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SherbertExisting3509@reddit

Intel being a leading edge foundry would make them the most strategically important company in America. If the US government wanted to build AI research facilities intel would be the ones who would likely get the contract because their headquaters, leading edge foundries and all of their leading edge research are based in the US, safe from the chinese and north koreans (The same can't be said for TSMC or Samsung because if their headquaters are bombed by the enemy then the fabs in the US would be operating like headless chicken with all leading edge research into future nodes being lost)

Divesting from fabs would be a huge mistake as they would forever be competing with AMD, Apple, Nvidia on TSMC wafer allocation (Which TSMC is sure to raise the price of if intel divests from fabs because of lack of competition from samsung)

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Tystros@reddit

isn't quite a bit of Intel leading edge research in Israel?

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Old_Wallaby_7461@reddit

A lot of the actual processor design is in Israel, but the manufacturing development is all in Oregon

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doxies1996@reddit

Not all of it is done in Oregon. Manufacturing development is also done in Chandler, AZ. Oregon and the Chandler facility work together on manufacturing development.

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sprintingTurtle0@reddit

The big core guys haven't done anything useful in years. Not limited to Israel just Intel in general.

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Lakku-82@reddit

Well your wish will be granted with Nova lake, which has a from the ground up design supposedly. Obviously some stuff will be reused but intel and analysts say it will be the biggest change since sandy bridge or the intro of the core line. Hopefully that’s the case

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BookinCookie@reddit

Nope, Coyote Cove (PNC) is just an evolution of Lion Cove. Nothing too significant.

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Exist50@reddit

Intel's only remaining big core team is the Israeli one. And they basically haven't done shit since the Sandy Bridge era.

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Electric_Bison@reddit

Is that how we ended up with all the + to cpu design?

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PunjabKLs@reddit

All the + is from the extra power they are driving through these chips.

Tell me the real difference between the 5820K and like the 12700k. They boosted the clocks and increased the power consumption. I'm sure there's something I'm missing but you can only push those buttons so many times

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ResponsibleJudge3172@reddit

That's hilarious because everything about 13700K is different. This is pure misinformation

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littleemp@reddit

of all the things you could have said to illustrate whatever point you're trying to make, you chose the wrong one.

Alder Lake is literally THE core redesign after all the stagnation.

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PainterRude1394@reddit

Lol, this is hilarious I stumbled upon this because the same person just replied this to me

https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/s/WbOhOxS7bC

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littleemp@reddit

Im always surprised at how confident the neophytes are of their own ignorance.

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Pimpmuckl@reddit

You're mistaking CPU design with the node.

We had Intel refining their 14nm a million times, with the disaster that was 10nm always being "just one more year out" every year. Which gave us 14nm+++++^+^+^+^+^+

The CPU design at that time wasn't node-agnostic so they were stuck with Skylake cores because that was the only core they had a 14nm design for.

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BigManWithABigBeard@reddit

The funny thing about 14nm is that we still left a lot of stuff on the table in terms of yield optimization. If we had known that 10nm was going to be as late as it was, I think we'd have made some much more aggressive process changes, but because it was always just one year away as you say so it was difficult to justify major changes that would have required new toolsets and such. Ho hum.

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Electric_Bison@reddit

Yes I was mixing them up, but I looked it up again and I was along the right track:

"Skylake's development, as with previous processors such as Banias, Dothan, Conroe, Sandy Bridge, and Ivy Bridge, was primarily undertaken by Intel Israel at its engineering research center in Haifa, Israel.^([19]) The final design was largely an evolution of Haswell, with minor improvements to performance and several power-saving features being added."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylake_(microarchitecture)

And the Israel team was part of its design lol. The joke originally was that 14nm wasnt really new, hence why the +'s became so many.

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LeotardoDeCrapio@reddit

ShitRedditSays

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dahauns@reddit

more like "shitrhardwaresays" but yeah, it's getting ridiculous. Think about Intel what you will, but brushing mArchs like Sunny Cove especially Golden Cove away as "not anything useful"...

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sprintingTurtle0@reddit

I was at Intel during a good portion of that on the Atom team. I had pretty high hopes for Atom.

Correct me if I'm wrong but the only changes from Skylake to Golden Cove that aren't adding more cache/making a deeper/wider pipeline are TAGE, and AVX-512. They did a great job with Golden Cove and actually changed quite a bitbut it wasn't particularly impressive for ~10 years. 10-20% iterative step.

If Royal hadn't been cancelled that would have been something to talk about.

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dahauns@reddit

sigh

I'm not really in the mood for true scotsman games, but there's a fundamental difference between "significant changes, with limited success", and "not anything useful".

I'll be that last one that would call the *Cove uplifts revolutionary - I mean, even without going further down, they still are just too huge for how they perform - but they were fairly non-trivial redesigns that if anything, at least kept Intel in the game, weren't they?

As for the fabled Royal core...dunno, really. You possibly know more about it than me, but everything about its rumours just sounded bonkers - especially the one that even Golden/Raptor Cove would have seemed tiny compared to it - and if they were just remotely true, I'm not sure that even with its focus on (finally!) high IPC/lower frequency scrapping it was the worst idea. Oh...and wasn't it designed in Portland anyway? Dunno what Haifa has to do with it in that case...

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cyperalien@reddit

10 years? Golden cove was 6 years after skylake and had 40% ipc over it not 10-20.

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Helpdesk_Guy@reddit

I was at Intel during a good portion of that on the Atom team. I had pretty high hopes for Atom.

My deepest condolences!

How did you felt and came to know about Intel's ever-repeating Atom-bugs of the dying Low Pin; Count (just after 18 months) and the failing Real Time Clock (RTC) like on the 2013-issued C2000 (Rangeley, Avoton), later in their Apollo Lake-CPUs Celeron N3350, J3355, J3455 and Pentium N4200 again later on, when the dying LPC-bus was recovered in 2017 and 2019 to be a persistently reoccurring issue since 2013/2014?

That very bug of the failing LPC-bus, the SD-card and RTC Circuitry aka Errata APL47 was known since 2013 and was never really fixed. How do you came to know about it and how it makes you feel how Intel handled it?

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BookinCookie@reddit

I’m pretty sure TAGE was present on big core since Haswell, (so even that’s a JF4 innovation lol). The only other thing I can think of is improved move elimination, which is significantly better on Golden Cove vs Skylake. But other than that, yeah not very impressive.

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batmanallthetime@reddit

They could not push the heat & energy limits on P due to inefficient Intel nodes (upto Intel 7). With Lunar Lake on TSMC 3 node, plus reductions of unnecessary circuitry more importantly HT, Intel P core finally appears more powerful, efficient & higher single core benchmarks compared to Qualcomm & AMD. Intel however did not compare it to Apple which tells us Apple still is the leader in single core.

Leveling the playground (efficient TSMC node) helped.

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mycall@reddit

A war in Israel is not good for processor design?

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kingwhocares@reddit

Intel Israel is mostly focused on military tech for the IDF.

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jaaval@reddit

Israel team has been the primary CPU design team since forever. That’s where the P-cores come from.

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kingwhocares@reddit

I was talking about their fabs.

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IJerkIt2ShovelDog@reddit

Why is this downvoted? It's literally true that a huge portion of American willingness to support the genocide in Gaza is because of MIC companies line Intel are heavily invested with the knesset

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ConsciousWallaby3@reddit

Because it's complete and utter bullshit? You can go look at engineering job offers for Intel in Israel (which I have applied to), and it's all CPU design and verificat stuff. They don't do any more "military tech" than e.g Nvidia.

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LeotardoDeCrapio@reddit

Intel has research and development centers all over the world.

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WorldlinessNo5192@reddit

Divesting from fabs would be a huge mistake as they would forever be competing with AMD, Apple, Nvidia on TSMC wafer allocation (Which TSMC is sure to raise the price of if intel divests from fabs because of lack of competition from samsung)

So we go from two competing foundries to three, and you think prices will go up lol? Delulu.

