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Intel’s future now depends on making everyone else’s chips
- DeathArrow 5y agoMeanwhile the Chinese are trying very hard to come up with their own EUV tech to overcome US imposed bans.
- madspindel 5y agoIt took Europe 20 years to come up with EUV
- HPsquared 5y agoIt won't take 20 years to catch up.
- rvba 5y agoSpies will steal the designs?
- xadhominemx 5y agoIt probably will, actually
- rowanG077 5y agoThis is a meaningless statement. It took humanity thousands of years to come up with calculus. Now we teach the basics to high schoolers.
- mschuster91 5y ago> It took humanity thousands of years to come up with calculus. Depends on how you see it. During most of humanity's existence, we were hunters and gatherers, with simple and small societies - there wasn't much need for advanced math and there was not really a possibility for a society to feed a thinker. Only when complex societies like ancient Greece and Rome were possible thanks to early industrialized farming, there was a possibility for people to do nothing "productive" towards the society itself surviving but instead invest resources into advancing society.
- adrianN 5y agoAncient Greece was thousands of years ago. Some complex societies are even a bit older. For example the Assyrian empire started around 2600BCE, and I guess there are older ones still.
- ido 5y agoAlexander the Great is roughly as distant from our time as the building of the pyramids were from his.
- m0zg 5y agoAnd thanks to all that effort the Chinese now likely have all the blueprints. The only reason why they still don't have EUV is because this stuff is difficult to bring up even if you have all the documentation - screw something up even a little, and it's not going to work. But it certainly isn't going to take them 20 years to replicate it.
- jillesvangurp 5y agoThe nature of patents is that it is mostly public information anyway and free to use after the patents expire. That works both ways of course, the Chinese have some pretty fancy technology in other fields that manufacturers in the EU or US might benefit from. Of course with chips, patents and know how that e.g. Intel or ASML have are two things. Ultimately this is good as it drives companies to continue innovating. Intel's current problems are related to them forgetting to do that.
- m0zg 5y agoPrecisely. A billion ways to get things wrong, and if you get it wrong it doesn't work. And the info to get it to work is unlikely to be in the patents. You have to have folks who worked with this stuff before, which is difficult, but doable. And as far as "innovating" in this field, we're almost at the end of the run - there are, as far as I'm aware, no processes planned beyond 3nm, and even 3nm is astonomically complex and expensive.
- 988747 5y ago>> patents and know how that e.g. Intel or ASML have are two things. Shouldn't that make the patent invalid? I thought the requirement is that the patent should give enough info so that "person skilled in the art" can reproduce the invention.
- swiftcoder 5y ago"skilled in the art" is somewhat irrelevant if that skill takes a couple of decades and a $120 million machine to develop...
- MangoCoffee 5y ago>It took Europe 20 years to come up with EUV "The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced an agreement with ASM Lithography (Einhoven, Netherlands) that would allow the company to participate in the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography development effort now underway in Livermore, Calif." https://www.eetimes.com/u-s-gives-ok-to-asml-on-euv-effort/ https://www.eetimes.com/u-s-gives-ok-to-asml-on-euv-effort/ EUV is a joint research by US Dept of Energy and several US companies. ASML got invited to join the research based on conditions lay out by US Dept of Energy.
- throaway46546 5y agoEUV?
- Semaphor 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_ultraviolet_lithography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_ultraviolet_lithograph...
- DeathArrow 5y agoMore context: https://techtaiwan.com/20210609/huawei-duv/ https://techtaiwan.com/20210609/huawei-duv/ https://inf.news/en/tech/ede38b11c0c375aee90b2451f5c0da3e.html https://inf.news/en/tech/ede38b11c0c375aee90b2451f5c0da3e.ht...
- PedroBatista 5y agoIt looks like everyone is opening a fab in the next couple years ( for many reasons, one of them is political ) so I would guess in the next couple years ordering chips will be "cheap" because most fabs are desperate to recoup at least some of the gigantic investment and margins will be razor thin. So my guess would be in the next decade, the real money will be on the design and IP not the manufacturing. ( excluding the bleeding edge half-a-nm stuff )
- dragontamer 5y agoEveryone is opening a fab, but it only "counts" if you in fact succeed at making the chips. Otherwise, you've only spent $5 billion on a failure. Intel has fallen behind because it failed to deliver its 10nm (now called 7nm) process in 2015. Intel tried-and-tried, but failed, to the point where supercomputers (ie: Aurora) were delayed because of the manufacturing mishap. Just because everyone is __planning__ to open a fab doesn't mean that they'll be successful at it. If Intel fails to reach 5nm (TSMC-name), then TSMC will win. In fact, TSMC has already started making 5nm chips called the Apple M1 Pro. --------- Intel has finally delivered 10nm, but they were 5 years late. If it takes another 5 years to deliver their version of 5nm, then TSMC will be at 3nm by the time Intel reaches 5nm ----------- Its all about manufacturing actually. All of these chip designs can be ported over to different manufacturers, so long as the different manufacturers are __CAPABLE__ of implementing the designs.
