7 ms·

Intel is microarchitecture + fab corporation. They do it all. 1. TSMC (also GlobalFoundries) is fab only. They design the node for the process and way to fabr

Intel is microarchitecture + fab corporation. They do it all. 1. TSMC (also GlobalFoundries) is fab only. They design the node for the process and way to fabricate it. 2. Then ARM joins with TSMC to develop the high performance microarchitecture for their processor design for TSMC's process. 3. Then ARM licenses the microarchitecture designed for the new processes to Amazon, Apple, Qualcomm who develop their own variants. Most of the the prosessor microarchitecture is the same for the same manufacturing process. As a result, costs are shared for large degree. Intel may still some scale advantages from integrated approach but not as much as you might think.

dnautics 8y ago
My personal suspicion is that the integrated approach can eventually be a liability. If you have an integrated process/design house, process can count on design to work around its shortcomings and failures. By contrast, if you are process only, and multiple firms make designs for the process, you have to make your process robust, which means that your process staff is ready and has good practices down when it's time to shrink. ^^ Note that this is entirely baseless speculation.
- Nokinside 8y ago
  Intel has always been a process first, design second company. The company was founded by physicists and chemists. Their process has always been the best in the world until just recently. Intel brings in or buys design talent when needed, but their R&D in process technology is their strongest suit even today.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    Intel has always been a process first, design second company. The company was founded by physicists and chemists. Their process has always been the best in the world until just recently. So they had a particular advantage, and exploited the heck out of it, but now the potency of that advantage is largely gone?
    - n-gatedotcom 8y ago
      I don't know what country you're in but in cricket there's a concept of innings and scoring runs. There's this dude who averaged nearly a 100 in every innings, most others average 50. Now think of the situation as him scoring a few knots. Is he old and retiring? Or is this just a slump in form? Nobody knows! I worked for a design team and we were proud of our material engineers.
      - stcredzero 8y ago
        Back in about 1996, most of the profs were going on about how x86 would crumble under the weight of the ISA, and RISC was the future. One of my profs knew people at Intel, and talked of a roadmap they had for kicking butt for the next dozen years. Turns out, the road map was more or less right. Is there more roadmap?
        hermitdev 8y ago
        Intel chips are RISC under the hood these days (for a long while - decade or more). They're CISC at the ASM layer before the instructions are decoded and dispatched by the microcode.
        earenndil 8y ago
        CISC is still an asset rather than a liability, though, as it means you can fit more code into cache.
        n-gatedotcom 8y ago
        What is an example of a commonly used complex instruction that is "simplified"/DNE in RISC? (in asm, not binary)
        gpderetta 8y ago
        Load-op instructions do not normally exist on RISC, but are common on CISC.
- pcnix 8y ago
  What you speculate is actually happening to some extent, Intel's designs work around their fabrication quirks in order to achieve their performance, and this makes Intel unable to easily separate out their fabrication business in order to take up external contracts, or unable to effectively change designs easily in order to use external fabricators.
- bloomer 8y ago
  It turns out that the effect is typically exactly the opposite. Design and process are already coupled where a given process will have design rules that must be adhered to to achieve a successfully manufacturable design. Intel only has to support their own designs so can have very strict design rules. Fabs like TSMC have to be more lenient in what they allow from their customers so have looser design rules that result in a less optimized process to achieve the same yield.
  - dnautics 8y ago
    The speculation is exactly that what you describe is indeed a short term gain, but that the pressure of having to accommodate looser design rules nets a stronger process discipline which pays off in the long term as feature size shrinkage gets closer to physical limits.
bstx 8y ago
ARM architectural licensees develop their own microarchitectures that implement the ARM ISA spec, they do not license any particular microarchitecture from ARM (e.g. Cortex-A? IP cores). That includes Apple, Samsung, Nvidia and others.
- ethbro 8y ago
  But ARM actually has relatively few architectural licensees (~10 as of 2015). In reality, most of their licenses are processor (core+interfaces) or POP (pre-optimized processor designs). https://www.anandtech.com/show/7112/the-arm-diaries-part-1-how-arms-business-model-works https://www.anandtech.com/show/7112/the-arm-diaries-part-1-h...
  - bogomipz 8y ago
    Could you or someone else elaborate on the different type of licenses and why a company interested in licensing might opt for one over another? I was surprised by the OPs comment that few companies actually license microarchitecture as I thought that's what Apple has been doing with ARM.
    - evancox100 8y ago
      It is what Apple has been doing with ARM, but as he said there's only about 10 companies doing this, compared to the hundreds (thousands?) who take the core directly from ARM. Even big players like Qualcomm seem to be moving to just requesting tweaks to the Cortex cores. It's much, much easier & cheaper to take the premade core rather than developing your own. But your own custom design gives you the ability to differentiate or really target a specific application. See Apple's designs. Read the Anandtech article, it goes into more detail on the license types. There's also the newer "Built on Cortex" license: https://www.anandtech.com/show/10366/arm-built-on-cortex-license https://www.anandtech.com/show/10366/arm-built-on-cortex-lic...
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
bogomipz 8y ago
>'They design the node for the process and way to fabricate it." What is a "node" in this context? I'm not familiar enough with FAB terminology.
- Kliment 8y ago
  A node is a combination of manufacturing capabilities and design components that are manufacturable in that process. They're typically named after an arbitrary dimension of a silicon feature, for example 14nm or 10nm. Your higher level design options are dictated by what you can produce at that "node" (with those masking methods/transistor pitches/sizes/electrical and thermal properties).
  - rbanffy 8y ago
    Would a pixel be a good analogy? It's the smallest thing you can make on your chip and that defines all the rest of your design.
    - rocqua 8y ago
      It's closer to the quality of a display then just how small your pixels are. It determines how large your display is before you get too many dead-pixels (yield in fabrication). What range of colors your pixels can produce (electric properties? resistance, leakage, etc.). Whether you can blast all pixels at full brightness, or only a few (thermal properties). And indeed, resolution of the display (size of transistors). What is missing from this analogy is the degree of layering / 3d structures that is possible. You might couple that to RGB v RGBY but I'm not really sure.
    - kingosticks 8y ago
      Only in the same way that even pixels of the same physical size can have other vastly different properties. And that makes ranking them purely on their size totally misguided. So I'm not convinced that really helps.
bogomipz 8y ago
Might you or anyone else be able to recommend a book or some literature on business and logistical side of third party chip design like this? Maybe something with some case studies?
- evancox100 8y ago
  Here's a free one that should cover what you're asking about. https://www.semiwiki.com/forum/content/4729-free-fabless-transformation-semiconductor-industry-e.html https://www.semiwiki.com/forum/content/4729-free-fabless-tra...
  - bogomipz 8y ago
    This is a great resource. Thanks. Cheers.