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Far_Piano4176@reddit

So we go from two competing foundries to three, and you think prices will go up lol? Delulu.

If intel divests from fabs, who will buy it? What are the odds that the buyer will continue to invest 11 figures per year in R&D to keep pace with TSMC and samsung, or will they just pull a GloFo, stop all R&D, and ride the trailing edge fab game until its logical conclusion (disappearance in a couple decades) while extracting as much profit as possible? The US government does not have the political will to subsidize local manufacturing of this complexity and scale so any buyer cannot count on the gov to help finance leading node development.

I know which outcome i expect.

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WorldlinessNo5192@reddit

If intel divests from fabs, who will buy it?

The same people who own Intel now: Wall Street.

What are the odds that the buyer will continue to invest 11 figures per year in R&D to keep pace with TSMC and samsung, or will they just pull a GloFo, stop all R&D, and ride the trailing edge fab game until its logical conclusion (disappearance in a couple decades) while extracting as much profit as possible?

Well, to start with, Intel will. Intel already spends $20B/yr on process development, and while that money is rapidly drying up because of their design incompetence, it's still more than anyone is paying (including Apple and nVidia). The problem is that this is too much money for Intel to spend at a <$50B run rate, which is where they are heading.

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Far_Piano4176@reddit

The same people who own Intel now: Wall Street.

ah yes, noted long term planners and years-long unprofitability+low growth enjoyers, wall street

Intel already spends $20B/yr on process development, and while that money is rapidly drying up because of their design incompetence, it's still more than anyone is paying (including Apple and nVidia). The problem is that this is too much money for Intel to spend at a <$50B run rate, which is where they are heading.

????

So let me get this straight. After divesting their fabs, intel will invest more money in the newly independent company because __. This will somehow magically bridge the $50B+ run rate gap that IFS now needs to make up, despite not covering that now, and with intel being totally free to use any fab they like?

$20B may be more than apple and nvidia, but some or all of that will go to TSMC post divestiture. TSMC already gets the business of all of apple, nvidia, AMD, qualcomm, etc. This is all money that will not go to IFS.

IFS needs some way to subsidize process improvement, and becoming independent is not an improvement in that area.

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WorldlinessNo5192@reddit

ah yes, noted long term planners and years-long unprofitability+low growth enjoyers, wall street

lol, what do you think is worth more - a newly independent Intel foundry that is selling advanced LEN wafers to the top tier customers, or IDM Intel that has only one foundry customer, and that customer's revenue has shrunk at a rate of ~15% per quarter for the last two years.

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Far_Piano4176@reddit

lol, what do you think is worth more - a newly independent Intel foundry that is selling advanced LEN wafers to the top tier customers, or IDM Intel that has only one foundry customer, and that customer's revenue has shrunk at a rate of ~15% per quarter for the last two years.

that's the whole point of making the foundry independent, so that they can both do that, and make a profit on their design business. You know, the actual profitable part of the business. So to answer your question, I think that the combined business is worth more because it includes intel's profitable design business.

...because they are a semiconductor company? This is like asking why Heinz buys tomatoes, lol.

i think there's some confusion here. I'm using "intel" to refer to the design business, and IFS to refer to the foundry. Where will the foundry get money to invest in R&D? They have no customers, and TSMC is ahead, and their cost per wafer is not lower than TSMC's.

The gap isn't $50B, it's probably less than $15B (because TSMC is spending on that order - ~$30B) and Intel is already spending ~$15-20B per year.

So in this scenario, intel the design business is now free to pick the best fab, which is not the divested foundry IFS. some of this money now goes to TSMC, increasing their revenue and reducing ability to do R&D. this is a net loss for the foundry.

Read up on how the AMD-GF spinoff worked, because the things you are saying are impossible are exactly how it was done, lol.

Can you go check whether GF continued to invest in cutting edge processes, and get back to me?

You realize that what you are saying is impossible is exactly Pat Gelsinger's plan to save Intel, right?

I'm saying the current strategy, where intel subsidizes process improvements with design profits, which is pat's plan, is better than divesting and having no customers and no subsidies and a worse process and minimal real income to generate R&D investments.

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WorldlinessNo5192@reddit

that's the whole point of making the foundry operate independently without spinning it off, so that they can both do that, and make a profit on their design business.

But they can't operate independently. IDM2.0 has been relaunched three times by Pat Gelsinger, because Intel has consistently failed to secure any wafer orders. It isn't happening. I understand you think that AMD is just going to forgive Intel for breaking the law for decades, and hand over its IP to Intel...but they aren't. It's not going to happen. Not while there is an independent foundry that doesn't compete with AMD and is already ahead of Intel in process development. The same rationale applies to nVidia, Apple, and every other chip design firm of note. Intel has bullied and abused all of them, and now they are begging those same companies to write $10B+ checks just to fund R&D. Would you pay Intel when TSMC is already established?

Maybe if they spun off the fabs. But certainly not an integrated Intel, because you're just giving Intel money to compete with you, and then on top of that you know their design house is going to get to look at your IP when you send it to the foundry. Why? Because every time Intel has had a choice to do the right thing or steal, they chose to steal.

You know, the actual profitable part of the business.

...so you want Intel to hold on to the money-losing part of the business...in order to save the money-making part of the business?

So to answer your question, I think that the combined business is worth more because it includes intel's profitable design business.

You're wrong. TSMC is worth more than Intel, and has no design side. AMD, nVidia, Qualcomm, Broadcom are all worth more than Intel and have no fab side - and generally none of those companies has as broad a product portfolio as Intel, either (meaning it would be easier, not harder, for Intel design to be profitable alone).

i think there's some confusion here. I'm using "intel" to refer to the design business, and IFS to refer to the foundry. There is no foundry. IFS is a captive fab owned by an IDM. You're pretending that it's not, and that's part of why it's hard for you to understand why no one will use IFS.

Where will the foundry get money to invest in R&D? They have no customers, and TSMC is ahead, and their cost per wafer is not lower than TSMC's.

This is true whether or not they spin off the fabs, but if they don't spin them off I can guarantee no company will use IFS. So they will definitely fail separately. Apart, there's a chance customers will use the new Foundry. It's only a chance, but some chance is better than none at all.

So in this scenario, intel the design business is now free to pick the best fab, which is not the divested foundry IFS. some of this money now goes to TSMC, increasing their revenue and reducing ability of IFS to do R&D. this is a net loss for the foundry.

When GF spun off from AMD, AMD committed to buy wafers for 5+ years from GF - including ~$500M per year from 2022 to 2025. AMD is still buying wafers from GF and is probably one of if not its largest customers.

Intel will similarly continue buying wafers from the new foundry. For the older nodes, Intel will be the only customer - and the foundry will be the only supplier (because no one else can make Intel's nodes with Intel's PDK). The foundry, though, will now be in a position to sell wafers to other companies. Maybe they won't, as you allege. But as noted, no one in their right mind is going to buy wafers from integrated Intel. And we know this - IFS is showing token amounts of revenue - these are small node development payments being made to force TSMC to reduce pricing (which they have already done). They are not real wafer orders, which is how the foundry makes money.

Can you go check whether GF continued to invest in cutting edge processes, and get back to me?

Can you go check whether AMD is buying wafers from its former fabs, and get back to me? Even though GF stopped developing new nodes?

I'm saying the current strategy, where intel subsidizes process improvements with design profits, which is pat's plan, is better than divesting and having no customers and no subsidies and a worse process and minimal real income to generate R&D investments.

Why would Intel spend tends of billions of dollars to adapt existing designs to TSMC's nodes? lol this is lunacy.

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Far_Piano4176@reddit

i'm not going to do another point by point response. It's blatantly obvious that the foundry is not going to continue developing cutting edge nodes if it is spun off, it's simply never going to happen without subsidies or investment that it will not receive from government or wall street. That was my entire point in the first place, which you ended up agreeing with by using GF to try and show that i'm wrong. believe whatever conspiracy theories you want about potential IP theft, i no longer care to talk about this with you.

