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Comment by nsteel | Hacker News Reader

Agree entirely with your take. The packaging story is awesome, I wish there were more details on the stacking used on this one.

But I am at a loss to how Intel are really going to get any traction with IFS. How can anyone trust Intel as a long-term foundry partner. Even if they priced it more aggressively, the opportunity cost in picking a supplier who decides to quit next year would be catastrophic for many. The only way this works is if they practically give their services away to someone big, who can afford to take that risk and can also make it worth Intel's continued investment. Any ideas who that would be, I've got nothing.

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I suspect that timing might help Intel here, with so much of the better established foundries near fully allocated for the next two years, it may be more a question of availability than brand name risk. And for whatever problems Intel has, it's pretty unlikely they'd go completely under and disolve in less than a year. Good non completion clauses in the contracts can mitigate a good chunk of the remaining risk.

Not to mention potential customers who would prefer a US based foundry regardless. My guess is that there's a pretty large part of the market that would be perfectly fine with using Intel.

> How can anyone trust Intel as a long-term foundry partner

With the standard form of business trust: a contract.

Worthless. Just looks how IFS worked out the previous two times they gave it a go. If you're not in the industry you may not even be aware it was a thing. And then not. Twice.

And how many times did Intel get sued for breach of contract over changing their mind? If they have a contract, they'll honor it or compensate.

And that's why it's got to be a big company that takes this on, you need deep pockets to successfully sue a company like Intel. It's not realistic for most. Plus the huge opportunity cost of missing your market and wasting years having to start over. Again, a bigger company can survive that with multiple projects in parallel.

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