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"The Core i3 move to a 5nm process is set to be followed by mid-range and high-end CPUs being produced for Intel by TSMC on a 3nm process in 2H22." So Intel be
by Jonnax 6y ago
"The Core i3 move to a 5nm process is set to be followed by mid-range and high-end CPUs being produced for Intel by TSMC on a 3nm process in 2H22."
So Intel becoming Fabless is a matter of time?
- bayindirh 6y agoI don't think so. They have a lot of things to produce in their fabs. Optane, Chipsets, NAND (if they still produce it), sensors, FPGAs, Ethernet Controllers, etc. They're considering it as an interim solution IMHO. To buy time for their own processes.
- cma 6y agoIsn't it a bigger step than that, as they have to firewall the design team with access to confidential TSMC info now? If they got another process online in 2 years they'd have to have a different team on it or wait another two years or so.
- QuesnayJr 6y agoI find it surprising that TSMC is going along with it, just because I would think it's hard to be sure some confidential information wouldn't leak. Unless this kind of institutional firewall works better than I think.
- avs733 6y agoIf I were to speculate, I would say that tsmc has a diversified enough customer base AND doesn’t see intel as a contract fab competitor. I would imagine if roles were reversed there would be a whole lot more concern.
- mkr-hn 6y agoTSMC could hand Intel everything they know and it wouldn't do them a bit of good before it's no longer relevant. Raw knowledge won't buy machines, train people to maintain them, build factories, tune the manufacturing processes, or make relationships with design partners. By the time Intel gets something running with something they pick up and starts thinking about making deals, TSMC will be off profiting from another breakthrough.
- cma 6y agoI've just heard that TSMC requires strict isolation for a period of years for any team that gets the detailed design specs that can lead to process knowledge, and that this now prevents several fabless companies from second sourcing without a second design team. I would think it would be even stricter with a non fabless client competitor like Intel.
- bicolao 6y agoIt's confusing though because it's to be followed up with mid to high range CPUs as well. So this is a quite long interim period. If they just need a bit more time, outsourcing high end CPUs makes more sense.
- ryneandal 6y agoWell they've nuked consumer Optane (https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-kills-off-all-optane-only-ssds-for-consumers-no-replacements-planned https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-kills-off-all-optane...) and sold their NAND business (https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/10/26/intel-sk-hynix-nand-sale-terms/ https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/10/26/intel-sk-hynix-nand-sa...) so that should free up some of their own capacity, right?
- wtallis 6y agoIntel's selling off the NAND fabs and never owned a 3D XPoint fab; Optane products are built with 3D XPoint memory fabbed by Micron, with whom they co-developed 3D XPoint. And it's not cheap or quick to refit a memory fab to produce processors.
- ryneandal 6y agoAh, I didn't look too deeply into the NAND sale. In that case, yeah I totally see why they are choosing to outsource to TSMC.
- xbmcuser 6y agoNo this is a move to protect market share and buy time their processors with the current Intel node are not competitive this way they are able to compete with AMD as well as restrict AMD supply. They will be able to hold market share with this till their own next generation fab is fully functional.
- usrusr 6y agoSure, assuming that their in-house manufacturing is more expensive than buying externally (quite likely, considering that it was grown for decades more on USPs than on pricing). I wonder how much the "cooperate to learn" effect has been part of the decision. You surely won't get outright trade secrets this way or technological details, but valuable insights in how they think, how they "do things on a high level"
- PartiallyTyped 6y agoThey'd have to also compete with Apple, NVDA and AMD for those wafers. TSM is looking like a great investing opportunity.
- culopatin 6y agoIt’s been going up since March. It was around 55 now at 136. Really nice returns.
- bluGill 6y agoBuy the rumor, sell the news. TSM was a great opportunity, is it still? I don't know the answer, but it is an important warning to keep in mind when making decisions.
- andrewmcwatters 6y agoA resounding "no." The last time TSM was near fair value was mid-2020.
- PartiallyTyped 6y ago
- ACAVJW4H 6y agoIt would be very surprising if TSMC would heavily invest in capacity to help Intel
- ChrisLTD 6y agoMoney is money. Samsung also makes a bunch of stuff for Apple, and they don't seem to think twice about it.
- bluGill 6y agoI'm not clear what Samsung makes for Apple (someone might know, but not me), but it makes sense to share the more complex parts. One team does all the expensive design work, and then both benefit because the design cost is over more devices, plus more hardware means better scale factors in manufacturing. The above is on a case by case basis. So they may share some complex part, and some other (possibly more complex) they decide isn't worth sharing.
- ChrisLTD 6y agoThe main thing Samsung provides Apple is their iPhone displays, but they’ve also supplied chips in the past (I’m not sure about now).
- mhh__ 6y agoThat move seems like a good way of going from having the potential to win to guaranteeing being average at best in the long run.
- cbozeman 6y agoIntel will never become fabless. They made the wrong bet on the type of technology to reduce transistor size and they overestimated what their engineers would be capable of creating and doing, but that won't last forever. There's a lot of working going on with 10nm and 7nm to fix the production problems (because a lot of work is still required). It won't happen overnight, in fact, I predicted about a year or two ago that it would be around 2023, +/- 6 months, that Intel would have its node production problems mostly ironed out. Sadly by then, TSMC should be at 3nm, and while Intel's 10nm is easily a match for TSMC's 7nm, it won't be enough to be competitive against TSMC 5nm and 3nm. I hope that Intel has their shit together for the 7nm node, or can at least break even on it. If they can break even (cost of wafer is equal to or less than what they can sell the chips for) on 7nm, they'll be able to hang in there until they get the 5nm / 3nm nodes up and running. If Intel drops the ball though... and they aren't able to get 10nm yields over 90% by 2023 and if they can't get 7nm yields at a reasonable point... well that's a whole different ball game for Intel. It might not be out of the question for Intel to approach the US government about either subsidies, tax breaks, custom manufacturing for military applications, etc., in order to 1) keep Intel viable until the engineering challenges are resolved and 2) prevent the offshoring of all semiconductor fabs. Put simply, Intel staying competitive is a matter of national security for the United States.
- wegs 6y agoIt seems a dollar of government investment now is likely worth $5 of investment down the line, once we've fallen further behind. The US ought to be investing on multiple fronts to regain/maintain the lead here. Best company I worked at -- small startup -- would always do 2-3 R&D initiatives in parallel. One would be conservative (guaranteed results). One would be super-high-risk (huge payoff if it works). Sometimes there would be one or two more. It was all a big hedge. Some panned out, some didn't, and when we hit the market, our technology was like science fiction. Competition didn't know what hit them. That would run a fair bit of coin, but fairly little on the national scale. (Footnote: Not a software company)
- andre_ramos 6y agoCan you share the company's name?
- blackrock 6y agoIs TSMC about to hit a physics barrier? How much smaller than 3nm, can transistor sizes go? 2 nm? 1 nm? O.5 nm?
- MayeulC 6y agoOh, transistors haven't shrunk that much. I don't know the exact process details, but integration density has been going up( putting gates vertical with FinFET), together with better electrostatic control (GAAFET, kind of a step uf from FDSOI), while gate length remains the same. Think about it this way: you're doping semiconductors by adding a few other atoms. On the order of 1 dopant atom per 1M intrinsic (undopped) semiconductor. How thin can you make it before there's only a dozen dopant atoms? And then, how do you make sure they are evenly distributed? And in the same way across multiple transistors, to guarantee a consistent performance? Yield is key, at this scale. Technically, they can still improve density by embracing 3D. A friend of mine works on multi-gate vertical nanowire transistors, for instance, but that's still a few years (or a decade?) away from the fab.