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WorldlinessNo5192@reddit

It's blatantly obvious that the foundry is not going to continue developing cutting edge nodes if it is spun off, it's simply never going to happen without subsidies or investment that it will not receive from government or wall street.

lol, everything that you say is "blatantly obvious" will not happen has literally already happened with GlobalFoundries. Not only are you wrong, but there's living breathing evidence you are wrong.

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Plank_With_A_Nail_In@reddit

Why does it matter that it gets run down and ends up defunct. Capital should be invested in successful ones not failing ones and that includes parts of your own business.

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Plank_With_A_Nail_In@reddit

It doesn't matter if anyone buys it or not. Money will stop being wasted and the production that moves to other companies fabs that haven't failed will give those winners money to invest in themselves and we all benefit.

Giving Intel more money to waste isn't the answer and failed business should be allowed to die...the world won't lose anything as we already have better than Intel can do.

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nanonan@reddit

They could do it the same way TSMC does.

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Far_Piano4176@reddit

they have several structural disadvantages that TSMC doesn't have:

they're already behind
cost of labor
lack of institutional/governmental investment in comparison. intel is committed to the strategy for now, what are the odds that a buyer has the same plan?
worse tooling

intel's foundry needs as many advantages as they can get, and having built-in subsidies in the form of profit from design on the P+L sheet is one of them. Judging by the stock price, wall street doesn't believe they can do it, why would they believe they can do it when the foundry suddenly has much worse financials?

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Legal-Insurance-8291@reddit

Someone better tell the US government that because so far they seem happy to let Intel go bankrupt.

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ThrowawayusGenerica@reddit

Given the return on investment Germany are getting, who can blame them?

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Strazdas1@reddit

You mean by blocknig developement because soil under the factory is more important to germany?

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yabn5@reddit

Germany never gave the money and instead are blocking any development until the top soil is removed and recovered, which would cost more money.

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PainterRude1394@reddit

Intel is nowhere near bankruptcy though

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Educational-Plan-113@reddit

Huh, the US government already gave them billions, and to be frank it's not looked upon as the best way to do things

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DaBIGmeow888@reddit

Not a single penny has been disbursed from CHIPS ACT yet.

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broknbottle@reddit

Well Intel should be automatically excluded from receiving any of the money if they’ve laid off any US based employees in the last 24 months.

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gunfell@reddit

Why? That makes no sense. Intel had over hired enormously. The chips act is a chips program not a run your company inefficiently program

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broknbottle@reddit

That’s the whole point. They’ve laid off already so they would be disqualified.

Pat came in very reckless and immediately hired 20K people in a year.. there needs to be repercussions for companies when they let their CEO make moronic decisions.. they uprooted peoples lives and then out of nowhere treat them like disposable. Pat has only seen his salary rise over the past few years and he’s been rewarded with numerous multi-million dollar bonuses for what amounts to a degenerate gambler at the slot machine betting the farm on hitting big and then underperforming..

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gunfell@reddit

The repercussions for over hiring is you are paying people salaries that you otherwise would not

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Educational-Plan-113@reddit

That's what took down the ussr.

Putting money into companies that need it Sounded like a good idea in theory, but ended up basically rewarding incompetance.

Oleary was also pissed off at this, as he calls it out.

I personally am on the fence, if Intel can pull it off I think it was a good thing but time will tell

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gunfell@reddit

Dude chips act style programs did not take down the ussr. Also intel 18a is really good so the usa should want to invest in that and the company the has the most high na euv.

I realize the time horizon for analysis on this sub (not saying you specifically) and elsewhere is about 3 weeks, but the government rightly sees things differently.

Legit just last week people were saying how intel could not do cpu architecture, and there engineers suck. Then lunar lake benchmarks release and amd likely wont catch up in mobile for years

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Educational-Plan-113@reddit

I didnt say "chips style act" obviously it was many factors, but you miss the point. one of the pillars they had was to support companies that needed it federally, in retrospect, they were rewarding the bad companies and punishing the good companies.. by time they realized this it was too late. if you don't understand the comparison i'm not going to explain it again.

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gunfell@reddit

Dude chips act style programs did not take down the ussr. Also intel 18a is really good so the usa should want to invest in that and the company the has the most high na euv.

I realize the time horizon for analysis on this sub (not saying you specifically) and elsewhere is about 3 weeks, but the government rightly sees things differently.

Legit just last week people were saying how intel could not do cpu architecture, and there engineers suck. Then lunar lake benchmarks release and amd likely wont catch up in mobile for years

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Educational-Plan-113@reddit

I gotta call you out there I believe they have as I have read many articles saying several billion have been disbursed to the.

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DaBIGmeow888@reddit

Well, they haven't yet.

https://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/news/2024/08/09/white-house-chips-act-update.html

And any premature celebration is just politicians lips yapping

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Educational-Plan-113@reddit

I read an article the other day that said they HAD been given the 8 billion already but not the rest. the article could have been wrong but it specifically said it. I'm not sure where this is a point you are arguing anyway. as what difference does it make?

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DaBIGmeow888@reddit

The point is the US govt moves too slowly to ensure Intel is at the leading edge. It needs $8 billion every 3 months for next few year just to compete if US govt is serious, not 3 years to give $8 billion. It's too slow.

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Legal-Insurance-8291@reddit

The US government gave money to any company building a fab in the US. Being a US company wasn't relevant.

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Educational-Plan-113@reddit

Yeah I don't think thats debate so I don't understand thr point to your comment

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Legal-Insurance-8291@reddit

A lot of people here seem to think Intel is getting special treatment. Even more seem to think the should.

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Stockzman@reddit

Please get your facts right. Intel has not received money from the government yet. It's all talk till now but no fund has been disbursed yet.

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Educational-Plan-113@reddit

Really because I read several articles that say billions have been disbursed to the. I'm not being coy

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gnocchicotti@reddit

US government only gets a strategic advantage from Intel continuity of operations. What happens to the investors and creditors is (or should be) irrelevant.

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Real-Human-1985@reddit

in 18 months they will own intel foundry.

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XY-chroma@reddit

This is the outcome I want, out of spite for intel. They could have built fabs in the USA 25 years ago. But they are greedy fucks. Let them burn and then let the government take them over and do a better job. I don't think the government will do a good job. But it will be better than intel's bullshit.

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DaBIGmeow888@reddit

They are sooooo slow to give CHIPS ACT money.

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Exist50@reddit

Divesting from fabs would be a huge mistake as they would forever be competing with AMD, Apple, Nvidia on TSMC wafer allocation

If they run Intel Foundry as independently as they claim, then they'll be competing with other foundry customers just as they would at TSMC.

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SherbertExisting3509@reddit

And it would be OK for intel to compete for wafers because if Intel Design can't compete for wafer allocation with AMD/Nvidia then the foundry business can prop them up until they can compete again. Both sides of the business will help keep each other afloat while not holding each other back.

AMD is wholly at the mercy of the whims of TSMC and Samsung and there is no backup for AMD if they can't compete with other companies for wafer space.

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dj_antares@reddit

AMD is wholly at the mercy of the whims of TSMC and Samsung and there is no backup for AMD

Unlike AMD, Intel has a backup where? Their failed 10nm was never addressed for alomst a decade. A backup would have been handy, don't you think?

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Mornnb@reddit

18A is just an enhancement to 20A. The reason Intel is doing this is 18A is ready earlier and they figure they can actually save money by moving to 18A earlier and avoid the slight retooling between 20A and 18A.

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Real-Human-1985@reddit

they don't get it lol. they're hoping china nukes the world at this point. seeing how compromised our countries are they'd manage a first strike on intel's fabs lmao.

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Exist50@reddit

And it would be OK for intel to compete for wafers because if Intel Design can't compete for wafer allocation with AMD/Nvidia then the foundry business can prop them up until they can compete again

What are you implying? That the Foundry would favor business from Intel Products over 3rd parties? Then the foundry dream is stillborn.

