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EE Times On Air episode 33, published April 26, 2019, brought together four semiconductor stories: ON Semiconductor’s $430 million purchase of a former IBM/GlobalFoundries fab, TSMC’s sequence of process-node variants, Tesla’s in-house Full Self-Driving computer, and the rapid rise in China’s fabless chip-company count. The figures and forecasts below describe what the episode reported in 2019, not current company or market status.
What did ON Semiconductor buy from GlobalFoundries?
ON Semiconductor bought GlobalFoundries’ 300 mm fab in East Fishkill, New York, for $430 million, according to EE Times reporting in 2019. The site was a former IBM fab. Reporter Rick Merritt presented the deal as a way for ON to acquire manufacturing equipment and an experienced workforce at about one-third the cost of building a fab from the ground up.
The strategic fit was a move beyond ON’s largely 200 mm base in discrete and power semiconductors. Merritt noted that Infineon was already advancing toward 300 mm wafers, increasing competitive pressure to make the transition. The broader implication was that an older 300 mm facility that could not be expanded for high-end digital production might still suit analog and specialty-chip manufacturers.
Why did TSMC have so many process-node steps?
The episode described TSMC’s roadmap as “one new node a year”: 7 nm, 7+, 6 nm, 5 nm and 5+. These successive variants were presented as offering improvements in performance and power, but generally modest ones. Merritt compared the approach with Samsung’s similar strategy and said both companies were ramping EUV steppers after a long development cycle.
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Node maturity versus an early move
Merritt’s advice to designers was to favor mature major nodes unless a product had a compelling need for the newest process. He used the first 100,000 wafers through a process as an example of a maturity milestone worth waiting for; it was an example, not a universal qualification standard. An interim node can make sense when its gains matter to the product, but the episode cautioned against treating each yearly step as a dramatic leap.
Packaging and the longer-term roadmap
The episode also pointed beyond transistor scaling: TSMC’s 2.5D and 3D packaging technologies were expected to appear in commercial products around 2021, offering another path to performance improvements. That was a 2019 forecast. A move to 3 nm was described as likely to require a new transistor, with the details still uncertain at the time.
How powerful was Tesla’s FSD computer, and what did that mean for autonomy?
As reported by EE Times from a Tesla presentation in 2019, Tesla’s two-chip Full Self-Driving (FSD) computer was rated at 144 trillion operations per second (TOPS) and 72 watts. Those figures describe compute throughput and power; by themselves, they do not establish how safely or independently a vehicle can drive.
EE Times chief international correspondent Junko Yoshida argued that the FSD name should not be confused with the auto industry’s Level 4 or Level 5 autonomy definitions. She assessed the system as “the equivalent of Level 2-plus at best,” saying a person still had to drive. That is Yoshida’s characterization in the episode, not a claim that the chip’s TOPS figure determines an autonomy level.
The robotaxi proposal
Yoshida also described Tesla’s proposed robotaxi model: owners could make their cars available through an app, with Tesla taking a 25–30% commission. She characterized this as ride sharing rather than a conventional autonomous fleet. The proposal was discussed in 2019; the episode does not establish its later implementation or present-day terms.
How many fabless chip companies were in China?
EE Times China chief analyst Echo Zhao reported that the survey counted 1,698 fabless chip companies in China in 2018, compared with 736 in 2015. Nearly half of the companies had revenue below RMB 10 million. The count indicates a rapid increase in the number of companies, but the revenue distribution shows that a large share remained small.
The survey respondents were mostly small and midsized companies, and their outlook was notably optimistic: roughly one-third expected sales growth above 20%. Zhao also noted that some respondents reported profits higher than those of China’s top 10 fabless companies. These were survey responses, not evidence that the industry as a whole had reached that level of profitability.
Growth, niches and consolidation
Zhao’s concern was that company proliferation did not necessarily translate into durable businesses. Fragmented Internet of Things demand could support specialized niches, but she expected startups without strong, end-to-end solutions to be eliminated or acquired as the market consolidated. In that sense, the episode contrasted rapid growth in company count with the challenge of building revenue scale and differentiated products.
What ties the four stories together?
Each segment examined a different route to competitiveness: buying manufacturing scale rather than building it, balancing leading-edge processes against maturity, separating chip throughput from real-world autonomy, and asking whether a crowded startup market can support enough strong businesses. Because the episode aired in 2019, its roadmaps, forecasts and market counts should be read as a snapshot of those discussions at that time.
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