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Intel's current fab troubles are simply inexcusable. There are some factors that can account for part of the problem, but at this point Intel is 5+ years late o
by wtallis 6y ago
Intel's current fab troubles are simply inexcusable. There are some factors that can account for part of the problem, but at this point Intel is 5+ years late on delivering a usable, profitable successor to their 14nm process. And 14nm got off to a slow, rocky start too. Intel's fab business has been horribly mismanaged, and the CPU design business has been forced to believe fab roadmaps that don't have any credibility.
- manquer 6y agoPerhaps it is because all the latest Intel fabs are in the U.S. in Hillsboro, Oregon. Other foundries like TSMC benefit from the ecosystem and cheaper cost in East Asia ? i.e. they can afford to make more mistakes than Intel can if it is cheaper to do so.
- wtallis 6y agoI don't think cost of labor is a big factor here. Intel has no trouble maintaining a large enough workforce. They continually decided not to have parallel teams designing processors for their unproven 10nm and their successful 14nm nodes (or one team making a relatively portable design), even years after it was clear that 10nm was not going to work out as well as needed by their processor design roadmap. That wasn't for lack of staffing or inability to afford enough engineers. It was management hubris. (On the other hand, I've often pointed out that Intel's attempts to develop two microarchitectures in parallel have always failed in the long run, with one project ending up woefully uncompetitive.)