5 ms·

You mean intel that uses TSMC to manufacture their chips, because they can not create top of the line chips themself?

by BonoboIO 2y ago

walterbell 2y ago
The older Intel chips used by the defense industrial base are Made in America.
tester756 2y ago
Those decisions are usually made years in advance
- wtallis 2y ago
  That doesn't actually change the fact that Intel is now significantly relying on TSMC for several important product lines, nor does it change the fact that even if TSMC were destroyed in a war, Intel would still be struggling with a shortage of competence.
  - tester756 2y ago
    >nor does it change the fact that even if TSMC were destroyed in a war, Intel would still be struggling with a shortage of competence. What makes you think so? They're about to deliver 18A in 6 months
    - BonoboIO 2y ago
      I believe it, when i see it
    - wtallis 2y ago
      Compare https://images.anandtech.com/doci/16823/AnandTechRoadmaps3.png https://images.anandtech.com/doci/16823/AnandTechRoadmaps3.p... against what actually happened: Intel 7 was reasonably successful, except for the desktop chips that were burning themselves out because Intel couldn't get their voltage regulation working right. Intel 4 resulted in slight performance regressions for laptops, but battery life improvements because they moved everything except the CPU cores over to TSMC. Intel 3 was late. Intel 20A was cancelled. Intel 18A isn't here, and neither is the CEO in charge of the above strategy.
      - tester756 2y ago
        >except for the desktop chips that were burning themselves out because Intel couldn't get their voltage regulation working right. that was firmware issue, not the node, yup?
        wtallis 2y ago
        It was a combination of issues. Intel needed to be able to supply quite high voltages (at the right moments) to reach high enough clock speeds to win benchmarks with their desktop CPUs, so they couldn't implement a simple conservative, safe cap on the maximum voltage that would be requested. Their attempts to build an on-die voltage regulator (DLVR) repeatedly failed, leaving Intel relying exclusively on a different voltage regulator mechanism than they'd originally planned for. And then they seemingly did a sloppy rush job of characterizing how the chip behaved with their fallback voltage regulator strategy, and messed up the code controlling that system. There were many steps at which Intel could have avoided this outcome, but it started from the fact that Intel had to push voltages and clocks beyond reasonable limits to make up for having a microarchitecture with poor enough performance per clock that Intel needed to hit 6+ GHz to be competitive.
gonzo 2y ago
That’s not quite the truth. Parts of Lunar Lake and most of Arrow Lake will be built at TSMC, but Intel still plans to use its own 18a process for Panther Lake

You mean intel that uses TSMC to manufacture their chips, because they can not create top of the line chips themself?

walterbell 2y ago

The older Intel chips used by the defense industrial base are Made in America.

tester756 2y ago

Those decisions are usually made years in advance

wtallis 2y ago
That doesn't actually change the fact that Intel is now significantly relying on TSMC for several important product lines, nor does it change the fact that even if TSMC were destroyed in a war, Intel would still be struggling with a shortage of competence.
- tester756 2y ago
  >nor does it change the fact that even if TSMC were destroyed in a war, Intel would still be struggling with a shortage of competence. What makes you think so? They're about to deliver 18A in 6 months
  - BonoboIO 2y ago
    I believe it, when i see it
  - wtallis 2y ago
    Compare https://images.anandtech.com/doci/16823/AnandTechRoadmaps3.png https://images.anandtech.com/doci/16823/AnandTechRoadmaps3.p... against what actually happened: Intel 7 was reasonably successful, except for the desktop chips that were burning themselves out because Intel couldn't get their voltage regulation working right. Intel 4 resulted in slight performance regressions for laptops, but battery life improvements because they moved everything except the CPU cores over to TSMC. Intel 3 was late. Intel 20A was cancelled. Intel 18A isn't here, and neither is the CEO in charge of the above strategy.
    - tester756 2y ago
      >except for the desktop chips that were burning themselves out because Intel couldn't get their voltage regulation working right. that was firmware issue, not the node, yup?
      - wtallis 2y ago
        It was a combination of issues. Intel needed to be able to supply quite high voltages (at the right moments) to reach high enough clock speeds to win benchmarks with their desktop CPUs, so they couldn't implement a simple conservative, safe cap on the maximum voltage that would be requested. Their attempts to build an on-die voltage regulator (DLVR) repeatedly failed, leaving Intel relying exclusively on a different voltage regulator mechanism than they'd originally planned for. And then they seemingly did a sloppy rush job of characterizing how the chip behaved with their fallback voltage regulator strategy, and messed up the code controlling that system. There were many steps at which Intel could have avoided this outcome, but it started from the fact that Intel had to push voltages and clocks beyond reasonable limits to make up for having a microarchitecture with poor enough performance per clock that Intel needed to hit 6+ GHz to be competitive.

gonzo 2y ago

That’s not quite the truth. Parts of Lunar Lake and most of Arrow Lake will be built at TSMC, but Intel still plans to use its own 18a process for Panther Lake