Assuming they’re telling the truth, they’ve successfully built one chip from that fab. That’s good, but it doesn’t mean the fab is capable of manufacturing at scale while turning a profit.
They need an external customer for the fab so they can iterate and work out the issues. It’s anyone’s guess if someone trusts intel to manufacture on their behalf instead of sticking with an established player. They’re stuck in a chicken and egg situation - can’t reach high yields without a customer, but a customer only wants to sign up if the yields and future deliveries are guaranteed.
Intels only hope might be that someone, not naming names, coerces an established company to sign up.
That's too pessimistic. In general, customers don't want to be dealing with a monopolist and foundry customers are no different. It's in everyone's interest to solve the unproven process problem, so if Intel has evidence that the process isn't bust, customers will find a product which can be used as a pipe cleaner for mutual benefit.
> It’s anyone’s guess if someone trusts intel to manufacture on their behalf instead of sticking with an established player.
Intel also designs its own chips. Thus, it's hard for fabless players to buy in without worrying about their IPs being stolen. One of the strengths of TSMC is they only make chips. They don't do anything else. TSMC is highly trusted by its customers.
Intel has a habit of giving up on things too early. So I'm not sure I would trust them with anything even if they had a better process or were less expensive or easier to work with.
Yup. Let’s see how they do with Arc. It takes multiple years and architecture revisions to catch up, and honestly they’ve been making very respectful improvements from Alchemist to Battlemage, and driver support and updates have been progressing very well.
I think that's the industry's viewpoint as well. Intel's fabs' biggest customer was Intel. They're not doing well, so they're not fabbing as much especially at the leading edge. It'll death spiral.
The foundries they're putting together for future manufacturing are just hoping customers will comes. Intel needs partnerships because the brand isn't the same since the core founders and builders are long gone.
This is common in industry. You often do give a discount and guarantees to the first users of a system to compensate for the risk the customer is taking.
This is part of how DigitalOcean got going, Kingston gave a huge discount on a traditional HDD order if the order was switched to SSD instead because they wanted to kickstart scaled manufacturing. First time an SSD was put in and the IOPS was measured, the product direction was clear, at the time we thought it might be a CDN tho, but eventually landed on a "cloud hosting provider".
If we assume that intel gets successful with 18A with their x86 processors, would they even have the money to finance the node after that? And the node after that which gets exponentially more expensive?
In the past x86 raked in enough money to burn a lot of it on new fab tech but non-x86 has grown immensely and floods TSMC with money. The problem for intel is that their fab tech was fitted to their processor architecture and vice versa. It made sense in the past but in the future it might not. For the processor business it may be better to use TSMC for production. For the fab it may be necessary to manufacture for many customers and take a premium for being based in a country in need. So, a split-up may be inevitable and this fabbing a competitive ARM chip surely helps in attracting more customers. Customers who may pay a premium for political and security reasons.
Apple, Nvidia and US govt can provide the required funds if they have confidence in its ability to deliver. These companies will benefit from breaking current monopoly of TSMC.
Samsung is already in a much better position for this. They have external customers and experience facilitating them. Unlike Intel's track record which doesn't inspire confidence at all.
I wouldn't count on either to save Intel as it still is (i.e with the fab business still attached to the CPU/GPU business). While it's true that having Intel fabs as a second source would be nice for them to alleviate the dependency on TSMC, they are also competing with Intel on the CPU/GPU side.
My guess is, they're gonna let Intel rot a little further while doing their best to pressure for Intel to split off their fab biz (as AMD had done back then), and then invest just in the fab.
> Apple, Nvidia and US govt can provide the required funds
When the first tough about investing is to go to big corporations and the goverment instead of going to investors is a telling about how nowadays the economy works.
I love that the Orange guy has opened the door to the nationalization of big tech. I hope that the next president is bolder on this regard. If all these companies depend on monopolies to exists, they should be state owned/controlled.
I understand the part where Intel is trying to get external customers interested in the output of their fab by exhibiting an implementation of an ARM processor.
In the past I understand that they did some custom implementation of Xeon cores for hyperscalers, but the meat and potatoes was the chip they designed.
Do we take this to mean that the current leadership assess the value proposition -of Intel- to be in the /making/ of the chips, akin to TSMC, and not in the /designing/ of them, as in all past seasons at Intel?
I suppose a key factor here is how far from reference this chip is. If they mean to innovate in ARM ISA territory, that's a development to ponder. But if this is a "we can also make those things" statement, I'm hearing bears in the woods.
>Do we take this to mean that the current leadership assess the value proposition -of Intel- to be in the /making/ of the chips, akin to TSMC, and not in the /designing/ of them, as in all past seasons at Intel?
No… Gelsinger laid all of this out very clearly. He wanted the design side of the house and the manufacturing side of the house to stand on their own. He didn’t want the design side relying solely on process to maintain performance leads, and he also wanted them to have the flexibility to use any fab should manufacturing fall behind.
In order for manufacturing to survive design potentially going to competitors for certain generations, they need to also support outside business.
The fabs need external customers not just intel to be profitable.
The custom designs for hyperscalars don’t count as external customers, they’re just part of Intels own production set.
And since nobody but AMD or VIA can make x86, it has to be ARM or other ISAs instead.
The article title is a bit clickbait since ARM is the eventuality of having external customers. The real key point is that they have made chips that aren’t their own at all.
As I understand it, Intel's strength was in manufacturing their own design in their exclusive (and most advanced) process. So the advantage was being vertically integrated.
State of the art processes are too expensive these days. x86 CPUs alone cannot sustain them. Specially, when AMD builds their CPU also with state of the art processes.
