I'm so torn between the choice of activating Nuclear power plant4 and tai-chi-tien's business substainability...honestly speaking I personally think they might not survive for much longer if they stay anyway...so maybe it's good to relocate sooner than later and grow/develope in mainland instead. I only hope being a taiwanese owned business, they will still pay good tax back home to TWN...? I think Taiwan has missed the boat , maybe people there will have to find different way to survive economically...(??)
Yes, the Florida model: tourism + fruits. But this will require a huge market, so it will actually make Taiwan even more dependent on China.
frances
2015-08-31 00:00
tourism is not a bad industry to develop for TWN ; if done correctly, there will be visitors from many parts of the world other than visitors mostly from mainland...Do you see big negatives if it depends on mainland? (if they are banned or discouraged to visit for political reason?) Taiwanese might not have many options left and I see tourism is not a bad way to make a living (provided with good planning like any other industry they wish to develop (or to destroy...) I still enjoyed being there whenever I returned...just make sure I didn't watch too much tv esp those shows talking politics...
There is nothing wrong with being a tourist attraction. I pointed it out merely for the intrinsic contradiction: Taiwan lost its industrial base because of its boneheaded fascination on independence, and the result is exactly the total dependence on China economically. What an irony.
I had the similar thought /dream to YM's more than a decade ago but now it seems too many are too blind to see their own and only opportunity... To all who think democracy might be a bad idea to some societies/countries; I agree and disagree...but the right timing is critical...a lot of problems in twn were not cuased by democracy itself, but the overstretched implication& applications and misinterpreted definition/ overinflated values...like its application on Free speech / out of controlled biased media/biased & dated educational material n methods/ unnecessary over frequent elections, and many more... With efficient and effective administration of the govt (minus corruption) to match democrary, it will still work in my view-and there are some contrieds who have proved such success
I think you are stating a belief, not a logical conclusion.
frances
2015-09-01 00:00
it will take pages to write about all my thoughts so here are a few over simplified points... - There are quite a few niches markets for TWN businesses, although they can be copied/caught up within a decade or so - Yes Great mountains, good foods, National palace museum ( many will be screaming and kicking in M/land), arts and music, fashion/designs, service industry standards, good health care, etc. - Mainland Chinese are not the only source for tourism market...we should look elsewhere too...although many English guiding information required (too many strange signs with funny/interesting English) to make travelling in twn for visitors from non-Chinese speaking countries Friendlier and easier - Provided that PRC will not take over TWN by force; most Taiwanese might not enjoy much economical growth, but will be ok too in my view. As Mr wang said before, some can always try to work/do business in China (more and more difficult though, except for on-line shops which cost little to set up but face severe competition...too many of them ) - Money /economic growth is important but not everything...A civilized society with good taste/decent culture matters equally if not more - Tourism will not damage Environment as badly as many manufactories did/do...it's heart breaking to see how this beautiful island's water and land got so badly ruined/polluted for a couple of decades rapid economical growth ( good export)...I think this land needs rest therefore hopefully to recover... - Not everyone has/needs big ambition, just like not everyone can be prime minister or steve job...I think nowdays if many young people are happy with just running a personality store , that's totally fine...nothing wrong with that! I would love to see my children grow up being happy and confident knowing what they want (& don't want)...if they want to run a shop, I will not be any less proud of them ... getting too long already, stop here
High-tech manufacturing remains the key to high living standards. Taiwan is too big to qualify as an exception to the rule.
frances
2015-09-01 00:00
with such bad hand and missed all good timings...Taiwanese can only plan a realistic future and live with it...what else can they do?
No, Taiwan had about the best hand in the world 25 years ago and squandered it. Even now, it still have an ace in the hole; it simply refuses to play it.
总体看来,这就像时间序列里说的一样,一个稳态的时间序列(stationary time series)有mean-reverting的性质。就是不管外部正向或者负向冲击多大(shocks),这个时间序列要向自己的长期均值趋近。台湾的发展就像一个时间序列,70年前经历的巨大的正向冲击,现在向历史的均值趋近。台湾的正确策略应该是提高自己的均值,保持在高水准。可惜民主化太早了,很多矛盾没有解决就暴露了,并且主导了社会运作。说了半天都是天意。
Oh Mr Wang please do not have such sad prediction for Hong's chance of winning...I believe it's going to be very tough, but the gap won't be too big in my view (as many overseas Taiwanese seem to be enthuiastic about returnning to TWN to cast their votes ( quite a big numbers in you total those from Mainland China and U.S. etc)...plus I really believe there are some quiet people who will show DPP with their disapprovals by voting against Ms Tsai. My major worry is Wang jing-ping and his gang...if he pulled Hongs leg from behind without truly supporting her, then she will be in bigger trouble as Hidden enemy (fake friend) is so much worse than enemy in the open...on the other hand, wang JP will not be able to share the pie if he doesn't help Hong to win...that's my shallow view on this matter, some ideology fundamentalists please stay clear
Facts are facts: the majority of Taiwanese electorate is the problem, not the solution.
