A discarded TSMC test wafer sparks discussion. Learn why it's not a production chip and what it reveals about manufacturing.
Matilda
TSMC Test Wafer Found Discarded: What It Means
After a chip is manufactured, testing is done to measure its clock speed, power consumption, the number of working cores, and more. After testing, the chips as classified by how they perform. Top-performing components are placed in the top bins and are sold as high-end silicon. Other chips that don't make the grade are placed in lower bins and command reduced prices. A chip with one defective core could be sold as having seven cores instead of eight, for example. Image : Google This practice is known as "Chip Binning" and while not really part of this practice, a Reddit subscriber happened to find a silicon wafer in the ultimate bin-a garbage can. The foundation of chip manufacturing, the wafer was discovered in the dumpster near TSMC's Fab 16 located in Nanjing, China. This fab does not produce some of the high-profile advanced process node chips you've heard about such as 4nm, 3nm, and the 2nm node th…
