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Comment by dlevine | Hacker News Reader

Intel has whiffed their 10nm process node to the point where it may never launch in any scale. Their 7nm node is significantly behind schedule. Their only solution in the near-term is to keep increasing the TDP of their chips, which won't work for long.

This might be their only good option. Sure outsourcing manufacturing is a risk, but it's probably one they need to take. They will catch back up if they can get their 7nm node back on track, which isn't a given.

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The federal government has identified semiconductor manufacturing as a critical piece of national infrastructure. If it comes to it, Intel can get subsidized like Boeing.

Is money actually the issue here?

I presume it was incorrect technical decisions rather than a lack of money.

More money can fix a lot of mistakes, like making it financially viable to start from "scratch" (whatever that means in context), or fund multiple redundant teams trying more ideas in parallel.

Gotta fucking love it. Our American industries are becoming so incompetent and corrupt that we just start giving them free cash in hopes that they fix themselves. Instead it just becomes permanent socialism for corporations and by socialism, I mean free hand outs to the non-engineers MBA fuckheads that run these companies to drain them for cash.

>socialism for corporations and by socialism

That's not how Socialism works, but you can call it elitist and extreme capitalism if you like...or United Cyberpunk of America.

Can someone explain why intel's fabs are in so much trouble? I tought everybody is using ASML, so what are the important differences?

The ASML lithography machine is just one, very important, machine out of many dozens. A semiconductor fab process involves 100s-1000s of process steps each with dozens to hundreds of parameters. For example, something as simple as rinsing a wafer after an etch step:

- How long to rinse

- What to rinse with (DI water, solvent, etc)

- What temperature to rinse at

- Should the temperature change over time?

- Agitated vs. non-agitated

It may sound small, but a bad rinse process will tank yields and make the whole process fail.

In a huge semiconductor company like Intel or TSMC, multiple process engineers specialize on each one of these steps out of hundreds. These are truly massive undertakings.

I just think it stinks of desperation and suspect once they go down this path it's going to be very difficult to reverse course.

Intel is intel because of x86, not because of their fab. 10nm is what, 4 years behind, does anyone feel confident 7nm will be ready in the next 5 years? Having a superior architecture (which they don't anymore) can only compensate for so much regarding node size. Intel isn't going to pull that one around. Having your fab in-house only makes sense if you're state of the art. At some point, not admitting defeat and just keep increasing TDP is false pride.

Intel is what it is because of fab. For many years, they were way ahead. 5 years ago AMD also had x86 but was very much behind and almost went bankrupt.

Stink or otherwise, they are actually very desperate!

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