And lol, Foundry has been a boat anchor for going on a decade. It's far more likely to kill Intel Products than to bail it out.

AMD is wholly at the mercy of the whims of TSMC and Samsung and there is no backup for AMD if they can't compete with other companies for wafer space.

You can say that for just about anyone. Hasn't been a problem.

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SherbertExisting3509@reddit

No I'm saying if Intel Design can't compete for wafer space at the leading edge foundries then it doesn't really matter because Intel Foundry can cover the financial (NOT WAFER) losses of intel Design until they become competitive. Both Businesses will do what's best for them but will hold each other up in terms of crisis.

TSMC Is already jacking up the prices for N4 wafers and it's a trend that is going to continue because of the AI Boom. AMD will be forced to pay more for wafers, get gradually outcompeted for wafer space because of Nvidia's profit advantage and AMD will eventually be relegated to samsung nodes or worse TSMC nodes. It's not a problem now because the AI boom is recent but TSMC will raise the price of wafers to increase their margins.

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Exist50@reddit

No I'm saying if Intel Design can't compete for wafer space at the leading edge foundries then it doesn't really matter because Intel Foundry can cover the financial (NOT WAFER) losses of intel Design until they become competitive

This would be a much more compelling argument if Foundry wasn't the one failing for better part of a decade now. That relationship isn't going to invert.

AMD will be forced to pay more for wafers, get gradually outcompeted for wafer space because of Nvidia's profit advantage and AMD will eventually be relegated to samsung nodes or worse TSMC nodes

...you do realize TSMC builds new capacity, right? N5/N4 aren't even fully utilized today.

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SherbertExisting3509@reddit

TSMC is at full capacity with CoWoS production and they're failing so hard at scaling up production that Nvidia is looking to use foveros to make the interposer dies for the H100. (It's probably why you don't see the 7600X3D or other mid range X3D since 3d V cache implementation relies on CoWoS

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Exist50@reddit

TSMC is at full capacity with CoWoS production and they're failing so hard at scaling up production

They are scaling it up, and quite rapidly at that. It's just not as rapidly as demand grew for the AI boom. But it's very uncertain whether that will hold. One of Intel's fundamental miscalculations was assuming the COVID demand environment was a new normal. It was not.

Nvidia is looking to use foveros to make the interposer dies for the H100

They haven't yet...

It's probably why you don't see the 7600X3D or other mid range X3D since 3d V cache implementation relies on CoWoS

No, it doesn't. Completely different tech.

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SherbertExisting3509@reddit

"They haven't yet..." it's based on rumors which apparently you're OK with since you rely on them them to claim that 18A will fail without evidence.

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/nvidia-reportedly-selects-intel-foundry-services-for-chip-packaging-production-could-produce-over-300000-h100-gpus-per-month

I could easily say the same about your claims about 18A

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Exist50@reddit

it's based on rumors which apparently you're OK with since you rely on them them to claim that 18A will fail without evidence

That's not what I've been relying on for my claims. Again, you keep trying to ignore that I've been more accurate than the Intel PR you keep parroting.

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/nvidia-reportedly-selects-intel-foundry-services-for-chip-packaging-production-could-produce-over-300000-h100-gpus-per-month

8 months later + the launch of Blackwell, and no sign of any Intel involvement.

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SherbertExisting3509@reddit

Ok where your irrefutable proof that 18A will fail? Go On

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Exist50@reddit

It being 8 months later doesn't mean it will never happen

I never said it would never happen. Lying again, I see.

especially with how fast demand for AI Chips is going up

Intel's making their own 2026 AI chips at TSMC. Their fabs aren't fit for the task.

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HellsPerfectSpawn@reddit

Intel makes all their GPU and AI chips there. They've been doing that from the beginning. It's cheaper for them to do that as that is a very small number of wafers(in Intel's wafer numbers).

Intel making CPUs at TSMC is the aberration not the other way around.

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TwelveSilverSwords@reddit (OP)

It's probably why you don't see the 7600X3D or other mid range X3D since 3d V cache implementation relies on CoWoS

AMD 3D-V cache uses SoIC (hybrid bonding), not CoWoS.

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Real-Human-1985@reddit

so the foundry with zero customers that's not working and losing an obscene amount of money can cover? no orders for 18A yet and the only news looks bad. when will this dream scenario happen?

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Patient_Stable_5954@reddit

IFS won't be able to subsidise Intel if run independently.

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Ghostsonplanets@reddit

Subsidize? Currently they're the reason Intel is needing to make so many cuts and financial plays. Intel CCG are the ones saving Intel right now.

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ProfessionalPrincipa@reddit

Nobody will trust Intel foundry if the foundry gives Intel design special treatment in priority and pricing just because they're siblings living under the same roof. That independence thing and all.

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DigitalTank@reddit

I take it you were buying shares of Intel at $40 thinking this is a steal of a lifetime?

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Oxire@reddit

That's not what independent means. Previously they made the fab for the design teams needs, now they advance the fab without any input from them. The design team doesn't have a say about the fabs.

Sorry but I can't stop laughing with what you said. Aren't you the one with "sources"?

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Ghostsonplanets@reddit

That's literally what indepent means. That Intel Design doesn’t has some special share of wafers for themselves and would be treated as any customer.

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Oxire@reddit

Lol.Sure. get there with a dictionary and tell them what independent means and tell them that you need all capacity of Intel 3 that they are going to use for the xeons.

Been a factory and having your own product isn't new. Samsung does it.

They are doing what I told you. What you imagine they should do is stupid. Sorry.

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Ghostsonplanets@reddit

If they want to eat their cake by favoring their own products but also have it by getting external customers to fight for scraps, then their whole IFS is stillbirth. And this is one of the key reasons why design companies are reticent to work with IFS.

Samsung comparison is laughable because Exynos is only used due to lack of interested customers. But multiple times in the past a new Samsung Foundry node was released with an external design win. The last example was 5LPE with 888.

And even then, the fact Samsung itself design and manufacture Exynos is often times cited as a reason for fabless makers to be reticent of working with them. And that's despite they being a proven Foundry, unlike Intel. So why would Intel be treated any different?

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Oxire@reddit

They aren't doing anything against external customers. Once a customer buys from their fab they are going to be treated the same way. That's why the made the fab independent.

Previously. If the design team had problems the fab would try to adapt and make it work. That's not the case anymore. It's the design team's job to make the product with the same tools and same help as the external customers would get.

That doesn't mean that they wouldn't reserve capacity for themselves first.

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phil151515@reddit

Intel has consistent said that the first designs in a new technology will be Intel designs. That's not treating all customers the same.

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ResponsibleJudge3172@reddit

Those are what Intel 4, Intel 20A and so on are. Internal Intel only uses of EUV, BSPD, foveros, etc coming to Intel client before they release the refined versions being Intel3, Intel 18A, respectively to the matket

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Oxire@reddit

I said that they are treated the same after buying from them.

Its an Intel fab. They will sell as much as they want. If you buy you will have the same treatment as Intel's design team.

And the point of all these comments was that Intel is going to use as much capacity as they want and sell the rest to customers. Or they may sell a lot and buy from tscm if they need.

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phil151515@reddit

So potential external customers will have to get in line behind Intel internal. That still doesn't seem like treating them the same -- and would really annoy potential customers.

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Oxire@reddit

You ll say whatever just to argue. If its good for their business they will buy, if not they won't.

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Faranocks@reddit

Eh. Not quite that simple. For example Apple has always had first bite in the last few years, notably buying up the entire allocation for 3nm chips in 2023. They were also allegedly first in line for 2nm allocation. Independent doesn't mean free from favoritism. We can assume that Intel will be eager to get external money into their company, but we can also assume that Intel will do things to benefit Intel.

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Ghostsonplanets@reddit

Well, that's because Apple uses their massive amount of money to buy these wafers nad jumpstart TSMC node R&D. Doesn't mean they get all the share of wafers unless others companies aren't interested into it for first round.

