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And I plan to date supermodels. /s Okay I'll try to be constructive. TSMC is two things: The biggest contracting foundry in the world, and a leader in EUV appl

And I plan to date supermodels. /s Okay I'll try to be constructive. TSMC is two things: The biggest contracting foundry in the world, and a leader in EUV application for tiny geometries. I think it's possible for Intel to become a contracting foundry; it goes against their DNA but Gelsinger very much wants to do it. So that's the first thing. Maybe it'll happen. The second thing is much more problematic. > Intel is still working on getting its 5-nm mass production going, and says it will begin manufacturing Intel 3 -- its answer to TSMC's 3-nm tech -- in the second half of 2023. This I'm much more skeptical about. Intel tried to make EUV work before and failed. Still they seem to be buying ASML equipment and installing it at Ronler Acres: https://www.protocol.com/enterprise/intel-euv-fab-chips https://www.protocol.com/enterprise/intel-euv-fab-chips But it still sounds like a long shot to get it working in 2023.

curious_cat_163 4y ago
Would you share some insight on why Intel failed at making EUV work? Gelsinger said on a podcast (Decoder) recently that in fact they fought it. Obviously, they are kind of big enough to do both — make a half hearted attempt and fight it all the same due to some internal politics. However, for something this existential, one would think that the smart people and the leadership would try to put some focus on the field. Was it that bad? Really, looking for some insight on what really went down.
- chasil 4y ago
  Intel has mastered 10nm production. The race to the bottom of physics is not a long ride.
- dreamcompiler 4y ago
  Intel (like every other chipmaker) has been chasing EUV for decades, but every time they thought they finally nailed it they turned out to be wrong. The key that ultimately made it possible was the light source, and ASML is the only company that sells these light sources. ASML didn't invent the light source entirely on its own; there were a lot of ideas for light sources floating around and the only one that turned out to work was laser-induced plasma from tin microdroplets, which sounds completely crazy but it works [0]. ASML perfected that process (with -- to be fair -- some investment from Intel). [0] https://www.asml.com/en/technology/lithography-principles/light-and-lasers https://www.asml.com/en/technology/lithography-principles/li... Intel did fight EUV with a technology called SAQP which ultimately turned out not to work as well as EUV, but they were researching EUV at the same time. Here are some more historical articles about Intel's work on EUV in the past. Note the dates. https://newsroom.intel.com/news-releases/intel-achieves-major-milestones-in-euv-lithography-program/#gs.h80lu7 https://newsroom.intel.com/news-releases/intel-achieves-majo... https://semiengineering.com/why-euv-is-so-difficult/ https://semiengineering.com/why-euv-is-so-difficult/ https://www.eetimes.com/intel-developing-euv-pellicle/ https://www.eetimes.com/intel-developing-euv-pellicle/ https://www.extremetech.com/computing/276376-intel-reportedly-wont-deploy-euv-lithography-until-2021 https://www.extremetech.com/computing/276376-intel-reportedl...
  - curious_cat_163 4y ago
    Thank you.
  - dmix 4y ago
    Do you have any insight on what organizational failures led to them failing to find the right EUV solution? Was it just a matter of luck that ASML nailed the right one or was it the nature of exploring some riskier alternative (as you said "which sounds completely crazy but it works")?
    - dreamcompiler 4y ago
      I know nothing about Intel's internal organization. There were several different light source ideas tried. Some at US national laboratories. Tin plasma was known to work but it left so much debris that it gummed up the optics so it was forgotten for a while. The key turned out to be tin microdroplets. https://www.optica-opn.org/home/articles/volume_29/march_2018/features/euv_light_sources_for_next-gen_lithography/ https://www.optica-opn.org/home/articles/volume_29/march_201...
    - Pietertje 4y ago
      ASML and Intel are two completely different companies. ASML makes lithography machines which is one of the many steps in producing a chip. ASML machines are used by all chip manufacturers. The challenge for chip manufacturers like Intel, but also tsmc, Samsung among others, is to optimize the entire production process. And that has been / is not easy with a lithography step (EUV) which is so drastically different then what the industry has been using before. One of the challenging choices for chip manufacturers was to drastically change the process and implement EUV or to go self-aligned quadratic patterning. The latter, if you take a simplistic view, can be seen as an evolution on existing processes. We know see that those companies who went aggressively into EUV are having an edge on their competitors.
