24 ms·

Intel Foundry Services Lands MediaTek, a Leading TSMC Customer

40 points by ItsTotallyOn 4y ago

rk06 4y ago
Great! So TSMC will have more capacity for Qualcomm and Apple, and other chips?
- gjsman-1000 4y ago
  Reading between the lines - MediaTek will probably send Intel some obscure parts for a small production run. This is "Intel 16" we're talking about, which is revised 22nm FinFET Low Power (that Intel thinks is comparable to 3rd-party 16nm). Aka Smart Home device chips, nothing near smartphone level. So... they might have extra capacity, sure, but extra capacity isn't the problem right now. NVIDIA has overbooked and is desperately seeking a buyer for capacity when everyone is cutting back or has all the capacity they need. This won't affect the 5nm-ish capacity, but only TSMC 22nm capacity, which... how many buyers does that have? Is it overbooked?
  - foobarian 4y ago
    Isn't this right around the node that is under huge pressure right now, causing unprecedented shortages and backlogs for sectors such as automotive or medical devices? Might be nice to have more help there.
    - gjsman-1000 4y ago
      This was a major point of contention during the chip shortages. Automotive and medical devices are stuck on very old nodes, like 180nm. This MediaTek partnership is using way, way too new of a node than they would like, while being too old for smartphones. 22nm would be lightyears ahead of where they are. Chip makers view the situation as being simple: Car makers and Medical need to upgrade their tech to newer nodes, as they aren't interested in building new 180nm-era factories. Car makers and Medical chip makers blame, well, the chip makers and say that redesigning those chips would be very expensive as well as to re-certify, but so far the chip makers don't care. And so rumor has it, though rumor only for now, that car makers are finally updating because there is no other choice. To what though? Probably the next-oldest and cheapest node, 40nm or older, not 22nm.
      - onethought 4y ago
        This doesn’t sound accurate. Do you have a source for this? I work with most of the OEMs and “update to newer chips” is not something they are doing. Tesla was effected by the shortage as well even though they expressed willingness to use whatever chip design they could get their hands on. I don’t think your summary is accurate. I could be wrong but my first hand experience tells me the exact opposite.
        vxNsr 4y ago
        I’ve heard many people repeat that summary, but as you appear to have first hand knowledge: what do you believe or know to be the reason for the shortage?
        onethought 4y ago
        The shortage was the car industry cancelled all there orders for chips (mistakenly, because of bad forecasting) and the chip manufacturers sold that factory time elsewhere, cars tried to take it back and buy more factory time to make up for the shortfall… but they all did it. So it was basically like toilet paper shortages. You are right they are on old architecture and the chip manufactures would prefer to move to newer ones. But I don’t think they ever didn’t take the car industry seriously, the order sizes are a stupid amount of money to leave on the table over “new nodes vs old nodes”
        adrian_b 4y ago
        The problem with "new nodes vs. old nodes" for the chip manufacturers is that any semiconductor plant has quite large fixed costs. When the production is very high, the fixed costs are divided over a very large number of chips and the cost per chip is negligible. When the production diminishes for an old node because some obsolete devices are no longer used in new designs, there is a threshold where the fixed costs per chip become so large that the chips cannot be sold at a profit. So even if the semiconductor plant would still have orders for millions of chips per month and they could be easily made, the production would not be profitable, because the profitability threshold might be e.g. at ten million chips per month. Because of that, as soon as they see that the old plants are run much below their maximum capacity, the foundries would prefer very much the customers to move their orders to a newer node, to be able to close completely the old plant instead of running it at a very low profit or even at a loss, when they have to satisfy some old contracts, made when the plant was still profitable.
- manuelabeledo 4y ago
  Mediatek accounts for 6% of TSMC revenue, meaning that they aren't such a large a customer either in advanced nodes, volume, or both. Some capacity may be freed, but I doubt that it would be significant enough for smartphone chips, especially given that Mediatek is going for an older node size on Intel.
ksec 4y ago
Intel 16, you should expect TV SoC, Router SoC, IoT and some other low end stuff.
allie1 4y ago
Given Intel’s execution track record and even recent mishaps (where’s my Sapphire Rapids Pat, or the gpus?!) even getting this is a big step. They better deliver their A game if they hope to win any real trust.
- manuelabeledo 4y ago
  This is a relatively old node, unveiled around ten years ago. I would be surprised if Intel couldn't deliver.