N5 which many claimed was Apple exclusive for the first year was actually shared between Apple and Huawei. N3B is also shared by Apple and Intel and Intel had contracted this wafer allocation years ago.

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TwelveSilverSwords@reddit (OP)

Yup, people forget that Huawei also got early dibs on TSMC nodes until they got sanctioned to oblivion.

In the last days leading upto the sanctions, TSMC was using their N5 node to exclusively produce 5nm Kirin 9000 chips for Huawei, so they could stockpile as much as they can.

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ET3D@reddit

Divesting from fabs would be a huge mistake as they would forever be competing with AMD, Apple, Nvidia on TSMC wafer allocation

Why? They'd still be able to use the fabs even if they're not part of Intel. In fact, Intel's current strategy is to treat its own fabs as a third party.

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dern_the_hermit@reddit

Why? They'd still be able to use the fabs even if they're not part of Intel.

But they'd have to compete with AMD, Apple, etc. for those fabs, as well.

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nanonan@reddit

They want Apple, AMD etc. as customers for their fabs right now.

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plushie-apocalypse@reddit

The US is already experiencing a reckoning with regards to off-shoring. With the pivot to nearshoring, they need to take a further step back from neoliberalism and re-examine government driven initiatives around key strategic assets. Continuing to rely on internationally liable and publicly held corporations with opaque allegiances at the best of times is a mistake. I'm not talking about Intel alone or even specifically, but companies like Tesla (quite possibly compromised by Russia), Microsoft, Google, and Nvidia, who are not shy about complying with Chinese laws or shirking US sanctions; even non-tech organisations like PMCs, many of whom have taken their US military experience to train the PRC armed forces. This will require long term thinking, resolute political will and quite frankly a paradigm shift that a large chunk of it's population may not be able to stomache. My 2c.

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Ploddit@reddit

Are you suggesting government-run chip development and foundries? Oof, no thanks. That's taking the path of brainless nationalism we're already rushing down to truly idiotic levels.

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plushie-apocalypse@reddit

What's so scary about government? If it's not Communist to have government defend your country with an army, surely you can afford the affront of a government run strategic resource. Or do you think nukes should be privatised by PMCs?

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Ploddit@reddit

Communist? Huh?? Not really sure what you think you're talking about here, so I'll leave it at this...

Government is capable of running some things and should run some important things, but what government is not is innovative. Putting something as bleeding edge as chip design in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats would be the death of the US chip industry. Hell fucking no.

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thermalblac@reddit

what government is not is innovative

DARPA created ARPANET which became the internet

DoD created GPS

Navy created Tor

NSA created SHA256 which is critical to internet security

Doppler radar

And more

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QuantumUtility@reddit

Man should read up on DARPA and the research they fund and do. All the basic technologies inside the iPhone for instance.

The von Neumann architecture came from his work at Princeton.

The first transistors were created at Bell labs and the IC at Intel and TI all with the help of government funding. One of the first use cases for the IC was inside missiles.

ARPANET and the World Wide Web were developed by the US military and Tim Berners-Lee at CERN.

GPS was developed by the US military and continues to be provided by government satellites.

Hell, the Human Genome Project was funded by the multiple different national governments and universities.

What do you mean government is not innovative? Government funding and stimulating science is how we got here.

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Ploddit@reddit

Aw, it's cute you could imagine I'm unaware of DARPA, etc.

Read the comment I replied to. Government grants that go toward basic research are a very different thing from government managing chip design and manufacturing. I love that anyone thinks the same government that gave us the massively bloated, corrupt, and inefficient defense industry is somehow going to do a good job running chip fabs.

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XY-chroma@reddit

Intel isn't innovative either. LMAO. Fuck intel.

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intelminer@reddit

but what government is not is innovative

Man your head is gonna explode when you find out what The Internet started out as...

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JuliusFIN@reddit

A government owning a majority stake in a company wouldn’t make it anti-competitive. A CEO runs a company.

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plushie-apocalypse@reddit

It's entirely possible to have concurrent private and public research, you know? Same goes for health care, for that matter. The two compliment each other.

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aprx4@reddit

Because government projects are not efficient. They have no interest in running businesses efficiently. Politicians will always turn it into pork-barrel project to make lobbyists happy.

The people who created 35 trillions of national debt obviously has no qualification to run a competitive semiconductor foundry.

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Johnny_Oro@reddit

TSMC is a government project. I could talk (or rant) forever about the supposed "efficiency" of a purely profit driven capitalist business, but Intel's commitment to the foundry business being met with disgust by the capital owners rather than enthusiasm while Amazon's warehouse business model which doesn't produce any useful goods or add any value to the society is totally welcomed is proof that thirst and greed for profit is probably not the best driver for innovation.

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aprx4@reddit

TSMC is not run by government, government is a shareholder. They had significant public funding, but Taiwan government has been slowly divesting out of TSMC over the years.

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Johnny_Oro@reddit

It wouldn't happen at all without the Taiwanese government, and they're now their share is still 7 times as big as the biggest private stakeholder, so effectively they're the most influential decision maker still. It's also an important asset for Taiwanese sovereignty and economy, so its creation and operation are not fully motivated by profits.

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aprx4@reddit

TSMC wouldn't happen without government funding, but Morris Chang runs the company as he wants.

Taiwanese government is third largest holder of TSMC, with 6.31%, not the largest. In 1987 they hold 48%.

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JuliusFIN@reddit

A government can be the major stakeholder in a competitive business. This happens all around.

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aprx4@reddit

The government is already a stakeholder in every business. Perhaps you mean 'shareholder'?

The person above suggested government-run foundries, not government being a shareholder.

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JuliusFIN@reddit

You are correct about the terminology, thank you for the correction. I presumed that colloquially saying “government run” would usually refer to an arrangement where government owns 51% of the shares. This is how it’s usually set-up where I’m from and we have quite a few examples of such companies. There’s also a political culture in which the government mostly acts as a “silent shareholder” only taking action when some big strategic interest comes into play.

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aprx4@reddit

government owns at least 51% of the shares. This is how it’s usually set-up where I’m from and we have quite a few examples of such companies

Is there any of them tech company AND globally competitive?

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JuliusFIN@reddit

Depends how you define a tech company. I can find a few that would fit the description somewhat (communications, technological education etc.) but they are not very big or international. They seem to make a profit though. The biggest examples are in aviation and the energy sector. These companies used to be fully under government control afaik and were later “privatized”. They are generally well run, turn a profit and work internationally, but the scale is of course relatively small as our country is the size of a mid-sized US state.

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aprx4@reddit

Let's just use the definition from parent comment of 'tech' company: Intel, Tesla, Microsoft...

I don't see any globally competitive tech firm run by government.

These companies used to be fully under government control afaik and were later “privatized”

Let me guess, government divested out of them because they weren't very good at running these companies? That's is same trend in plenty of countries, including my home country.

If state enterprise and command economy was the solution, Marxism would've been succeeded.

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JuliusFIN@reddit

The companies were not publicly traded so the government didn’t exactly divest from them, more like IPOd them.

As to your last line. This is a common trope to basically say the government shouldn’t run much of anything and shouldn’t be a stakeholder at all in/with the private sector which is provably false since we have many examples of successful companies with a majority public ownership. Furthermore a “state enterprise” would refer to something that is not publicly traded and doesn’t really operate inside the competitive market.

Using communism as an argument against public ownership is disingenuous since communism didn’t include a democratic process. In a democracy (or social democracy) the government owning something is equal to the public owning something and at the end of the day the voter decides how the company is run. I’d say this is a very good system when it comes to infrastructure, natural monopolies and strategically critical assets.

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Real-Human-1985@reddit

intel is relying on Asian manufacturing so why would the US go all in on them before fixing that? They just agreed to give money for domestic chips and intel immediately moved their newest design to TSMC.