    - RC_ITR 4y ago
      When they say “microdroplets” (I may be out of date here) they mean firing lasers at falling drops of molten tin and then capturing the energy that the tin gives off. Like anything, some of their PHDs were like “no that’s probably not going to work because xyz” and they trusted said PHDs. It’s just science. It’s hard to predict.
- sanxiyn 4y ago
  I am much more hopeful about Intel's chance at EUV than GP. In order to avoid repeating myself, here's my analysis of what went wrong: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32335873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32335873
  - Sakos 4y ago
    Why is it that it's taking them so long to pivoting from that failure? 10nm didn't work out, that's fine. But it feels like that didn't work out and they've spent the years after that in a hole and still haven't dug themselves out.
    - dreamcompiler 4y ago
      From the rumors I've heard (might be true; might not) Intel lost a great deal of semiconductor engineering talent because they were making so much money on minor evolutions of x86 that they saw little need to truly innovate. The MBAs took over. Once it became clear that AMD and ARM (and by extension TSMC) were eating their lunch, they had great difficulty pivoting because they lacked the talent and the organizational will to do so -- at least until Gelsinger took charge. I have a lot of respect for Gelsinger and I think he just might turn it around.
      - yourapostasy 4y ago
        > ...they were making so much money on minor evolutions of x86 that they saw little need to truly innovate. The MBAs took over. Yet another example in a long history that modeling your talent pipeline as a JIT supply chain does not work in high cognitive input settings. This is a general unsolved management challenge: capturing sufficiently granular and comprehensive institutional knowledge to be able to efficiently restart organizations that rely upon it years down the line. I don't think we will ever solve it until we learn how to share human mind states. The complexity of these high cognitive input activities at large scale has surpassed the ability of our capabilities to transfer comprehension between minds using conventional information transfer techniques (primarily written word and audio video). Even were I to guarantee the capture of all information at sufficient granularity, the only way to QA that is to de novo staff up a brand-new parallel organization, and have them reproduce the original organization's accomplishments. No one is ever funded for that. This is a really interesting problem space for me because I suspect it is a dimension of technical debt very rarely explored because our species has not had to really grapple with it before as our technological progression has been slow enough we could "good enough" brute force our way through it whenever it came up in less severe forms.
- simplotek 4y ago
  > Would you share some insight on why Intel failed at making EUV work? Gelsinger said on a podcast (Decoder) recently that in fact they fought it. A cursory Google search results in multiple search hits from recent news pieces announcing Intel buying their EUV kits from ASML. If Intel is handing out small fortunes to ASML to deliver a machine that in the past Intel was expected to develop in-house, that does not sound like a success story. Here's a Reddit thread on the topic: https://www.reddit.com/r/AMD_Stock/comments/miar30/why_is_intel_so_late_to_the_euv_litho_party_my/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AMD_Stock/comments/miar30/why_is_in...
sawyna 4y ago
Can you explain what EUV is? I'd prefer an ELI5!
- jl6 4y ago
  Chips are made by etching lines into a special kind of glass. The etching is done with light. The smaller the light, the smaller the lines. Red light is big, violet light is small. Extreme ultra-violet light is really small, so they can etch really small lines. When the lines are small, the electricity moves through them more quickly, so the chip’s work gets done faster.
  - scns 4y ago
    When the lines are smaller, you can place more transistors/functionality in the same area, which leads to higher performance. The power required decreases too.
    - saberience 4y ago
