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Not clear what IBM doing 7nm means, really. They no longer own a foundry, and don't have any chips in normal products that compete with Intel. IBM also demons

by qdog 11y ago

Not clear what IBM doing 7nm means, really. They no longer own a foundry, and don't have any chips in normal products that compete with Intel. IBM also demonstrated some really high clock speeds previously, but the Power8 is still a 4GHz part and is built on 22nm. Now, if Global Foundry actually starts making full 14nm chips this year (which it doesn't sound like it, seems to be a 20nm back end), that might things pretty interesting. I previously worked for a company that used both TSMC and UMC, the jump to the next process level is always extremely hard, and the biggest deal is yield. Until the yields are high enough to actually get to a profit a lot of companies with specialized chips will stick to the older process (set-top box chips for instance) where it's good enough. FD: I'm at Intel (not hardware), cannot comment on Intel itself.

bitmapbrother 11y ago
Why does IBM need to own a foundry to design chips? Making chips is a commodity business. The skill is in the design and patenting.
- sangnoir 11y ago
  > Making chips is a commodity business. The skill is in the design and patenting There's no point in designing (& patenting) a fancy chip that can't be manufactured in yields high enough to get a profit, is there? An approximate analogy would be wireframing a web application prototype (design) vs. egnineering the site so that it scales to millions of users (making chips). More on-topic, IBM probably announced a 7 chip that can't be manafactured with acceptable yields yet. Hypothetically, Intel could design a 5nm chip with < 0.1% yields: but what would be point?
  - bitmapbrother 11y ago
    Of course there is. Even if the chip is never released to the public, the IP and processes used to produce a 7nm chip have great patent value.
- qdog 11y ago
  Without owning the foundry, it's not clear if this is an IBM tech demo that goes nowhere, or if it effects GF's roadmap. GF uses a Samsung process for 14nm (really 14/20 hybrid), so it really looks like IBM is out of the foundry business as far as taking a process all the way to manufacturing. GF might leapfrog down to 7nm, but if they aren't even fully 14nm at this point, does that really seem plausible?

by qdog 11y ago

bitmapbrother 11y ago

Why does IBM need to own a foundry to design chips? Making chips is a commodity business. The skill is in the design and patenting.

sangnoir 11y ago
> Making chips is a commodity business. The skill is in the design and patenting There's no point in designing (& patenting) a fancy chip that can't be manufactured in yields high enough to get a profit, is there? An approximate analogy would be wireframing a web application prototype (design) vs. egnineering the site so that it scales to millions of users (making chips). More on-topic, IBM probably announced a 7 chip that can't be manafactured with acceptable yields yet. Hypothetically, Intel could design a 5nm chip with < 0.1% yields: but what would be point?
- bitmapbrother 11y ago
  Of course there is. Even if the chip is never released to the public, the IP and processes used to produce a 7nm chip have great patent value.
qdog 11y ago
Without owning the foundry, it's not clear if this is an IBM tech demo that goes nowhere, or if it effects GF's roadmap. GF uses a Samsung process for 14nm (really 14/20 hybrid), so it really looks like IBM is out of the foundry business as far as taking a process all the way to manufacturing. GF might leapfrog down to 7nm, but if they aren't even fully 14nm at this point, does that really seem plausible?