dnautics 8y ago

My personal suspicion is that the integrated approach can eventually be a liability. If you have an integrated process/design house, process can count on design to work around its shortcomings and failures. By contrast, if you are process only, and multiple firms make designs for the process, you have to make your process robust, which means that your process staff is ready and has good practices down when it's time to shrink. ^^ Note that this is entirely baseless speculation.

Nokinside 8y ago
Intel has always been a process first, design second company. The company was founded by physicists and chemists. Their process has always been the best in the world until just recently. Intel brings in or buys design talent when needed, but their R&D in process technology is their strongest suit even today.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  Intel has always been a process first, design second company. The company was founded by physicists and chemists. Their process has always been the best in the world until just recently. So they had a particular advantage, and exploited the heck out of it, but now the potency of that advantage is largely gone?
  - n-gatedotcom 8y ago
    I don't know what country you're in but in cricket there's a concept of innings and scoring runs. There's this dude who averaged nearly a 100 in every innings, most others average 50. Now think of the situation as him scoring a few knots. Is he old and retiring? Or is this just a slump in form? Nobody knows! I worked for a design team and we were proud of our material engineers.
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      Back in about 1996, most of the profs were going on about how x86 would crumble under the weight of the ISA, and RISC was the future. One of my profs knew people at Intel, and talked of a roadmap they had for kicking butt for the next dozen years. Turns out, the road map was more or less right. Is there more roadmap?
      - hermitdev 8y ago
        Intel chips are RISC under the hood these days (for a long while - decade or more). They're CISC at the ASM layer before the instructions are decoded and dispatched by the microcode.
        earenndil 8y ago
        CISC is still an asset rather than a liability, though, as it means you can fit more code into cache.
        n-gatedotcom 8y ago
        What is an example of a commonly used complex instruction that is "simplified"/DNE in RISC? (in asm, not binary)
        gpderetta 8y ago
        Load-op instructions do not normally exist on RISC, but are common on CISC.
pcnix 8y ago
What you speculate is actually happening to some extent, Intel's designs work around their fabrication quirks in order to achieve their performance, and this makes Intel unable to easily separate out their fabrication business in order to take up external contracts, or unable to effectively change designs easily in order to use external fabricators.
bloomer 8y ago
It turns out that the effect is typically exactly the opposite. Design and process are already coupled where a given process will have design rules that must be adhered to to achieve a successfully manufacturable design. Intel only has to support their own designs so can have very strict design rules. Fabs like TSMC have to be more lenient in what they allow from their customers so have looser design rules that result in a less optimized process to achieve the same yield.
- dnautics 8y ago
  The speculation is exactly that what you describe is indeed a short term gain, but that the pressure of having to accommodate looser design rules nets a stronger process discipline which pays off in the long term as feature size shrinkage gets closer to physical limits.