      Can you explain how the transistors are placed on the glass? Are they also "etched" by the EUV light?
      - rusticpenn 4y ago
        They are etched and filled with different elements. So a traditional mosfet Transistor needs n, p and gate layers.
      - elsjaako 4y ago
        They are put on there by putting chemicals on specificatic places. Because it's such a complex pattern, it's easiest to use a template and spray the chemicals on, the same way some artists apply spraypaint. The template is first printed on the glass. This is done by putting a light sensitive layer (photoresist) on the glass, and exposing some of it to light. When the light gets put on there the properties of the photoresist change so you can wash off the parts you don't want. Jl6 called this process "etching" (there may be additional steps that can also be described as etching, I don't know. Semiconductors are made with a lot of processes. This is the most well known process). Then you spray on the chemicals you want, and then you wash away the remaining photoresist so you can put the next layer on. This happens a lot of times for a modern chip.
blitzar 4y ago
No I plan to rival your dating of the supermodels so you have to date regular models /s
ksec 4y ago
>Intel tried to make EUV work before and failed Where does it said that? They haven't even launched their first node with EUV yet. So arguably they haven't failed. I am not entirely sure if Intel needs to overtake TSMC, they just need to be a good enough alternative. But I agree even that is a tall order.
- 7speter 4y ago
  Is it really though? Intels roadmap seems to place them manufacturing on 3nm by 2024 and TSMC is having issues with their 3nm atm, iirc. It seems like competitive advantages in this industry stems from one of the major players getting caught up on a given new node/process.
  - ksec 4y ago
    It depends, it is not yet clear what Intel meant by 3nm in 2024. Shipping hundreds of wafers? Or Real Product launches by their customers? It is the same with Samsung which arguably ship their 7nm ahead of TSMC. But with low volume, yield and poor performance characteristic it doesn't really matter. ( And I haven't even mentioned cost yet )
davedx 4y ago
Some other things I noticed when I read their earnings call transcript from the other day: "We'll start with a focus on driving $3 billion of cost reduction in 2023, 1/3 in cost of sales and 2/3 in operating expenses." "best-in-class semiconductor companies have a financial profile that includes gross margins in the 60s" (Intel's is in the mid 40's and fell last quarter) So they're not only trying to change a gigantic part of their business model, but ALSO drive $3B of cost reduction and try and push gross margins back up to... where they were 5 years or so ago? They're making it impossible for themselves IMO. Pivot or profit improvements, choose one. Doing both at the same time is surely going to lead to a huge mess.
- brookst 4y ago
  The thing to understand about Intel is that the finance org has hugely outsized power compared to other companies. This is a company that believes that any problem can be solved with capital allocation, and no project is worth doing unless there’s a financial analysis “proving” it will add at least $1B/year to the bottom line. Intel’s culture is that of a cash cow, not an innovator. So year, profit improvements come naturally, pivoting not so much.
throwaway9870 4y ago
I worked with IBM in the early 2000s porting some IP to their processes and what was so difficult was that everything was proprietary to IBM. From the nomenclature, to the tools, to the models, etc. That was great when they were on top, but the world passed them by and there was no hope of converting them over. I never worked with Intel the same way, but some close friends did and it sounds exactly the same. They are proprietary and very inefficient. A block that would normally be laid out in two days, Intel would spend two weeks on. Their process design rules were super restrictive and their tooling just isn't efficient compared to the what the rest of the industry now uses. Unique, strict and obnoxious design rules might be OK when you are designing a high-volume processor like Intel, but that is not the kind of process you want for a foundry. I fear it is not in Intel's DNA to make this switch.
starkd 4y ago
I don't think they really have a choice but to do this. China is moving hard for Taiwan, and they are serious.
pipodeclown 4y ago
They're already using euv. They didn't try to use euv and failed, they tried to stay on duv too long and couldn't get the yield they needed for too long, that was the mistake.