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soggybiscuit93@reddit

Intel bought their N3B allocation like 4 years ago

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PainterRude1394@reddit

Microsoft seems pretty aligned with us national security.

Tesla yeah can be a bit sketchy. But we know starlink and SpaceX launches are aligned with us national security.

Nvidia is following the law wrt sanctions. I'm not sure that companies obeying USA sanctions is evidence they aren't aligned with the USA.

Wrt organizations complying with Chinese laws when selling in China... How is that a problem? Does breaking Chinese law mean they are more aligned with the USA? I'm confused on that one.

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Vb_33@reddit

Tesla possibly compromised by Russia? Since when?

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GOOGAMZNGPT4@reddit

All of this TSMC v Samsung v Intel + Chinese takeover discussion that gets parroted here for years comes down to techno-militaristic fanfiction. A fiction that will never develop intro fruition, and a fiction that ignores obvious basic truths.

The fabs aren't strategic military targets and never have been. If things ever escalated to that level where World powers are attacking domestic chip production sites - well we'd have WW3, nukes, bombs, and land invasions to worry about.
The minute TSMC is gone, then Intel becomes the leading node by default. The disruption of TSMC does nothing other than set back CPU world standards by 6-18 months, and probably hurts supply in the market, but increases the demand and value of Intel by 50x. The US Military complex won't protect TSMC - if anything they will orchestrate its demise by provoking China into invading Taiwan.
There is nothing wrong with being 2nd in this industry anyways.. Being 'a node behind' doesn't strategically disadvantage anyone in any meaningful way. 'Oh no, our opponents CPU is 8% faster and 10% more power efficient on average than us! ooooh nooooo!' You may lose the highest value contracts for bleeding-edge customers, but that's it. Older nodes hold economic value. Intel being shit doesn't harm our nations ability to compute.

The only thing the West needs is for Intel to be competent enough to maintain any chip manufacturing at all. It doesn't matter how bad or how inefficient they are or how far they are behind any competitor. As long as we physically have chips for the consumer, enterprise, and military markets to utilize then we will march forward - even if we had to go back to 32nm.

Our eyes should collectively gloss over when the community steers CPU discussions into 'The Chinese and Norks!' 'headquarters bombed by the enemy' Lol what the fuck is this a michael crichton novel.

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soggybiscuit93@reddit

even if we had to go back to 32nm

The discussion around advanced node fabrication for military and geopolitical purposes is centered around autonomous weapons systems and AI being the Centerpoint of the DoD's 3rd Offset Strategy.

With large datacenters for AI for military use, the ability to domestically source advanced fabrication is key to that strategy. Access to the most advanced chips was the primary driver of the 2nd offset strategy which was first demonstrated in the Gulf War.

The militaries historic need for mature / trailing nodes for kinetic systems is completely separate from their new need for advanced fabrication (RAMP-C is just an example of this)

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putragease@reddit

I just leading edged to this comment

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mikethespike056@reddit

same

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Fast_Wafer4095@reddit

I share this long term perspective, but Intel simply lacks the money atm. The government would need to step in and give them giant loans if they want them to continue this strategy.

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DigitalTank@reddit

The current path of Intel, not divesting from fabs, is leading them to bankruptcy. And getting them to the "lead" is only occurring in their power point presentations. Pat's strategy has failed and the money being wasted by them and by the US government is silly. They're already competing for wafer allocation at TSM because their own "leading edge" technology isn't being used by their own designers for their top of the line products.

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PeteConcrete@reddit

Did you actually read the article?

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DaBIGmeow888@reddit

US govt moves too slowly to make Intel the leading edge. For one, not a single penny of CHIPS ACT had been disbursed to Intel and it's been two years!

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Pale_Ad7012@reddit

People are just fear mongering. Few years ago they were fear mongering about Rolls Royce. Chinese/Russian govt will buy Intel today for 500Billion easy. No questions asked, maybe even for a few trillion. Will they buy Spirit airlines? probably not. Heck maybe even any other western govt might be interested in buying Intel, The Saudis and Softbank too are loaded with cash. Everyone Knows its not for sale.

Intel has to succeed and for every one who says "Its not possible" I say "No, its necessary" (Interstellar)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2H1s9gj5DA

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ProfessionalPrincipa@reddit

People are just fear mongering. Few years ago they were fear mongering about Rolls Royce. Chinese/Russian govt will buy Intel today for 500Billion easy. No questions asked, maybe even for a few trillion.

Why would they spend trillions or even half a trillion? Are they stupid? The company is barely worth $80 billion right now! LOL

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Pale_Ad7012@reddit

Advanced technology, IP. US is limiting tech access to Russia and China. You can’t gain this knowledge even for 10s of trillions of dollars.

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ProfessionalPrincipa@reddit

I don't think you understand how big 10s of trillions of dollars actually is. "10s" of trillions would be bigger than their GDP's.

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Strazdas1@reddit

Chinas GDP is currently 18 trillion. So pruchasing it for 500 billion would be about 6% of their GDP. Note that an average country redistributes about a third of their GDP via government budget.

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Pale_Ad7012@reddit

Yes that might be a bit of exaggeration but right now it’s 80 billion! That peanuts for advanced tech, knowledge, IP.

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haloimplant@reddit

you can't gain it even with 10s of trillions of dollars, because the US government would tell you to fuck right off

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Strazdas1@reddit

Well Chinese specifically would do it because they would get access to a lot of IP and tech that they otherwise do not have access to.

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Helpdesk_Guy@reddit

Chinese/Russian govt will buy Intel today for 500Billion easy.

If you dropped the typical fearmongering for the Taiwan-straight and that Chinese threat, it would be at least understandable, yet this utter nonsense is so delusional and outright ludicrously bizarre, it's just hilariously funny!

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EJ19876@reddit

I suspect the biggest issues with 20A are financial in nature. Intel has limited EUV capacity, so they have to allocate it where it makes the most financial sense. 20A wafers are also supposedly much more expensive than N3B.

Obviously this is a bad look for Intel, but I doubt it means much for 18A. TSMC says 18A is similar to their N3P node, and Intel says it is similar to TSMC's N2 node. The truth is probably somewhere in between, in which case it is going to be a good node. Intel's challenge will be getting it price competitive with TSMC's offerings, and actually having the ability to produce vast volumes of it if they ever wish to attract a whale client like Nvidia or Qualcomm.

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grahaman27@reddit

Agreed. With all the financial troubles, axing 20A to focus on 18A makes the most sense the more you think about it

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gnocchicotti@reddit

Getting strong "we are accelerating the ramp of 7nm" vibes when 10nm was in deep trouble. Only to reverse course again and double down on 10nm aka "Intel 7."

Intel has been misleading the public for many years, and the lack of skepticism around here is difficult to understand.

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Strazdas1@reddit

18A is a more refined 20A and uses same machines, so its would make no sense to reverse course to 20A

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Legal-Insurance-8291@reddit

It makes sense if you buy their story. But few people do these days after the years of lies.

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limpleaf@reddit

20A is an internal node = possibly brings no increase in revenue. 18A is both internal and external = possibly brings increase in revenue.

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Ghostsonplanets@reddit

The whole reason 20A was proped was that it would be a node which Intel would leverage with Arrow Lake to show advancement and how healthy their proccess and R&D. The cancellation of it cast doubts over 18A (the nodelet improvement of 20A), even if Intel claims it was purely a financial decision and that 18A is extremely healthy.

18A live and die with Panther Lake. If it's a good generation, with ample volume and no issues, confidence will rebound.

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limpleaf@reddit

I highly doubt confidence would rebound even with a very good node. Intel has lost all market confidence.

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Helpdesk_Guy@reddit

But few people do these days after the years of lies.

Well, makes sense and is well-deservedly – A liar will not be believed even when he speaks the truth!
Then again, if anyone has damaged their reputation, it weren't their nay-sayers but Intel in and of itself first and foremost.