So by becoming a foundry, Intel may be able to have state of the art fabs and use it in their own designs of x86 CPUs, GPUs, etc.
The use of standard cells for a process somewhat opens it for outside users.
The 80386 was the first use of standard cells for x86, which also introduced "automatic place and route" via a graduate student project named "Timberwolf."
It would be bad for x86 in general if Intel just disappears. They supply a ton of chips for businesses still and TSMC isn't going to replace that overnight.
Someone moved Intel's cheese, and they didn't go after it until it was too late.
Nobody is going to be switching their ARM-based chip provider from TSMC or anyone else (with whom they've only just built up enough trust) to even thinking of changing.
Without a track record of delivery, intel is just there to be used in leverage with price negotiations with TSMC.
Or perhaps the E-Core team continues their strides and the design side becomes competitive again. AMD used to be uncompetitive after all; tides can change, and I think people are dooming too much. Intel still has a chance.
Part of Intel’s problem is their ‘P Core’ team absolutely sucked for a decade.
For anyone familiar with Chinese culture, history, and mindset, and who views China through that lens rather than a Western one, the probability of this is lower than the probability of Intel’s collapsing entirely in the next two years.
“Supreme excellence is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
“Victory without unsheathing the blade.”
“If swords are clashing, strategy has already failed.”
No one has doubted Intel's tech...its their manufacturing that is the problem. Anyone can make one successful chip from a wafer...making 80%+ yields is an entirely different problem to crack.
Readit News
They need an external customer for the fab so they can iterate and work out the issues. It’s anyone’s guess if someone trusts intel to manufacture on their behalf instead of sticking with an established player. They’re stuck in a chicken and egg situation - can’t reach high yields without a customer, but a customer only wants to sign up if the yields and future deliveries are guaranteed.
Intels only hope might be that someone, not naming names, coerces an established company to sign up.
Like 75% off for the first run of chips?
https://semiwiki.com/forum/threads/nova-lake-to-use-tsmc-n2p...
Intel also designs its own chips. Thus, it's hard for fabless players to buy in without worrying about their IPs being stolen. One of the strengths of TSMC is they only make chips. They don't do anything else. TSMC is highly trusted by its customers.
I hope they don’t can it.
If they themselves don't produce their chip there, why would anybody else do?
I guess you mean Intel to iterate using its own money to get the customer's chip right, no?
In the past x86 raked in enough money to burn a lot of it on new fab tech but non-x86 has grown immensely and floods TSMC with money. The problem for intel is that their fab tech was fitted to their processor architecture and vice versa. It made sense in the past but in the future it might not. For the processor business it may be better to use TSMC for production. For the fab it may be necessary to manufacture for many customers and take a premium for being based in a country in need. So, a split-up may be inevitable and this fabbing a competitive ARM chip surely helps in attracting more customers. Customers who may pay a premium for political and security reasons.
Given Apple's history with Intel's ability to deliver, I'm guessing the confidence there isn't high.
My guess is, they're gonna let Intel rot a little further while doing their best to pressure for Intel to split off their fab biz (as AMD had done back then), and then invest just in the fab.
When the first tough about investing is to go to big corporations and the goverment instead of going to investors is a telling about how nowadays the economy works.
I love that the Orange guy has opened the door to the nationalization of big tech. I hope that the next president is bolder on this regard. If all these companies depend on monopolies to exists, they should be state owned/controlled.
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In the past I understand that they did some custom implementation of Xeon cores for hyperscalers, but the meat and potatoes was the chip they designed.
Do we take this to mean that the current leadership assess the value proposition -of Intel- to be in the /making/ of the chips, akin to TSMC, and not in the /designing/ of them, as in all past seasons at Intel?
I suppose a key factor here is how far from reference this chip is. If they mean to innovate in ARM ISA territory, that's a development to ponder. But if this is a "we can also make those things" statement, I'm hearing bears in the woods.
No… Gelsinger laid all of this out very clearly. He wanted the design side of the house and the manufacturing side of the house to stand on their own. He didn’t want the design side relying solely on process to maintain performance leads, and he also wanted them to have the flexibility to use any fab should manufacturing fall behind.
In order for manufacturing to survive design potentially going to competitors for certain generations, they need to also support outside business.
https://www.intc.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1451/...
The custom designs for hyperscalars don’t count as external customers, they’re just part of Intels own production set.
And since nobody but AMD or VIA can make x86, it has to be ARM or other ISAs instead.
The article title is a bit clickbait since ARM is the eventuality of having external customers. The real key point is that they have made chips that aren’t their own at all.
The 80386 was the first use of standard cells for x86, which also introduced "automatic place and route" via a graduate student project named "Timberwolf."
https://www.righto.com/2023/10/intel-386-die-versions.html
No, why?
The world desperately needs a TSMC competitor.
Own a bunch of AMD shares so cheering for them naturally...but we don't need a monopoly in CPU space.
Makes sense since they were once popular in the NUC space and Apple has shown high-end ARM has a market.
Nobody is going to be switching their ARM-based chip provider from TSMC or anyone else (with whom they've only just built up enough trust) to even thinking of changing.
Without a track record of delivery, intel is just there to be used in leverage with price negotiations with TSMC.
Part of Intel’s problem is their ‘P Core’ team absolutely sucked for a decade.
For anyone familiar with Chinese culture, history, and mindset, and who views China through that lens rather than a Western one, the probability of this is lower than the probability of Intel’s collapsing entirely in the next two years.
“Supreme excellence is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
“Victory without unsheathing the blade.”
“If swords are clashing, strategy has already failed.”
Their plan is to invade. Or at least, that's a plan they are spending significant resources on because it's in the top five plans.