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Comment by logicallee | Hacker News Reader

Does Cray manufacture their own silicon? I did glance through https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray including reading the lead, and did the same Google search... while I'm sure I could dig deeper, maybe it's fun to let people here say what they know :)

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They’re fabless.

so what's the story? how do they compete?

They have the expertise, not the fabs. They know how to build and interconnect CPU's and memory to a huge scale that others are struggling with.

so they design their own CPU's, just for supercomputers?

No, they don't design CPUs. They design ASICs that run inside their network. This is the secret sauce that keeps them competitive in HPC environments where latency/bandwidth matter a lot more.

They used to do the whole shebang, back in the day. But it's been a long, long time since that was the case.

Unless you’re TSMC, Samsung, Global Foundries, or Chartered, you’re fabless. Apple, Nvidia, Qualcomm, AMD, and many others are doing ok as fabless companies.

wow, I had no idea AMD was fabless. I'd think it's one of the main things they do. thanks for the info.

Global foundries was amd spinning out its fab business iirc.

It used to be one of the main things they did, but they spun it out into a separate company about 10 years ago.

They were failing to keep up with Intel in fabrication process because of the massive capital and R&D expenditure required. They decided they would be better off having a choice of fab partners instead.

and intel, right?

wait... where does intel manufacture?

intel isn't fabless. They have a fab in the Phoenix area

With the super-computers sold at Best Buy? Good question....

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