Since Intel has torpedoed their own credibility for decades in finest salami tactics by always admitting bit by bit to what was already known and undisputable anyway and especially when it comes to nodes, processes, yields and general Chip'nStuff in the Foundry-site of things, they've basically tarnished their own trustworthiness with every statement of theirs – Always backpedaling, declare old road-maps as obsolete and issue new changed ones and shifting the goals, twisting words and refuting 'bad rumors' within hours on Twitter (only to later reveal, that these were in fact accurate, by the time these were made) and constantly re-issue new plans all of a sudden, as soon as something was about to be due, and their never-ending delays en masse, of course.

You can only fool for so long, until all believability is lost and people start making their own assumptions – If the then plausibility-based thought-of future happenings even begin to render truth in the end, you're basically finished …

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Exist50@reddit

20A wafers are also supposedly much more expensive than N3B.

If they are, then so is 18A, and thus it's not going to do well.

TSMC says 18A is similar to their N3P node, and Intel says it is similar to TSMC's N2 node. The truth is probably somewhere in between, in which case it is going to be a good node.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation

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III-V@reddit

If they are, then so is 18A, and thus it's not going to do well.

The price to develop a wafer may be similar in terms of time, labor, raw materials, etc., but 20A would only start paying for itself with Intel as its only customer. 18A would, hopefully, have much higher volume, and the fixed costs associated with developing and ramping the node would be spread out over a greater number of wafers, reducing the overall cost per wafer.

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haloimplant@reddit

how it 20A being much too expensive not a problem for 18A unless it is somehow much cheaper

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Veastli@reddit

Because building out one expensive process is far cheaper than building out two expensive processes.

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HellsPerfectSpawn@reddit

Especially when one of those processes is very feature incomplete(20A) and hence can't be used for much else but a few internal CPU tiles.

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pianobench007@reddit

Q2 2024 INTEL report state they shifted Intel 3 from Oregon to Ireland for production. Why? Well they were going to produce Intel 3 at Ireland anyway. May as well just move equipment there rather than buying the same equipment twice.

Once that shift has been completed, Oregon will be on 18A. Likely Oregon already test manufactured 20A. Said it was good but not good enough. 18A is better. Let's ramp up on 18A.

IE setup full production rather than the test bed style.

So they saved some capital by moving equipment from Oregon that eventually was going to be purchased new in Ireland. And in the meantime while they are moving equipment they are utilizing an external foundry.

There is also some excess capacity at the moment. But it's to be expected.

The question that brought this answer up was someone asked why wafer costs were higher. And it's because they moved production to Ireland were the wafer cost more.

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invasionofcamels@reddit

Read the transcript of David Zinsner talking to Citi - it’s pretty much what you’ve said here.

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Puzzleheaded-Wave-44@reddit

We got some clarity on it, 18A is doing well enough that it doesn't make sense to ramp up 20A, And any sensible group of people would do the same thing. And 20A was mostly going to be a learning node, where the learnings came the hard way, Intel couldn't have jumped straight to 18A, it was next to impossible. And with 18A showing great promise, It should be HVM ready mid 2025, which was the original timeline. But there's something more to it, not on Intel's part but someone else, whoever they are they're circling Intel, and don't want it to succeed and instead crash and burn, which is why the lunar lake launch momentum is being hijacked and a desperate flurry of awful rumors coming out, take them with a grain of salt as 18A yields are confident. Basically it's a race against time and money

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DaBIGmeow888@reddit

I am not optimistic.

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Puzzleheaded-Wave-44@reddit

It's your choice. I have some inside view. I know when to load up on intc, not now.

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DaBIGmeow888@reddit

Plenty of insiders were saying Intel was on track, then it's down -65% year to date.

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Puzzleheaded-Wave-44@reddit

It is on track, but the current products the ones out in the market were all designed and taped out before Pat Gelsinger took charge, Take a look at Lunar lake, that product just made qcomm's xelite completely dead on launch, matching or beating it in battery life which was talking point for qcomm, take a look at graphics on that thing, it beat amd's rdna 3.5 in just nearly 2 generations of xe graphics architecture, with only 8 graphics cores vs 16 of rdna, Matching apple on battery life, 18A defect density< 0.4, 0.2 to reach hvm, that should be ready in 3 quarters or mid 2025. PTL and CWF booted on 18A! early arrowlake benchmarks are showing great promise. I'm looking at near future 2025 and beyond, where as you are looking at this quarter end! Intel is a company that was not innovating for a more than a decade when Pat came, It takes 5 years to turn around semi, And I always knew 2024 was going to be the worst time for Intel, and I was right, but looking at the future things are looking very good. GNR and SRF will compete heavily with Turin, arrowlake and lunarlake will take marketshare back this year, because they're just a step better than AMD. And when it comes to stock, even I'm not keen on intc at the moment infact I advise against it, but mid of 2025 when Intel will announce 18A yields and around the same time if CWF and DMR beat AMD on perf per watt, then know that js the sign to go in on intc. because if 18a will achieve even 90% of it's targets, intc will explode like crazy. But for now, avoid intc at all costs.

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Puzzleheaded-Wave-44@reddit

Also have I mentioned GNR and SRF taking perf per watt back from amd on intel3? So looks like most of the fear mongors are shortsighted vultures hoping to tear intel apart or are just outright haters. Yes Intel is indeed at it's lowest point ever and it was expected to be I'm not surprised even a bit, but the near future is looking promising and strong.

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ET3D@reddit

The good thing is that 18A is promised to enter production this year, so by 2027 we should know how good it is . Seriously, it's not too much time to wait to see whether Intel has something decent under its hands.

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BuchMaister@reddit

Well with 18A they really push for getting IFS costomers like Nvidia, broadcomm, Qualcomm and so on, not just internal use. So there is huge pressure on them to deliver and deliver on time. If they don't deliver, well we can all safely say it's time for them to spinoff their manufacturing. Probably one of the most important node in last decade or so form them to deliver, they can't afford 10nm fiasco again, if it means canceling 20A and delivering 18A on time, then it's worth it - again if they can deliver, big If right there.

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DaBIGmeow888@reddit

I doubt they can deliver. If they can't deliver even a few 20A themselves, 18A isn't going to be any different.

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BuchMaister@reddit

Well I guess we gonna have to wait and see.

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simplyh@reddit

Intel has a big talent problem they need to solve. Most of the smart 22 year olds I know (or any in the past decade at least) don’t want to work at Intel. I think their problem is, funnily enough, margins. With high margins you can attract top talent with big pay packages (and with good management retain them).

Their only hope to increase margins is to get their foundry working and then to really hit it out of the park with their data center GPUs, I think (look at NVDAs margins in that area).

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Exist50@reddit

Intel frankly also hasn't been good to their talent. Pay cuts, layoffs, benefit cuts, etc. Who would want to work for a company that's run like that?

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travelin_man_yeah@reddit

Talent retention is a problem at Intel because their pay are benefits is not competitive but that's more on the non-manufacturing side of things. If you're manufacturing, especially in the US, where else can you go work besides Intel? TSMC, Samsung and there are a few like TI or Global Foundries making older node products. TSMC is a sweatshop culture and is having a lot of trouble poaching Intel employees in AZ. I imagine Samsung is no picnic either.

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DaBIGmeow888@reddit

TSMC is a sweatshop culture

This explains why US fell behind in semiconductor tech, the work culture difference is massive.

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travelin_man_yeah@reddit

But the problem is, TSMC doesn't compensate for it. Places Like Amazon and Tesla have toxic work environments (I know folks who have worked at both places) but employees put up with it because they made out like bandits on the pay and stock.

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Exist50@reddit

If you're manufacturing, especially in the US, where else can you go work besides Intel?

There's work outside of semiconductor fabs. Much of the technician skills are transferrable. My understanding is that turnover is an even bigger problem in the fabs than design.

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Helpdesk_Guy@reddit

The recent “No free coffee, beverages or free fruits for you!” really takes the cake!