frances
2015-09-02 00:00
Too add on my points; English Tsai is the one who attacks sher2-ba1-pa1 but still happily receives it...same thing applied to my friends who is twn Indpcy supporter and he attacked 18% too but never wanted to reject the payments when I suggested him to do so...His brothers were all doing businesses in China, I wonder if they really want to lose them all...I don't think so
We know they are all hypocrites. In fact, they are also cowards, liars, thieves, traitors and mass murderers. But that does not change the fact that they control the island's majority opinions.
This is really way off the subject. I am putting a stop to it.
frances
2015-09-02 00:00
to abs, i thought of Taiwanese education being one of its niches when i wrote one of those previous replies, then I didn't put it on my list because I thought the standards of many Taiwanese universities are not high/competative enough, I didn't think of those in China who can't get in to the top unis in mainland...Speaking the same language can also be the weakness for taiwanese education though...I thought part of over"seas" study experience is foreign language learnning and experience (very) different cultures??
Taiwan's higher education has its own problems. The quality has dropped precipitously over the past 25 years. Even the top universities are no longer places for the pursuit of intelligence.
to chenwj, please please do not think this way and even suggest the wu3-tone3 option...those TWN Independence ideologist fundamentalists in Taiwan most of them are those who can flee the country fastest once the war broke...little people (hsau3-lau3-bai3-hsin4) are those who will suffer and sacrifice...and the country itself the economy/environment will be ruined...the price is too high. Any chance for you and family to move to mainland? if you feel so bad staying where you are? I firmly believe the reunification will eventually happen without force needing to be applied by China!
That's the tragedy of it: those who are responsible will be the first to run, and those who are not responsible for it are the only ones who see it coming.
luke
2015-09-03 00:00
To YM兄 其实我只是觉得您不需要为这种事情气坏自己身体罢了。您来台湾自由行,感受到的气氛是亲身经验或是看媒体报导的感触呢? 如果是后者,王大哥以及很多网友都分析的很精辟,我就不班门弄斧了。 我说说一些小故事吧?我今年四月去高雄玩,搭乘高雄捷运,车上遇见三位来自大陆的自由行大姐,一上车先站着(其实还有很多空位),从她们的聊天口音知道她们来自大陆。一位已经坐着的台湾大姐挪了挪屁股,招呼着她们:「来这里坐啊!」 ,大约短短2分钟内,彼此也客气妳夸我,我夸妳的寒暄几句。 我二姑姑也住云林,她对于包公有着虔诚的信仰,举凡生活大小事她都要请示包公。(我无意讨论宗教)。去年大家聚在一起,刚好九合一选举之前,她和三姑姑聊着聊着就骂起马英九了,骂着骂着就骂起中国人了。我听了不敢反驳,因为她们是长辈。不过我三姑丈听不下去了,就反问二姑姑:「妳拜的包公不就是中国人?」,二姑姑说:「不一样」,三姑丈:「哪里不一样?」,接着就是一阵沉默了。回应自知者明朋友,其实台湾中南部这样的例子很多,台湾中南部对于妈祖、关公、包公、三太子的信仰近乎狂热,偏偏又是同一群人成为铁杆深绿。这本身在我看来是很矛盾的。我姑姑就是一个范例吧?她听了我姑丈的反驳,她肯定不服却又无法反驳。内心肯定矛盾不已吧?她们原本不仇中的,对于她们的转变,自由时报、地下电台,郑弘仪居功厥伟。我也不忍苛责她们愚蠢,她们没念书,接触世界的管道已经被把持了,全怪她们也不对吧?
