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Suddenly another company that has (old?) fabs and a cpu design team in-house This could be interesting to see how much they try to loss-lead to get market shar
by somanyphotons 1y ago
Suddenly another company that has (old?) fabs and a cpu design team in-house
This could be interesting to see how much they try to loss-lead to get market share in the low-end
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- kragen 1y agoGF's fabs aren't that old. They were neck-and-neck with TSMC until 02018, when they could do 12nm: https://web.archive.org/web/20190107061855/https://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/3061809/globalfoundries-drops-7nm-as-amd-goes-to-tsmc-instead https://web.archive.org/web/20190107061855/https://www.v3.co...
- kasabali 1y agoImagine canning your 7nm process last minute only few years before the chip shortage. Must be the most moronic decision ever. and it's not like 20/20 hindsight either, because every hardware enthusiast knew at the time Intel was having troubles and was worried TSMC (and Samsung at the time) were going to be the only fabs producing leading edge lithographies.
- bee_rider 1y agoI think it would require some work to call it a “moronic decision.” My suspicion is that even if they could see the future and predict that shortage, 7nm by 2020/2021 was not on the table for them. These nm values are really bullshit anyway, but the tech node that was supposed to be Intel’s 7nm, which ended up being called “Intel 4” (because they branded some 10nm tech as Intel 7), only came out in like 2023. Given they Global Foundries was always behind Intel, suddenly leapfrogging them by 2-3 years would be quite a feat.
- kasabali 1y agoOh no, it is a moronic decision and everyone thought so even then. It was a competitive process, they said volume production was due in late 2018 and they canned it at the very last minute citing it financially not feasible. You can read details at this news article (https://www.anandtech.com/show/13277/globalfoundries-stops-all-7nm-development https://www.anandtech.com/show/13277/globalfoundries-stops-a...) or thousands of forum discussions regarding the news. No need to even look that far, just skimp the discussions on the forum topic below the news article I linked and it was plain as a day to anyone what would happen. > These nm values are really bullshit anyway, but the tech node that was supposed to be Intel’s 7nm, which ended up being called “Intel 4” (because they branded some 10nm tech as Intel 7), only came out in like 2023. Given they Global Foundries was always behind Intel, suddenly leapfrogging them by 2-3 years would be quite a feat. This is a very weak argument. Intel was ahead of everyone, now everyone is ahead of Intel. Remember TSMC's blunder processes like 20nm? How they turned around after that? Or how GloFo has had always mediocre processes but they finally hit the nail in the head with their 14/12nm? Fab business has always had companies leapfrogging each other, it turns out the worst sin is not trying. GloFo's greedy investors chose to bury the business in the ground for their short term profits.
- StillBored 1y agoIts odd all these MBAs and few in the tech space appear to know that when a technology company stops investing in the future they are done. It might take 20+ years for that to happen but it will. Sure, stretch the timeline for the next node/product/etc but _NEVER_ stop pushing the enveloper because if you can't invest in it now, you won't be able to in a few years time when your resources are even more constrained as your customer base dwindles, or your technology becomes more commoditized or simply left behind as companies that did invest no longer have a need for their older products/lines.
- prewett 1y agoMight not be the investors, might be squarely management's fault. A lot of investors are pretty passive.
- MangoCoffee 1y ago>Imagine canning your 7nm process last minute only few years before the chip shortage. https://www.eetimes.com/samsung-globalfoundries-prep-14nm-process/ https://www.eetimes.com/samsung-globalfoundries-prep-14nm-pr... "Samsung expects to be in production late this year with a 14 nm FinFET process it has developed. GlobalFoundries has licensed the process and will have it in production early next year." GlobalFoundries licensed 14nm from Samsung. How do you know GlobalFoundries is capable of 7nm?
- kragen 1y agoThis was from 02014, btw.
- MangoCoffee 1y agothat's my point. how does OP know GlobalFoundries is capable of 7nm if they can't even do 14nm. do you have any insider info that you can share?
- kragen 1y agoI agree, and I wrote a longer comment agreeing with your point at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44503245 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44503245.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- kasabali 1y agoNo I don't have insider info. Neither do you. What an ridiculous nit to pick.
- jonas21 1y agoYou're the one claiming it's the "most moronic decision ever". The burden of proof is on you to support your claim that they could have executed a 7nm process profitably, as opposed to them looking at the data and coming to a rational conclusion that they couldn't.
- ryao 1y agoThat was a huge gift to AMD since it let them use TSMC as for fabrication instead, and they gained a process node advantage over Intel for the first time in history. My guess is that the guys in Abu Dhabi did not want to do the investments needed to bring 7nm into production. They lost a huge opportunity because of that. At the time, it probably looked like the right financial decision to them, even though practically everyone affected downstream thought it was myopic.
- pantalaimon 1y agoIntel struggled for years with their 7nm process to the point where they are now fabbing their latest ICs at TSCM. Pursuing 7nm would have likely bankrupted GloFo.
- morepedantic 1y agoIIRC, that's because Intel attempted it without EUV to save a handful of dollars.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- dragontamer 1y ago> Imagine canning your 7nm process last minute only few years before the chip shortage. What? The chip shortage was a shortage of cheap but inferior 28nm, 40nm, 65nm and 80nm chips that GlobalFoundries was (and still is) well positioned to profit from.
- kragen 1y agoThis is a good point, but they weren't necessarily very cheap or inferior; they were just fabricated in larger process nodes, which for analog chips (as many of them were) doesn't imply inferiority.
- silisili 1y agoIn terms of years, not that old. In terms of process, it's ancient.
- kragen 1y agoI suspect the vast majority of chips made today are made at the 12nm process node or coarser, because I know of some surprising examples. Smaller process nodes are critical to the highest-performance digital chips, but a lot of chips aren't those.
- MangoToupe 1y agoEh if humanity had to revert to 12nm nothing would noticeably get worse
- kragen 1y agoCellphones would, servers would, not much else.
- MangoToupe 1y agoI, personally, am not doing much with my phone i wasn't doing 10 years ago, which about lines up with a 16nm process. I think the camera is the only thing I'd really notice.
- aitchnyu 1y agoWhat Andy (Grove, Intel cofounder) gives, Bill (Gates) takes away.
- kragen 1y agoWell, and all the internet services you use via the phone going away. Not sure about 5G.
- MangoToupe 1y agoI don't really use much aside from apple music, which was buggy but was released almost exactly 10 years ago, and apple photos, which was already a thing. Google was already circling the drain, so I suppose that's a good point. 5G wasn't really that necessary, although I know it's critical as a broadband replacement for many people. I would miss TikTok, of course.
- cpldcpu 1y agoThey decided to pivot to innovation that does not require extreme CMOS scaling. For example, they focussed heavily on ultra-low-power SOI at 28nm. Keep in mind that your iphone only has very few chips in <10nm technology. The rest is using much larger groundrules, even the memory.
- StillBored 1y agoBut that stuff tends to be much lower margin, and while this year you might have the best power/price numbers, next year someone figures out their product is even lower power on some newer fab that is slowly lowering its price and now the competition forces the margin even lower. Repeat until you have some 40 year old fabs and no customers.
- phkahler 1y ago>> Suddenly another company that has (old?) fabs and a cpu design team in-house Glo-flo is leading edge for anyone without EUV.