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Sure 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

by opencl 7y ago

Sure 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 ago
Yeah 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 ago
Intel'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 ago
  According 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.

by opencl 7y ago

AJ007 7y ago

Yeah 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 ago

Intel'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 ago
According 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.