bstx 8y ago

ARM architectural licensees develop their own microarchitectures that implement the ARM ISA spec, they do not license any particular microarchitecture from ARM (e.g. Cortex-A? IP cores). That includes Apple, Samsung, Nvidia and others.

ethbro 8y ago
But ARM actually has relatively few architectural licensees (~10 as of 2015). In reality, most of their licenses are processor (core+interfaces) or POP (pre-optimized processor designs). https://www.anandtech.com/show/7112/the-arm-diaries-part-1-how-arms-business-model-works https://www.anandtech.com/show/7112/the-arm-diaries-part-1-h...
- bogomipz 8y ago
  Could you or someone else elaborate on the different type of licenses and why a company interested in licensing might opt for one over another? I was surprised by the OPs comment that few companies actually license microarchitecture as I thought that's what Apple has been doing with ARM.
  - evancox100 8y ago
    It is what Apple has been doing with ARM, but as he said there's only about 10 companies doing this, compared to the hundreds (thousands?) who take the core directly from ARM. Even big players like Qualcomm seem to be moving to just requesting tweaks to the Cortex cores. It's much, much easier & cheaper to take the premade core rather than developing your own. But your own custom design gives you the ability to differentiate or really target a specific application. See Apple's designs. Read the Anandtech article, it goes into more detail on the license types. There's also the newer "Built on Cortex" license: https://www.anandtech.com/show/10366/arm-built-on-cortex-license https://www.anandtech.com/show/10366/arm-built-on-cortex-lic...
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]

bogomipz 8y ago

>'They design the node for the process and way to fabricate it." What is a "node" in this context? I'm not familiar enough with FAB terminology.

Kliment 8y ago
A node is a combination of manufacturing capabilities and design components that are manufacturable in that process. They're typically named after an arbitrary dimension of a silicon feature, for example 14nm or 10nm. Your higher level design options are dictated by what you can produce at that "node" (with those masking methods/transistor pitches/sizes/electrical and thermal properties).
- rbanffy 8y ago
  Would a pixel be a good analogy? It's the smallest thing you can make on your chip and that defines all the rest of your design.
  - rocqua 8y ago
    It's closer to the quality of a display then just how small your pixels are. It determines how large your display is before you get too many dead-pixels (yield in fabrication). What range of colors your pixels can produce (electric properties? resistance, leakage, etc.). Whether you can blast all pixels at full brightness, or only a few (thermal properties). And indeed, resolution of the display (size of transistors). What is missing from this analogy is the degree of layering / 3d structures that is possible. You might couple that to RGB v RGBY but I'm not really sure.
  - kingosticks 8y ago
    Only in the same way that even pixels of the same physical size can have other vastly different properties. And that makes ranking them purely on their size totally misguided. So I'm not convinced that really helps.

bogomipz 8y ago

Might you or anyone else be able to recommend a book or some literature on business and logistical side of third party chip design like this? Maybe something with some case studies?

evancox100 8y ago
Here's a free one that should cover what you're asking about. https://www.semiwiki.com/forum/content/4729-free-fabless-transformation-semiconductor-industry-e.html https://www.semiwiki.com/forum/content/4729-free-fabless-tra...
- bogomipz 8y ago
  This is a great resource. Thanks. Cheers.