5 ms·
I don't know whether the Intel foundry accepts outside customers and to what extent the outside customers have influence on Intel, but TSMC benefits from being
by ww520 7y ago
I don't know whether the Intel foundry accepts outside customers and to what extent the outside customers have influence on Intel, but TSMC benefits from being single mindedly focused on chip fabrication and has the support of a wide array of customers, financially and technically. Apple, Nvida, AMD, Qualcom, Micron, most of the phone manufacturers, and any other chip consumers all give orders to TSMC. All these pour money, design and production requirement into TSMC. TSMC simply is more focused with the resource they have, while Intel is being distracted with other things.
- xxs 7y ago>Intel is being distracted with other things. Their long-drawn distraction (circa 2015) is ruining the very ambitious 10nm. The CEO got so distracted, it got sacked for a previous affair. I am not quite certain if was (is) just a distraction or more of a hubris.
- opencl 7y agoSure TSMC is more focused but Intel has dramatically greater resources. Their R&D budget is ~5x TSMC's and ~10x AMD's. You have to be pretty badly distracted to fail to produce superior products with such an enormous budget advantage. Intel technically accepts outside fab contracts but they haven't had any customers since they bought out Altera, their previous only customer. [1] https://ycharts.com/companies/INTC/r_and_d_expense https://ycharts.com/companies/INTC/r_and_d_expense https://ycharts.com/companies/TSM/r_and_d_expense https://ycharts.com/companies/TSM/r_and_d_expense https://ycharts.com/companies/AMD/r_and_d_expense https://ycharts.com/companies/AMD/r_and_d_expense
- AJ007 7y agoYeah but certainly all of the work TSMC’s customers account for something there too. Doesn’t seem like an apples to apples comparison.
- ohazi 7y ago> You have to be pretty badly distracted to fail to produce superior products with such an enormous budget advantage. I mean, this sure sounds like Intel lately...
- ww520 7y agoIntel's budget is not just for chip fabrication, they have a very wide array of product areas. Chip foundry is very cost intensive, in the range of 10's billions. I'm not surprised TSMC spends way more on fabrication than Intel does.
- rbanffy 7y agoAccording to the numbers of the post above, if they allocate more than 20% of their R&D budget to process improvements and more than 10% to their architecture improvements, they match or exceed their two rivals, leaving 70% to be allocated to other tracks, which I find rather excessive all things considered. I remember a comment I made a long time ago, in the beginning of the Browser Wars: Microsoft had more people assigned to design their icons than NetScape had employees. NetScape's fate was sealed from the get go and their resilience was commendable. And yet, in the end, Microsoft still lost that war.
- nv-vn 7y agoI think the key difference here is also competition. If Intel's foundry can't get 10nm right then Intel is SoL until that's resolved. Whereas AMD was able to ditch GF for TSMC as soon as it became clear that TSMC had the superior process.