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Comment by lukevp | Hacker News Reader

Intel is more than just fabs. AMD spun off digital foundry forever ago and just uses TSMC, no reason Intel couldn’t do the same. At this point their fabs are a liability. They have a new leader who’s from a semiconductor manufacturing background so I have some faith they’ll give up on the pursuit of next gen fabs and focus instead on their IP. There’s a huge opportunity in their GPU segment. They’ve gone from a joke to competitive in a couple years, and they offer more VRAM for the dollar. They could tailor towards AI and really get some traction there.

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> At this point their fabs are a liability.

Intel outsourcing their core product line is also a massive liability. It's just a different kind of liability.

I personally think the world's reliance on TSMC indicates that fabs are critically important infrastructure. And operating a world class one provides a company with a ton of leverage with governments and other businesses.

I think it also shows that fabs who only have one customer (ie, Intel) aren't as competitive because they can't provide as much scale and are more sensitive to that customer's success.

Intel's fab would be doing much better if it spun it out a while ago and was making Intel, Nvidia, and Apple chips right now.

If Intel's fabs has been spun out and operating at arms length from Intel's chip design side, then Intel's fabs would be dead. The guaranteed volume from manufacturing Intel's CPUs is all that's been keeping their fab side going. If they had to depend on customers who were actually sane and free to take their business elsewhere, Intel's fabs would have long since chased off all their customers with unfulfilled promises that next time they'll have a working process.

What Intel process from the last decade would have been enticing to Nvidia or Apple?

> no reason Intel couldn’t do the same.

Intel is doing the same. IDK if they are working on new fabs at this point, but the last few generations of chips from intel have used TSMC.

My expectation is that Intel might still run fabs, but they'll be mostly contracting them out to people who want cheap ASICs and 10 year old fab tech.

> IDK if they are working on new fabs at this point

Yes, they are.

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/in...

Definitely struggling, but still in the game.

How does this scale? TSMC can't literally be the only fab in the world...

They're the only fab company in the world with the technology to allow Intel, AMD, and Nvidia to compete with each other on the playing field they do.

Right but at some point does Nvidia use their muscle and block TSMC from making chips for anyone else? The demand for GPUs is just increasing too rapidly for this to make sense.

That will 100% never happen. Nvidia is big, but not even close to a majority of TSMC revenue or loading. Apple, Intel, Qualcomm, etc...

In this case...TSMC is holding all the cards, not Nvidia

Apple was TSMCs biggest customer (25%) and nVidia is 2nd (12-15%). The bigger thing being that between the two, they lock up most of the bleeding edge process capacity and leave everyone else fighting over older processes.

But leading edge these days is like 15 to 20 percent performance or density. It's not a huge lead any more.

You are forgetting AMD...they are up there as well (double digits %). Thats how the compete so effectively with Intel.

They aren't.

Samsung comes in a close second in terms of tech. GloFo is also still floating around though lagging pretty bad AFAIK. Micron has it's own fabs that they are actively developing (in fact, they are building new facilities right now).

What TSMC is is cutting edge. That's why everyone that needs top performance uses them.

Only one in their class then.

They are now but they weren't always. I don't know much about hardware these days, I gleefully walked away from embedded development over a decade ago, but what I believe is that you don't really want to forecast to hard on any single player too far into the future.

Neither Micron nor GloFo are trying to keep up with state of the art, though. AFAICT that's limited to TSMC, Samsung, Intel and SMIC.

GloFo simply decided to stay at 14nm because beyond that, manufacturing costs actually increase, not decrease, and everybody wants the best, not second best.

Samsung is still in the game at the STOA level, but a distant second. But maybe it’s the nature of the industry that one winner takes all for a number of years at the top end. After all, Intel was the only game in town for decades.

>> Intel might still run fabs, but they'll be mostly contracting them out to people who want cheap ASICs and 10 year old fab tech.

Intel fabs have never had to be as cost effective as others. They were selling top end chips for top dollar for decades. I bet there are 10 other companies that can make 45nm chips cheaper than Intel can on their old equipment. I could be wrong.

Owning fabs is the only thing that makes Intel special IMO. There are dozens if not hundreds of fabless semiconductor companies.

If everyone chases higher margin and ditches their fabs what kind of industry are we left with? One giant fab company like TSMC? That sounds healthy!

>There are dozens if not hundreds of fabless semiconductor companies.

How many of them develop high performance x64-64 cores?

Right now, it makes no sense to do so because they couldn't compete with Intel.

But if Intel joins the fabless club, all of the sudden the playing field gets much more level.

> Right now, it makes no sense to do so because they couldn't compete with Intel.

AMD would disagree?

>Owning fabs is the only thing that makes Intel special IMO.

Maybe if you ignore they're the only player with remotely competitive discrete GPU IP for graphics and AI, after the Nvidia and AMD duopoly.

> ... I have some faith they’ll give up on the pursuit of next gen fabs and focus instead on their IP.

The problem with Intel is that they are so short sighted and they change direction and focus very quickly. Intel will adopt these seemingly great ideas that require 10-20 year strategies, invest heavily in them, and then abandon them 5 years later. They always measure initiatives against their core CPU line and if they don't show similar profitability in the short term then they defund and eventually cut the programs entirely.

> They have a new leader who’s from a semiconductor manufacturing background

That's the precious leader. The new CEO is not from a semiconductor manufacturing background. His main claim to success is leading a company that built EDA tools.

> At this point their fabs are a liability.

So we're just going to hand control of the US supply of semiconductors completely over to TSMC, Samsung, and the Chinese fabs in the works? That seems incredibly short sighted and reckless.

They are bringing a lot of that “liability” online in the next few years. You’re ignoring strategic context - as long ad intel maintains domestic fabs it will not be allowed to fail

>digital foundry

global* foundry

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