To 山中风雨, 台湾现在对于大陆的投资和贸易的种种限制做法是有违于WTO承诺的,紫光的要求是台湾开放资本併购的大门,这扇大门在WTO上是本来就要开放的。如果紫光这次的建议被採纳,大陆对台湾的IC设计產业进行制裁,这应该可以算是WTO规则下的贸易报復,合法
山中风雨
2015-10-31 00:00
To YM: 你说的其实也清楚,我只是一直很感嘆台湾人不明白,我看到很多台湾人说甚么这样违反自由贸易原则。但他们都没有想过到底是谁先违反WTO承诺的开放原则,其实按照WTO的规则台湾应该要多开换900多项的工业產品及400多项的农產品,而这是你当初加入后就该承诺的项目,因为台湾当初以已开发的经济体名义加入,自然要开放这些。而现在马英九只是拿那些本应无条件开放的项目再去跟对岸谈,希望对岸在货贸上让更多,结果就被某些人说是卖台。反正那群人就只想拿好处,一点负面的影响都不想承担;就算真的跟他们苦心说明,他们也只会说:「谁叫中国对我们有野心,我们当然要禁止向中国开放」,但是他们从来就没有对两岸关系的本质有过了解。我现在比较关注的是究竟明年要是DPP上台后,中共对台工作风向会不会改变,是像习大大所说的没有92共识会地动山摇,还是像蔡英文所讲只要我们当选,中共会想我们妥协;对此,我内心的答案已经很清楚。还有,我现在已经是快毕业的大学生了,要是明年之后两岸关系遽变,我也得替我的将来另作打算。
Actually, I have no any attention to be paid to Taiwanese situation. Just as what Mr Wang's mentioned, it is a misled society in a shambles with a majour population who cannot distinguish and act on rationale. So it would be in vain, although you roll out all the stops to claim what's right and suitable for our Taiwanese people's future. I had ever favoured independence, but right now I start to maintain more tranquilised that there is no room for bolstering the autonomy of Taiwan. How could a US-or-Japan-influenced island remain its independence? In that situation, our off-springs will see no dignity and suffer US and Japan's intimidation.
This is my first post in this blog even though I read it a few times a day everyday... Anyway, I have to oblige Dr. Wang's summon and try to answer QED's question about 18in wafer fab.
Personally think 18in fab will be “fab technology of the future, forever”! Main technical challenge is uniformity; imagine having atomic scale wafer flatness, chemical distribution, temperature distribution etc. on such a large area, not to mention that there are ~50 different such tools involved. However, this is not the show stopper, economics dictates the result.
With such engineering complexity, you can imagine billions of dollars’ worth of investment will be needed to make the tool production worthy, that means you will have to manufacture the wafers consistently 24hours a day, 7 days a week. However, as technology moving forward, the entry barrier becomes so high that, you will have to invest ~ 100MUSD for a single 14 nm FinFET project for simulation tools, IP, layout, design, verification, mask, engineering wafers, software etc. That is why only companies like Apple, MTK, Qualcomm for cellphone or performance driven applications like highend networking, CPU, GPU can use 14nm FinFET or below technologies. For tool vendors, it does not make sense to invest billions in the market with a shrinking customer base, unless tsmc/INTEL/Samsung pay the tool vendors for the development... 杀头的生意有人做,赔钱的生意没人做啊!
Thanks, Kurt.
greg
2015-11-04 00:00
@Siliconmosaic Thanks for your input for the discussion. What you said make sense to me and I can't say I disagree with you (besides, I'm no expert in the field).
However, to play the devil's advocate, the commercial challenges that you raised might been overcome depending on:
1. The market needs - If the 18-inch can shrink the chip and increase the performance, as well as to drive the efficiency so much, such that new and large-scale applications for the new chip can be found, then from an economic standpoint, it may justfiy the large upper stream investment.
2. New business models - Much as the business model invention that brough fabless IC companies, and foundry companies like TSMC, new business model might emerge to deal with the expensive tool challenges. In fact, there have been some initiatives among the large semoconductor OEMs and foundries (Intel, Samsung, TSMC from my memory) that collaborate to invest in the next-gen semiconductor equipment.
I guess the bottom line is if there is strong market needs for 18-inch fab.
My 2 cents.
18 inch technology has been scotched once already a few years ago. This depends really on an accounting equation; TSMC has to balance competitive pressure against the enormous costs. The technology itself is certainly possible, so the forecast tends to be rosy, but accountants do not usually share the enthusiasm of engineers.
Anyway, we will know for sure in a few short years.
@QED, you are right. Actually, the story is more complicated than what I have written and things can indeed change. You will never know what will actually happen until the future is here… @Greg, I cannot argue with possibility you brought up. Nowadays, you can buy 100M Gate (You can think of it as unit used to calculate circuit complexity) for about 1.9/1.4/1.6 USD in 40nm/28nm/14nm. You can notice the per Gate cost is going up, rather than down from 28nm. Lower down the per Gate cost after 28nm is the main driver for the 18” wafer.
