the database into sqlite3.db files on per user basis. We'd also recommend you restructure your office for a more open space, bring down the cubicles and make sure the conference rooms are glasswalled and have funny names. Bringing pets to work is mandatory.

We need to look at ERP software in positive light. Fab guy here, there is another beast like this that runs the whole fab. It's made by Applied Materials, called FAB300. It connects to inventory systems, SAP & finance, all the fab tools and process data, automation control through interfaces like SECS/GEM, monitors fab output and wafer starts, material systems and movement of wafers, recipe management, copy exact audits, etc.

ERP/MRP systems are complicated because businesses and factory management is complicated. The fact that we have such pieces of software is a testament that however shitty you think they are, at least we have them. They run real businesses and fabs in prod. They bring revenue and are responsible for running multi-billion dollars of turnover. Whole nation states depend on them. That's kind of amazing.

Idk, I have much respect for SAP and such as I grow older. I feel like if I were to design such a thing with 10k engineers at my disposal, it'd be much worse. It can certainly improve, of course.

100%. I worked in the heart of semiconductor manufacturing. Quality primarily a result of systems such as COD (Contain-your-own-defect), SPC (statistical process control), inspection metrology (traceability to NIST, MCA, reproducibility, repeatability, etc.), 5M+E (man, machine, materials, methods, measurement and environment), copy exact, etc.

What OP is talking about is that good tools are the ones with better design. OP mistakes the technical term "quality" with "good design". Quality is producing things as per specifications and allowable tolerances.

A new horse is heading to Vietnam. There is still opportunity to stop it.

Fab guy here. This is excellent news and much needed, but vigilence is needed to make sure it doesn't end up being devoured by crony corporate agenda and it actually results in favorouble pro-US climate for semiconductor manufacturing.

I'd like to share personal experience with how we bankrupted American leadership in cutting edge nodes. Although, it is not lithography related, I was part of a few billion $ ROI program where we'd hot test the chip for binning, best I don't disclose too many details. Let's just say, it was critical so much so that I sat in unmarked buildings. I saw that get transfered under my personal watch to China. We had Chinese employees visit US for 6 months at a time and during this rotation, we'd teach them everything. Had to take a Chinese culture course. Process charts, metrics, drawings and schematics, whitepapers, how everything works, be part of troubleshooting process and then test them for their acuity. This was around 2012-2014. Usually, US semiconductor manufacturers do not transfer fab capabilities to China, only assembly/packaging. But, here, the was a clear violation of backend fab activities that were transferred to China and built out. I visited China for 3 months to get things up and running. This was a brand new process that no one in the world has. All custom equipment from a major Japanese equipment manufacturer. This process was so insane that it took 10 years of development internally to come to this point. Even today, in 2022, no one has replicated it.

This should not have happened IMO from a national security standpoint. But, these things continue to happen and US gov does not have enough insight into America's semiconductor industry when it comes to protecting IP. Far too many things do not require ITAR and are exported without oversight.

I am pretty much against over-regulation, but here there needs to be strict regulation for exporting any semiconductor technologies whether it is fab or assembly or what have you. The entire industry needs to be hamstrung with export control.

That someone was me when I used to be on call as a Fab engineer. I took responsibility and my team relied on my alertness when shit hit the fan a couple of times during my career. Yes, someone has to do it. The negativity and cynicism on HN astounds me.

Semiconductor Fabs would be less than 10% labor costs. But there are also indirect labor costs: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/semiconductors/our-insig...

There are areas in the fab that are not fully automated. Lot of backend wafer fabrication (Laser scribing, Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate or CoWoS, a bunch of other wild card assembly steps at wafer level, Wafer-to-Tape & Reel processes, etc.) is not entirely automated in terms of material flow in the Fab.

There are usually bigger fish to fry when it comes to Fab cost-reduction w.r.t labor. For example, if there is a trade off between having space for laborers to move about vs. using OHTs, the favor is almost always for OHTs. Why? Because every square foot of the Fab is big bucks. Floor space is king. You'd rather jam more equipment than to put humans that need 4 ft clearance and a whole bunch of OSHA needs.

Fab guy here. Lots of references in the article about semiconductors. I posted about automation here a while ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29331417

It is already extremely automated in the US for semiconductors.

If you have any questions about semiconductor manf, ask away.

I worked alongside this team. Without going into too much details, PTIM vs STIM are primarily cost driven. Engineers are not stupid, which is what Linus, et. al. claim. In fact, they know and listen to what Linus has to say about shitty PTIM. I would love to tell you everything that goes into selection of TIM but for obvious reasons, I cannot. You'd be surprised the amount of engineering that is behind something as simple as thermal interface material.

As they say, good engineering is about optimal tradeoff between every aspect of your product. That includes cost (directly, we are responsible for it) and customer happiness (indirectly, since in a giant company, that gets handed off to the Marketing/PR team). These can get out of sync.

Here is some public information about PTIM: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20150279762A1/en

There is also Software/IP which is basically US-based. For example, MES 3000 runs the fab which I believe is developed by AMAT.

If you want to work on robotics, you should look into working for one of the major semiconductor equipment manufacturers, not a Fab. To name a few: KLA Tencor (US), Applied Materials (US), ASM, ASML (Netherlands), Advantech (US), TEL(Japan), Besi (Netherlands), etc.

Having worked in Fab, the supply chain is already in the US+EU+Japan. About the only change in last 5 years or so is Intel's ability to compete in lithography process and get sufficient yield to stay competitive in pricing. Lithography is one of the 400 or so steps in Fab processing, but arguably the most critical and a bottle neck. TSMC does not have a lead in every single of these 400 steps, in fact quite the opposite.

Anytime someone says "impossible", I would take that opinion with a grain of salt.

Expert here. Worked in a Fab (Automated Material Handling Systems or AMHS group).

You might be suprised how automated it already is [1]. Notice the OHTs (Overhead Hoist Transport)[2] running on a system of highways and superhighways on the ceiling. Each of these OHTs carry a box inside it called a FOUPs (Front Opening Unified Pods)[3] carrying upto 25 wafers. That can easily be worth $1M+ per box. They have standardized JEDEC interfaces so any process tool can accept a FOUP and get wafers out of it. The environment inside these FOUPs is ridiculously clean and each one costs $15k for what most people would think is a plastic box with a door in the front. FOUPs are used internally. If wafers are shipped, they're shipped in a similar box called FOSB or Front Opening Shipping Boxes [4]. These boxes are the reason automation happens with standardized "APIs". We don't need to know who made the process tool to hand them a box of wafers.

Another automation feature are the AGVs or Automated Guided Vehicles [5] that carry the same FOUPs and FOSBs [5]. They also can be equipped with a robot arm that takes a wafer out of the box and hands it over to the tool. The AGVs run on specialized roads inside the Fab and remains docked on the tool during processing.

Usually, there are hardly any humans around the tool. Material (wafer) is fed by AMHS systems, picked up by the same. Fab is probably one of the most automated manufacturing places out there. Way more than Automotive manfacturing.

If you're looking to do software engineering, I would highly encourage people to go work in semiconductor industry. It is just a fucking cool place and lot of room for improvement still.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRlcZqqyBM8

[2] https://www.muratec.net/cfa/products/

[3] https://www.entegris.com/shop/en/USD/Products/Wafer-Handling...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOUP#/media/File:Front_opening...

[5] https://www.muratec-usa.com/machinery/clean-room/transport/A...