40 points by ItsTotallyOn 4y ago

rk06 4y ago

Great! So TSMC will have more capacity for Qualcomm and Apple, and other chips?

gjsman-1000 4y ago
Reading between the lines - MediaTek will probably send Intel some obscure parts for a small production run. This is "Intel 16" we're talking about, which is revised 22nm FinFET Low Power (that Intel thinks is comparable to 3rd-party 16nm). Aka Smart Home device chips, nothing near smartphone level. So... they might have extra capacity, sure, but extra capacity isn't the problem right now. NVIDIA has overbooked and is desperately seeking a buyer for capacity when everyone is cutting back or has all the capacity they need. This won't affect the 5nm-ish capacity, but only TSMC 22nm capacity, which... how many buyers does that have? Is it overbooked?
- foobarian 4y ago
  Isn't this right around the node that is under huge pressure right now, causing unprecedented shortages and backlogs for sectors such as automotive or medical devices? Might be nice to have more help there.
  - gjsman-1000 4y ago
    This was a major point of contention during the chip shortages. Automotive and medical devices are stuck on very old nodes, like 180nm. This MediaTek partnership is using way, way too new of a node than they would like, while being too old for smartphones. 22nm would be lightyears ahead of where they are. Chip makers view the situation as being simple: Car makers and Medical need to upgrade their tech to newer nodes, as they aren't interested in building new 180nm-era factories. Car makers and Medical chip makers blame, well, the chip makers and say that redesigning those chips would be very expensive as well as to re-certify, but so far the chip makers don't care. And so rumor has it, though rumor only for now, that car makers are finally updating because there is no other choice. To what though? Probably the next-oldest and cheapest node, 40nm or older, not 22nm.
    - onethought 4y ago
      This doesn’t sound accurate. Do you have a source for this? I work with most of the OEMs and “update to newer chips” is not something they are doing. Tesla was effected by the shortage as well even though they expressed willingness to use whatever chip design they could get their hands on. I don’t think your summary is accurate. I could be wrong but my first hand experience tells me the exact opposite.
      - vxNsr 4y ago
        I’ve heard many people repeat that summary, but as you appear to have first hand knowledge: what do you believe or know to be the reason for the shortage?
        onethought 4y ago
        The shortage was the car industry cancelled all there orders for chips (mistakenly, because of bad forecasting) and the chip manufacturers sold that factory time elsewhere, cars tried to take it back and buy more factory time to make up for the shortfall… but they all did it. So it was basically like toilet paper shortages. You are right they are on old architecture and the chip manufactures would prefer to move to newer ones. But I don’t think they ever didn’t take the car industry seriously, the order sizes are a stupid amount of money to leave on the table over “new nodes vs old nodes”
        adrian_b 4y ago
        The problem with "new nodes vs. old nodes" for the chip manufacturers is that any semiconductor plant has quite large fixed costs. When the production is very high, the fixed costs are divided over a very large number of chips and the cost per chip is negligible. When the production diminishes for an old node because some obsolete devices are no longer used in new designs, there is a threshold where the fixed costs per chip become so large that the chips cannot be sold at a profit. So even if the semiconductor plant would still have orders for millions of chips per month and they could be easily made, the production would not be profitable, because the profitability threshold might be e.g. at ten million chips per month. Because of that, as soon as they see that the old plants are run much below their maximum capacity, the foundries would prefer very much the customers to move their orders to a newer node, to be able to close completely the old plant instead of running it at a very low profit or even at a loss, when they have to satisfy some old contracts, made when the plant was still profitable.
manuelabeledo 4y ago
Mediatek accounts for 6% of TSMC revenue, meaning that they aren't such a large a customer either in advanced nodes, volume, or both. Some capacity may be freed, but I doubt that it would be significant enough for smartphone chips, especially given that Mediatek is going for an older node size on Intel.

ksec 4y ago

Intel 16, you should expect TV SoC, Router SoC, IoT and some other low end stuff.

allie1 4y ago

Given Intel’s execution track record and even recent mishaps (where’s my Sapphire Rapids Pat, or the gpus?!) even getting this is a big step. They better deliver their A game if they hope to win any real trust.

manuelabeledo 4y ago
This is a relatively old node, unveiled around ten years ago. I would be surprised if Intel couldn't deliver.