- irrational 5y agoWhy has TSMC succeeded where Intel has failed?
- dragontamer 5y ago> Why has TSMC succeeded where Intel has failed? Everyone is buying the same machines from ASML. Machines aren't the issue, its process. Its nitty gritty manufacturing details that no one will talk about (because those details are the "moat", the secret sauce that makes TSMC do something that Intel can't). It looks like Intel has figured out 7nm, just much later than expected.
- mhh__ 5y agoThey are currently basically one of at most a handful of people who can do that. They need to face the music and get their elbows out; now is a good time.
- slowjerk 5y agoGiven the tension around Taiwan, they are in an exceptional position. China's dithering might be centred partly around considerations of how they can overtake a country while keeping its silicon fabs in tact.
- slowjerk 5y agoI find this article incomplete without mention of the China-Taiwan situation adding to the mix in an enormous way.
- nly 5y agoGiven that Samsung's process was powering the iPhone up until 2015, how are Samsung doing in 2021 on this front?
- simonh 5y agoSamsung's big cash cow is it's memory business, it's responsible for only 20% of revenue but 50% of profits. They're doubling down on the logic chip business with massive investment in their 3nm gate-all-around architecture. One issue is there's a significant conflict of interest between their device and CPU businesses. Apple left them precisely because Samsung is a competitor in handsets, and other handset manufacturers are also wary of buying from them for the same reason. As a side note it is true TSMC deserves a lot of credit for the advantages of the Apple M-series CPUs. Without the 5nm TSMC process they wouldn't be anywhere near as impressive. However Apple has been working very closely with TSMC on it, and their long term financial commitments been a big factor in TSMC being able to move forward so decisively on developing the process and investing in future nodes and capacity. Apple ditching Samsung as a supplier has had a big influence on the shape of the CPU industry. The (currently) top comment by WithinReason highlights part of this dynamic.
- hocuspocus 5y ago> One issue is there's a significant conflict of interest between their device and CPU businesses. Apple left them precisely because Samsung is a competitor in handsets, and other handset manufacturers are also wary of buying from them for the same reason. I don't think what bothered Apple is relevant to other phone makers. Case in point, Qualcomm doesn't mind having Samsung fab their SoCs, and even their modems, a domain where Samsung has repeatedly tried to catch up! Anyway in the current Android smartphone landscape, everyone is using ARM reference CPU designs.
- dv_dt 5y agoThere was also a point in Samsung’s past when they had been selling Nand chips to the market, then decided to hold all the capacity for themselves (or maybe Apple and themselves), then somewhat recently opened it back up again - but nand (and CPU) chips aren’t easily interchangeable - so a reliable partner is more important. Dram chips on the other hand are much more interchangeable.
- WithinReason 5y agoI wasn't aware of the connection between volume and technological progress in semiconductor manufacturing: “When you have volume orders, then you can do yield experiments, you can improve your yield, and yield is everything because that’s how you cover your costs,” "Foundries that can juggle multiple clients and technologies can swiftly advance on their competitors. For example, TSMC’s scale allowed it to master extreme ultraviolet lithography faster than anyone else, which reduced the number of steps it took to make advanced chips and boosted the throughput of its fabs."
- amelius 5y agoIt's called Wright's law. Contrary to Moore's law, it's not slowing down.
- worrycue 5y agoGuess Intel is moving with the times. Won’t be the first time they overhauled their business, I heard they used to be DRAM makers before jumping into CPUs.