curious_cat_163 4y ago

Would you share some insight on why Intel failed at making EUV work? Gelsinger said on a podcast (Decoder) recently that in fact they fought it. Obviously, they are kind of big enough to do both — make a half hearted attempt and fight it all the same due to some internal politics. However, for something this existential, one would think that the smart people and the leadership would try to put some focus on the field. Was it that bad? Really, looking for some insight on what really went down.

chasil 4y ago
Intel has mastered 10nm production. The race to the bottom of physics is not a long ride.
dreamcompiler 4y ago
Intel (like every other chipmaker) has been chasing EUV for decades, but every time they thought they finally nailed it they turned out to be wrong. The key that ultimately made it possible was the light source, and ASML is the only company that sells these light sources. ASML didn't invent the light source entirely on its own; there were a lot of ideas for light sources floating around and the only one that turned out to work was laser-induced plasma from tin microdroplets, which sounds completely crazy but it works [0]. ASML perfected that process (with -- to be fair -- some investment from Intel). [0] https://www.asml.com/en/technology/lithography-principles/light-and-lasers https://www.asml.com/en/technology/lithography-principles/li... Intel did fight EUV with a technology called SAQP which ultimately turned out not to work as well as EUV, but they were researching EUV at the same time. Here are some more historical articles about Intel's work on EUV in the past. Note the dates. https://newsroom.intel.com/news-releases/intel-achieves-major-milestones-in-euv-lithography-program/#gs.h80lu7 https://newsroom.intel.com/news-releases/intel-achieves-majo... https://semiengineering.com/why-euv-is-so-difficult/ https://semiengineering.com/why-euv-is-so-difficult/ https://www.eetimes.com/intel-developing-euv-pellicle/ https://www.eetimes.com/intel-developing-euv-pellicle/ https://www.extremetech.com/computing/276376-intel-reportedly-wont-deploy-euv-lithography-until-2021 https://www.extremetech.com/computing/276376-intel-reportedl...
- curious_cat_163 4y ago
  Thank you.
- dmix 4y ago
  Do you have any insight on what organizational failures led to them failing to find the right EUV solution? Was it just a matter of luck that ASML nailed the right one or was it the nature of exploring some riskier alternative (as you said "which sounds completely crazy but it works")?
  - dreamcompiler 4y ago
    I know nothing about Intel's internal organization. There were several different light source ideas tried. Some at US national laboratories. Tin plasma was known to work but it left so much debris that it gummed up the optics so it was forgotten for a while. The key turned out to be tin microdroplets. https://www.optica-opn.org/home/articles/volume_29/march_2018/features/euv_light_sources_for_next-gen_lithography/ https://www.optica-opn.org/home/articles/volume_29/march_201...
  - Pietertje 4y ago
    ASML and Intel are two completely different companies. ASML makes lithography machines which is one of the many steps in producing a chip. ASML machines are used by all chip manufacturers. The challenge for chip manufacturers like Intel, but also tsmc, Samsung among others, is to optimize the entire production process. And that has been / is not easy with a lithography step (EUV) which is so drastically different then what the industry has been using before. One of the challenging choices for chip manufacturers was to drastically change the process and implement EUV or to go self-aligned quadratic patterning. The latter, if you take a simplistic view, can be seen as an evolution on existing processes. We know see that those companies who went aggressively into EUV are having an edge on their competitors.
  - RC_ITR 4y ago
    When they say “microdroplets” (I may be out of date here) they mean firing lasers at falling drops of molten tin and then capturing the energy that the tin gives off. Like anything, some of their PHDs were like “no that’s probably not going to work because xyz” and they trusted said PHDs. It’s just science. It’s hard to predict.
sanxiyn 4y ago
I am much more hopeful about Intel's chance at EUV than GP. In order to avoid repeating myself, here's my analysis of what went wrong: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32335873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32335873
- Sakos 4y ago
  Why is it that it's taking them so long to pivoting from that failure? 10nm didn't work out, that's fine. But it feels like that didn't work out and they've spent the years after that in a hole and still haven't dug themselves out.
  - dreamcompiler 4y ago
    From the rumors I've heard (might be true; might not) Intel lost a great deal of semiconductor engineering talent because they were making so much money on minor evolutions of x86 that they saw little need to truly innovate. The MBAs took over. Once it became clear that AMD and ARM (and by extension TSMC) were eating their lunch, they had great difficulty pivoting because they lacked the talent and the organizational will to do so -- at least until Gelsinger took charge. I have a lot of respect for Gelsinger and I think he just might turn it around.
    - yourapostasy 4y ago
      > ...they were making so much money on minor evolutions of x86 that they saw little need to truly innovate. The MBAs took over. Yet another example in a long history that modeling your talent pipeline as a JIT supply chain does not work in high cognitive input settings. This is a general unsolved management challenge: capturing sufficiently granular and comprehensive institutional knowledge to be able to efficiently restart organizations that rely upon it years down the line. I don't think we will ever solve it until we learn how to share human mind states. The complexity of these high cognitive input activities at large scale has surpassed the ability of our capabilities to transfer comprehension between minds using conventional information transfer techniques (primarily written word and audio video). Even were I to guarantee the capture of all information at sufficient granularity, the only way to QA that is to de novo staff up a brand-new parallel organization, and have them reproduce the original organization's accomplishments. No one is ever funded for that. This is a really interesting problem space for me because I suspect it is a dimension of technical debt very rarely explored because our species has not had to really grapple with it before as our technological progression has been slow enough we could "good enough" brute force our way through it whenever it came up in less severe forms.
simplotek 4y ago
> Would you share some insight on why Intel failed at making EUV work? Gelsinger said on a podcast (Decoder) recently that in fact they fought it. A cursory Google search results in multiple search hits from recent news pieces announcing Intel buying their EUV kits from ASML. If Intel is handing out small fortunes to ASML to deliver a machine that in the past Intel was expected to develop in-house, that does not sound like a success story. Here's a Reddit thread on the topic: https://www.reddit.com/r/AMD_Stock/comments/miar30/why_is_intel_so_late_to_the_euv_litho_party_my/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AMD_Stock/comments/miar30/why_is_in...

