[kurthr]

Embedded Sensing, Most Automotive, DisplayDrivers are usually mixed signal solutions that don't benefit from process shrinks as much as others. For a long time costs continued falling on legacy (55/90/180) processes, but that has stopped and during Pandemic, and prices shot way up. Some of it is transistor noise scaling (for ADCs/DACs), some is lack of Embedded Flash (as mentioned, though TSMC is now sampling at 28nm), and some die are already so small they're pad limited. In any case a process shrink has significant design costs (and testing/requalification) so if you're not going to make it up with reduced prices (customer) and higher margins (supplier) it's unlikely to happen.

One thing that is driving new development is the lack of 8in capacity and the move to 12in (300mm) due to equipment availability. Most of the installed capacity of 80nm and larger was 8in and you can only really build new 12in fabs.