- agumonkey 5y agolots of car makers were bike plants before, and before that metalsmith skills have to pivot I guess
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ksec 5y agoThe latest roadmap from TSMC now points to 2023 for 3nm. This actually put Intel in the same time frame as TSMC. So incidentally both Intel and TSMC will be on 4nm in 2022, and 3nm in 2023. Note: Intel 4nm is a Full, new Node while TSMC 4nm is an optimisation of their 5nm. Of course the roadmap and time table from Intel is often not a reliable indicator and also doesn't tell you whether it is product shipment or if they are only ramping. My guess is that Intel is running as fast as they can to reach those target. That is also not including capacity difference with node from both companies. I think Intel under Pat Gelsinger is making the same transition as Andy Grove did to during his era.
- tester34 5y agoI'm getting kinda lost, it's almost 2022 already did Intel skip 7 and 5nm?
- cjblomqvist 5y agoThey renamed their other nodes to cover those (and to better align with the rest of the industry).
- terafo 5y agoThey changed their branding. Their 10nm node was renamed to Intel 7, their 7nm is now Intel 4. Since amount of nanometers doesn't really mean anything anymore that's good PR strategy that nicely represents state of their nodes because density on Intel 7 and TSMC 7nm is pretty similar anyway.
- ant6n 5y agoIntel just reported earnings, and is down 10% in pre-market (ouch). It seems the market did not like the soft pc sales numbers. https://www.anandtech.com/show/17027/intel-reports-q3-2021-earnings-client-down-datacenter-and-iot-up https://www.anandtech.com/show/17027/intel-reports-q3-2021-e...
- simonh 5y agoThat's weird, the linked page shows them significantly up, and Google shows them storming it at $56.
- bwlg 5y agoAt the top right of the graph you can see that it's currently around 9% in the minus in the pre-market. A lot of sites don't update the graph for pre-market movements and only show price movements from when the market is open. On yahoo finance you can see pre-market movements if you open the full-screen graph (simply click the graph or click "full-screen" on mobile). https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/INTC?p=INTC&.tsrc=fin-srch https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/INTC?p=INTC&.tsrc=fin-srch
- kfprt 5y agoI'd bet PC sales are down because of the lack of GPU's. Mining hurts the rest of the industry because they aren't selling as many high end MOBO's, CPU's, cases, etc etc. Sounds like they need to twist arms to preference PC's over mining.
- gtirloni 5y agoI know the focus of the article is Intel and TSMC but I kept wondering about Samsung. If it's following the same foundry model that TSMC is, why does it only have a small fraction of the market (compared to TSMC)? Shouldn't it be doing as well as TSMC?
- Tenoke 5y agoWithinReason's comment seems to explain that. The benefits of being bigger compound over time.
- evancox100 5y agoI don't think that explains it. Measured by wafer starts/mo, Samsung is the largest semiconductor manufacturer in the world, bigger than TSMC. https://anysilicon.com/five-semiconductor-companies-hold-53-of-global-wafer-capacity/ https://anysilicon.com/five-semiconductor-companies-hold-53-... Edit: it is maybe a little more complex than that, because much of that is memory, and memory and logic processes may not be able to share the same learnings and developments.
- tooltalk 5y ago"... That represented 15.0% of the world’s total capacity and about two-thirds of it was used for the fabrication of DRAM and NAND flash memory devices. ..."
- TheTon 5y agoAs others pointed out, they both do a lot of volume. But TSMC are ahead at the leading edge. Complete speculation, but I would guess this is mostly due to Apple. Apple wants the best process and they’re able to pay for it. Further, Apple is mistrustful of Samsung so they were happy to drop them and switch to TSMC. I think this highlights the difficulty Intel will face. Samsung’s foundry is independent from Samsung’s phone business, and I don’t think anyone has alleged otherwise. But even if Intel does manage to keep its two sides at arms length, will that be enough to attract business from competitors like Apple and AMD? I’d guess no.
- DeathArrow 5y agoSo we will buy AMD CPUs fabbed by Intel? Sneaky Intel, they still found a way to have Intel inside. :)
- revolvingocelot 5y agoI really really hope not. Considering what Intel is willing to do in software to sabotage AMD performance, [0][1] I shudder to think what they'll do in hardware. [0] https://ol.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/ik9lw1/updated_intel_mkl_removes_workaround_allowing/ https://ol.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/ik9lw1/updated_int... [1] https://www.agner.org/optimize/blog/read.php?i=49 https://www.agner.org/optimize/blog/read.php?i=49 ^ For those interested in the storied history of Intel hurting AMD
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- swalsh 5y agoRegulation of anti-competitive behavior seems to have been extremely relaxed lately. Amazon's marketplace and Amazon Retail seem at odds with each other, yet they're allowed to coexest, and everyone is fully aware of the anti-competitive behavior. Intel's chip business needs to be seperated from their foundry business, and the 2 can't be allowed to comingle with each other.