sawyna 4y ago

Can you explain what EUV is? I'd prefer an ELI5!

jl6 4y ago
Chips are made by etching lines into a special kind of glass. The etching is done with light. The smaller the light, the smaller the lines. Red light is big, violet light is small. Extreme ultra-violet light is really small, so they can etch really small lines. When the lines are small, the electricity moves through them more quickly, so the chip’s work gets done faster.
- scns 4y ago
  When the lines are smaller, you can place more transistors/functionality in the same area, which leads to higher performance. The power required decreases too.
  - saberience 4y ago
    Can you explain how the transistors are placed on the glass? Are they also "etched" by the EUV light?
    - rusticpenn 4y ago
      They are etched and filled with different elements. So a traditional mosfet Transistor needs n, p and gate layers.
    - elsjaako 4y ago
      They are put on there by putting chemicals on specificatic places. Because it's such a complex pattern, it's easiest to use a template and spray the chemicals on, the same way some artists apply spraypaint. The template is first printed on the glass. This is done by putting a light sensitive layer (photoresist) on the glass, and exposing some of it to light. When the light gets put on there the properties of the photoresist change so you can wash off the parts you don't want. Jl6 called this process "etching" (there may be additional steps that can also be described as etching, I don't know. Semiconductors are made with a lot of processes. This is the most well known process). Then you spray on the chemicals you want, and then you wash away the remaining photoresist so you can put the next layer on. This happens a lot of times for a modern chip.

blitzar 4y ago

No I plan to rival your dating of the supermodels so you have to date regular models /s

ksec 4y ago

>Intel tried to make EUV work before and failed Where does it said that? They haven't even launched their first node with EUV yet. So arguably they haven't failed. I am not entirely sure if Intel needs to overtake TSMC, they just need to be a good enough alternative. But I agree even that is a tall order.

7speter 4y ago
Is it really though? Intels roadmap seems to place them manufacturing on 3nm by 2024 and TSMC is having issues with their 3nm atm, iirc. It seems like competitive advantages in this industry stems from one of the major players getting caught up on a given new node/process.
- ksec 4y ago
  It depends, it is not yet clear what Intel meant by 3nm in 2024. Shipping hundreds of wafers? Or Real Product launches by their customers? It is the same with Samsung which arguably ship their 7nm ahead of TSMC. But with low volume, yield and poor performance characteristic it doesn't really matter. ( And I haven't even mentioned cost yet )

davedx 4y ago

Some other things I noticed when I read their earnings call transcript from the other day: "We'll start with a focus on driving $3 billion of cost reduction in 2023, 1/3 in cost of sales and 2/3 in operating expenses." "best-in-class semiconductor companies have a financial profile that includes gross margins in the 60s" (Intel's is in the mid 40's and fell last quarter) So they're not only trying to change a gigantic part of their business model, but ALSO drive $3B of cost reduction and try and push gross margins back up to... where they were 5 years or so ago? They're making it impossible for themselves IMO. Pivot or profit improvements, choose one. Doing both at the same time is surely going to lead to a huge mess.

brookst 4y ago
The thing to understand about Intel is that the finance org has hugely outsized power compared to other companies. This is a company that believes that any problem can be solved with capital allocation, and no project is worth doing unless there’s a financial analysis “proving” it will add at least $1B/year to the bottom line. Intel’s culture is that of a cash cow, not an innovator. So year, profit improvements come naturally, pivoting not so much.

throwaway9870 4y ago

I worked with IBM in the early 2000s porting some IP to their processes and what was so difficult was that everything was proprietary to IBM. From the nomenclature, to the tools, to the models, etc. That was great when they were on top, but the world passed them by and there was no hope of converting them over. I never worked with Intel the same way, but some close friends did and it sounds exactly the same. They are proprietary and very inefficient. A block that would normally be laid out in two days, Intel would spend two weeks on. Their process design rules were super restrictive and their tooling just isn't efficient compared to the what the rest of the industry now uses. Unique, strict and obnoxious design rules might be OK when you are designing a high-volume processor like Intel, but that is not the kind of process you want for a foundry. I fear it is not in Intel's DNA to make this switch.

starkd 4y ago

I don't think they really have a choice but to do this. China is moving hard for Taiwan, and they are serious.

pipodeclown 4y ago

They're already using euv. They didn't try to use euv and failed, they tried to stay on duv too long and couldn't get the yield they needed for too long, that was the mistake.