TSMC wafer found in a dumpster - is this the ultimate case of chip binning?

WTF?! A Reddit user claims to have discovered an entire 12nm TSMC wafer discarded in a dumpster near one of the chipmaker's fabs in China. While it was just a test wafer, the find sparked jokes about cutting it into working GPUs and served as a reminder of the complexities of chip manufacturing. The Reddit user who shared the pictures, AVX512-VNNI, claims to have found the wafer near TSMC's Fab 16 factory in Nanjing, China. While not cutting-edge, that fab still produces reasonably advanced 12nm node chips, meaning we're talking about highly valuable silicon here. But surely a company like TSMC wouldn't just dump their IP this way for the world to copy? Indeed, they didn't, and there's a reasonable explanation for the "blunder." The same Redditor pointed out later under the post that this appears to be what's known as a "test wafer" used to calibrate the lithography machines that pattern the circuitry onto production wafers. Phew. That's certainly not as disastrous as tossing out wa ... Read full article.