The main problem is that there is no profit in chip manufacturing ( relative to software development). Apparently it takes 5-6 years for a node to make any profit.
> The main problem is that there is no profit in chip manufacturing
This isn't true. Check out the margins of TSMC, it tends to be 40% or so.
But to maintain this lead in the industry, they need to massively reinvest for the next smaller process. With that said, profits are great but they don't endure (software development is somewhat more 'sticky' especially since everyone is doing SaaS which provides more incentives for competition and many companies are growing even with covid19 changing the market landscape).
Maybe it is so with the monopolized ( or duopolized if we consider Samsung) foundry today. I visited Global Foundries just before they stopped investing in smaller nodes ( and Infineon which was nearby). Listening to the profits they made and the problems they had ( and my own experiences), I realised that the complete business flow for chip manufacturing is flawed somewhere. I did not have enough motivation to look into detail at that time.
Of course, most of the big foundries would still be open, if the profits were anywhere more than 10%.
I'd say it's weird because hardware like this is so much harder, but the benefit's also a lot more marginal. There was a time when you had to buy a new computer every 4 years or it would be cripplingly slow. These days, pretty good hardware that's 8 years old is good enough today if you have an SSD, 8GB of ram, and don't play AAA games.
There are a lot of other innovations possible, but the business flow for hardware manufacturing does not have the right motivations. I personally think that Apple is doing the right things on several levels.
While I understand the concept of "technology node" as a manufacturing process, where does the usage of the word "node" come from? From litography? Is it related to the "nodes" in the electric circuits?
> The technology node (also process node, process technology or simply node) refers to a specific semiconductor manufacturing process and its design rules. Different nodes often imply different circuit generations and architectures. Generally, the smaller the technology node means the smaller the feature size, producing smaller transistors which are both faster and more power-efficient. Historically, the process node name referred to a number of different features of a transistor including the gate length as well as M1 half-pitch. Most recently, due to various marketing and discrepancies among foundries, the number itself has lost the exact meaning it once held. Recent technology nodes such as 22 nm, 16 nm, 14 nm, and 10 nm refer purely to a specific generation of chips made in a particular technology. It does not correspond to any gate length or half pitch. Nevertheless, the name convention has stuck and it's what the leading foundries call their nodes.
This isn't true. Check out the margins of TSMC, it tends to be 40% or so.
But to maintain this lead in the industry, they need to massively reinvest for the next smaller process. With that said, profits are great but they don't endure (software development is somewhat more 'sticky' especially since everyone is doing SaaS which provides more incentives for competition and many companies are growing even with covid19 changing the market landscape).