- smoldesu 5y agoWhat incentive does the US government have to split up highly lucrative, domestic businesses?
- kaashif 5y agoThe incentive should be that a competitive free market is better for prosperity in the long term. If anti-competitive practices are allowed, the losers are the consumers, whose interests the government are supposed to represent. Obviously it doesn't work that way in practice.
- klelatti 5y ago> Gelsinger will have to change Intel’s culture and, to some extent, its technology, both of which are deep-seated. “He has to turn a huge ship around,” said Robert Maire, president of Semiconductor Advisors. Yes and even harder they will have to convince potential customers that their culture has changed too. Edit: This also adds the complexity of constantly managing trade-offs between (lower margin) external customers and the (higher-margin) in-house CPU business - it would be so easy to get that balance wrong.
- after_care 5y agoAll Intel needs to convince customers of us that they have a attract supply of chips.
- Enginerrrd 5y agoI think you've been downvoted because of English grammatical errors, but if I understand your point correctly, I whole-heartedly agree: All intel needs to do is make competitive chips at a good price. In past years, they resorted to more anti-competitive efforts, but at the end of the day, if you make good stuff and sell it at the right price, people will buy the crap out of it.
- klelatti 5y agoLets look at who "people" are here - TSMC's biggest customers over the last three years: AMD, Nvidia - direct Intel competitors Hi-Silicon - no due to being based in PRC Mediatek - based in Taiwan Which leaves Apple, Broadcom and Qualcomm. I suspect they will get some business from the last two but Apple clearly have a deep long term relationship with TSMC and have invested a lot into that relationship. Can't see it being easy to get them to move. Maybe Intel is counting on political pressure to get the big US firms to use them?
- zeusk 5y agoThere's a lot of interest from the big clouds on custom sillicon, I'm sure part of any govt cloud contract could include stipulations for use of sillicon manufactured or atleast verified on the western hemisphere.
- post_break 5y agoIntel lost Apple, Intel is losing the server market, next will be laptops I assume when AMD can keep up with demand. That's going to hurt.
- amelius 5y agoThis is a good thing. Who wants one company to completely integrate its entire supply chain, producing everything from start to finish? Imagine the cost if all companies did this. Imagine how it would suck for startup companies to get a foothold in this world.
- MangoCoffee 5y agoIntel need to split into two. 1. Intel fabless: open up x86 like ARM. work on Xscale (ARM) and RISC-V (SiFive). 2. Intel foundry: a pure play foundry with no tie to its fabless side to win customers trust. the foundry ecosystem is going to hurt Intel. the current trend is everyone design its own chip and outsource to foundry for production. edit: look like the deal to buy SiFive fall apart but the idea is Intel fabless can focus on chip design regardless the platform.
- jjoonathan 5y agoThis kills the foundry.
- ngomez 5y agoCould you elaborate? AMD spun their fabrication arm off into GlobalFoundries a while back, and they seem to be doing okay. I thought that would be a good precedent for Intel divesting its fabs too, but I'd love to hear any counterpoints to that.
- totalZero 5y agoAMD spun off GlobalFoundries to save itself, and suffered greatly for many years afterward. Let's not pretend it was some kind of masterstroke done by a company that was firing smoothly on all cylinders. Do a Google search for the stock price. AMD announced the spinoff in October 2008.
- jjoonathan 5y agoGlobalFoundries completely gave up on leading edge and went downmarket. It would be a shame to see Intel's fabs follow.
- throwawaysea 5y agoWhat you're suggesting is what AMD did when they spun off Global Foundries, correct? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GlobalFoundries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GlobalFoundries What would make Intel more successful at operating a foundry than anyone else? Or is it just a way to make the best of assets they already own?
- Animats 5y agoThis makes sense, because of the move to application-specific ICs. Products used to be generic ICs on custom boards. That's shrinking to a single application-specific IC. You can usually get all the transistors you need for a product onto one application-specific part. But that part will not be a commodity. Much of this is semi-custom. You plug together a few pre-defined CPU cores, a GPU, a video decoder, some software defined radios, etc. and you have a phone. Having more fabs in more locations is a good thing, for robustness.