However, the hard fact at this moment is the huge entry barrier for those advanced projects, >100MUSD design cost for 14/16nm, ~500MUSD for 10/7nm! Almost no other applications except for smartphone can expect positive payback for such projects. With such hefty payment, however, the marginal utility of smartphone user experience is actually reduced. As you might notice that high end smartphone growth is saturated and all the growth almost exclusively comes from low end smartphone which implies faster processor speed can no longer appeal to the users. That is why I think it is not that reasonable to chip in so much investment on 18” fab. On the other hand, as the barrier becomes so high, there can be other lower energy paths than following Moore’s law (actually, it is not really a law…). We have already seen new materials for novel memories (Resistive RAM, Magnetic RAM, Phase Change RAM) which can replace large and more expensive SRAM or embedded Flash with even better performance and lower bit-flipping energy. New CPU architecture like Neuromorphic computing in comparison with traditional von Neumann architecture invented 70 years ago also started to become hot topic. The innovation seemed esoteric before. Why? Because, why bother?? Every 1.5 years, you get to cut your cost in half with 40% lower power and 50% better performance by Moore’s law…
Anyhow, this is only my opinion and it might be wrong. How the future will unfold might actually depend on someone’s determination and the other people follow the herd.
Actually, I think the end of Moore's Law is a very good thing overall. First, as you pointed out, engineers finally have some incentives to try out innovative ideas. Second, the existing monopoly (yes, I am talking about Intel) will slowly fade away. New comers like those being fostered in China will have a chance to compete.
greg
2015-11-05 00:00
@Siliconmosaic Very insightful and helpful comments. I have also been wondering about whether we're fast apporaching the end of Moor's law given the fundamental limit of law of physics.
You're right about the acceptable cost of smartphone not justifying more investment into 18-inch fab technologies. I was thinking if there would be another mass application of microchips - has to be on a larger scale than smartphone - that would make the economy works. Apparently I can nto think of any over the horizon.
Also I like your comments about new architecture might emerge if the current technology development trend is stalled and Moor's Law no longer applies.
The manufacturers are dreaming about "Internet of Things", but I think it is largely hype.
Siliconmosaic
2015-11-06 00:00
@greg, people talked about IoT ( Internet of Things) might ship in tens of billions per year, but unfortunately, first, I don't think the volume will realize in next few years due to various reasons and, secondly, the silicon content is so low in comparison with Smartphone. For example, you can get about 50-90K pieces of MEMS, the key component for sensing in IoT, on a single 12" wafer with mature technology node, in comparison of 500-700 application processor chips with leading edge technology. Other hot silicon driver topics are automotive, robots, drones and VR. All of them will use advanced technology, but the units are orders of magnitude lower than cellphone. FYI.
Agreed.
PC
2015-11-09 00:00
I am in III-V semiconductor industry, which is still limited to 6" for various reasons (I think they are good reasons). There are much discussions about 18" Si fab among friends. I believe one of the TSMC team members sent to the consortium in NY is my classmate. (Especially when described as "一派轻松"!) The discussion and debates above are all good. The reason for large size wafer is economy, namely, to lower per chip cost. From that ONE point of view, the larger the better and there is no limit. However, as pointed out above, the technical difficulties and costs to keep going bigger become higher and higher so there will be a limit. The optimal wafer size may be 12" or 18", I do not know, and it may change. But from what I heard, the drive or incentive for moving to 18" is really not very strong. Those big players got together in NY simply because: 1: they cannot afford not to be left out if other guys did it first, 2: they can afford spending money on a hype like that. Another emerging way of thinking is micro-fabs. Instead of going with larger and larger tools/chambers where uniformity, vacuum, gas flow are all getting tougher and tougher, these micro-fabs employs an army of smaller chambers working smaller size wafers. While the main stream Si fab may not "downsize", this may be particularly suitable for new high volume products such as power inverter chips such as GaN/Si. Again, it all comes down to the optimization of costs. 稍微离题,请见谅。台积电的确有实力,但是台湾不能靠台积电养,更不能靠几支手机养。其他工业的发展投资就如王大哥所说,没有组织没有远见一团乱,很让人担忧。
If silicon technology peaks at 12"/7nm, it may be a blessing in disguise. For decades, the rapid doubling of performance has drained enthusiasm and resources away from other promising chip technologies and programming techniques. I look forward to the days when more frugal optimization is once again the focus of hardware and software engineers. This will encourage new ideas to surface. Furthermore, the decentralizing the competitive power from Intel will allow new players to emerge. The world may be better for it.
台湾在氮化镓元件研制已有一些成果,台积也有出一些样品,主要还是供消费性电子应用,类似EPC结构,水平导电的氮化镓元件主要问题之一为元件可靠性,虽然研究人员在IEDM及Transphorm, Gan System等商业公司不断发表元件可靠性测试报告,销售量应该还未上来。另在功率元件应用上 Trench MOS CoolMOS 进步也很快,影响GaN元件的推广。 军用雷达的晶片确实不需要先进微小的制程,GaN元件在阵列雷达应用的新闻逐渐传出,制作此RF-GaN元件与高频元件封装测试须一些功力,也很神秘。