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uncampodenabos@reddit

How many smart 22 year olds do you know? And why do you think their opinions alone are enough to say Intel has a big talent problem?

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WorldlinessNo5192@reddit

The problem Intel faces is that TSMC is collected money from the largest semiconductor design firms in the world (Apple and nVidia - both of whome are larger than Intel in terms of revenue), the largest vertically integrated chip design firms (MSFT, Amazon, and Google), and the largest fabless houses (AMD, Qualcomm, Broadcomm, Mediatek) to fund R&D on their leading edge node.

No one can or will pay more than Apple and nVidia for access to leading edge node - and both are on TSMC. No customer can make up larger volume than the fabless houses. Nobody has access to resources like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon do.

Intel, as long as they own their own fabs, is going to have to fund their node development mostly by themselves. 5-10 years ago that worked, Intel was the 800 pound gorilla in the semiconductor industry. They had more than twice as much revenue as the next largest company. Now they are a weak 4th (after Samsung) and rapidly losing ground.

They had to mortgage most of their existing investments and get a $35B bailout from the government to fund 18A. They cancelled several major product launches to afford it. Even if 1278 delivers, what will they sell to fund 1280? And 1282? Process development doesn't scale linearly with cost - it grows exponentially.

The only way Intel can survive is spread the cost of development across a larger revenue base. The intuition is to say, well, Intel is going to take back market share. But Intel already and still saturates then x86 CPU market. There isn't enough revenue in selling x86 CPU's to fund leading edge node. That's why Intel was buying Altera, Mobileye, etc in the first place - because there was no room to grow, they had already saturated the market.

So Intel is betting the farm (and $35B taxpayer dollars) on the idea that they can get ahead and stay ahead of TSMC when TSMC has access to 5 times as much revenue base as Intel does.

It's absurd, and thinking that Intel can "pull this off" is like believing in a perpetual motion machine. It costs too much money, and Intel has no way of getting access to it. And as always, Intel is going to make consumers pay so it can go down in flames instead of splitting up, and them emerging stronger than ever.

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PainterRude1394@reddit

All companies ordering from tsmc would prefer to have multiple suppliers for many reasons. All Intel needs to do is offer a relatively competitive node.

So Intel is betting the farm (and $35B taxpayer dollars) on the idea that they can get ahead and stay ahead of TSMC when TSMC has access to 5 times as much revenue base as Intel does.

Uh ... What? Tsmc doesn't have 5x Intel's revenue even after it's growth and Intels drop.

In 2023 TSMC had $69.3 billion in revenue, compared to Intel's $54.23 billion. Not really sure where your numbers and narratives are coming from.

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Worldly_Apple1920@reddit

All Intel needs to do is offer a relatively competitive node.

Bro, that's the hardest part, and Intel has been failing at 14nm and 10nm for over a decade. It's like you've been living under a rock for over 10 years.

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WorldlinessNo5192@reddit

All companies ordering from tsmc would prefer to have multiple suppliers for many reasons, including tsmc raising prices to pump margins. All Intel needs to do is offer a relatively competitive node.

Except Intel's nodes are notoriously expensive, and Intel has a reputation for stealing from their customers and clients.

Uh ... What? Tsmc doesn't have 5x Intel's revenue even after it's growth and Intels drop. In 2023 TSMC had $69.3 billion in revenue, compared to Intel's $54.23 billion

TSMC has access to

If I have access to your house, it doesn't mean I own your house. It means I have access to it.

Apple, nVidia, AMD, Mediatek, Qualcomm, and Broadcomm together are more than 5x Intel's revenue - because all of those companies are paying for access to TSMC's LEN, the amount of revenue supporting TSMC's process is 5x what Intel's revenue is.

Do you get it now?

Quite a statement. You seem to really hate Intel!

You should too. Intel spent ~$10B in bribes to prevent CPU prices from coming down in the 2000's. Single moms working extra shifts so they could buy their kid their first computer. had to spend an extra $100 per CPU so that Intel could maintain control of the market. All so that a few rich guys could keep their ego going.

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PainterRude1394@reddit

Sounds like we agree that all companies ordering from tsmc would prefer to have multiple suppliers instead of just tsmc. All Intel has to do is have a competitive node and they'll take advantage of it.

It's nonsense take every company that buys from tsmc, add up all their revenue, and claim it somehow benefits tsmc lol. Tsmc only benefits from the dollars going to it. And it's pretty similar to Intel still.

I don't really want to hate Intel or any company. I'm not that emotionally involved here and I recognize company leadership can change.

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WorldlinessNo5192@reddit

It's nonsense to take every company that buys from tsmc, add up all their revenue, and claim it somehow benefits tsmc or that tsmc has "access" to it lol. Tsmc only benefits from the dollars going to it. And it's pretty similar to Intel still.

Except this is exactly what TSMC does. And come to that, it's what Intel does...it's just that Intel only has one customer, which is why TSMC is in a much stronger position in terms of amortizing the cost of development of their future process nodes.

I understand you don't want it to be the way that it is...but the reality is that TSMC has much more revenue supporting its process development efforts than Intel does, and that is why TSMC is ahead. They aren't smarter or harder working that Intel, they just have way more money to spend on R&D than Intel does.

I don't really want to hate Intel or any company. I'm not emotionally involved here and I recognize company leadership can change. To suggest Intel is one of the most "evil" companies ever just makes me laugh.

Humor is an emotion, lol.

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sabot00@reddit

Uh ... What? Tsmc doesn't have 5x Intel's revenue even after it's growth and Intels drop. In 2023 TSMC had $69.3 billion in revenue, compared to Intel's $54.23 billion

in his defense, TSMC is pure play foundry. All that revenue goes to their manufacturing, where as Intel's is shared with design.

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PainterRude1394@reddit

No doubt. But he was nearly an older of magnitude of with that comparison. It's nowhere near the difference he was suggesting.

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Helpdesk_Guy@reddit

Well said and well brought across, thank you! You finally pointed to the very elephant in the room, so many love to ignore.

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dc_chilling17@reddit

I think Intel is about to have a pretty massive turnaround here.

Their product team and manufacturing arm appear to be firing on all cylinders.

Sell Altera and mobileye. Dump the money losing parts of the business. You probably free up 40-50B of cash.

Take foundry private and bring in major players in a jv. Any wafer scale customer behind Apple in the tsmc line would be interested in the new entity. Nvidia, OpenAI/microsoft, Qualcomm, Broadcom, etc. Who wouldn’t want to own part of the western tsmc.

18A/14A is proof of how legit their foundry actually is. Caught up or surpassed TSMC in a few years after jacking off for years doing nothing.

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Worldly_Apple1920@reddit

they just cancelled 20A and outsourced it to TSMC. That is not a good sign for 18A which is very similar to 20A.

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Legal-Insurance-8291@reddit

The problem I keep seeing in all these threads is that people keep talking about a technology race or international politics, but at the end of the day Intel is just a company trying to make money and attract talent. All this bad press and stock losses makes those missions far harder. And for all the talk about Intel being a strategic asset for the US there's no actual special treatment from the US government to help them succeed. The CHIPS Act is subsidizing Samsung and TSMC too. Intel isn't getting any special aid.

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PainterRude1394@reddit

The news is magnified and distorted quite a bit here. Most people don't froth at the mouth to hate on Intel like some folks in this sub. And stock price decreases don't make it more difficult to make money, they are a symptom of Intel's difficulty growing profits right now.

Yes, Intel isn't getting major special treatment in the immediate, the idea is that it would get more help if needed. But the reality is it's not actually that bad right now (recall the news distortion mentioned earlier) that intel needs special treatment. And yes bad press can make it harder to attract talent, though so far haven't seen any evidence that's actually a major issue right now.

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Sir_Cecil_Seltzer@reddit

And stock price decreases don't make it more difficult to make money (curious how you came upon that conclusion!)

Lower stock price does give them a competitive disadvantage indirectly. In the last 12 months they paid $9Billion in stock-based compensation (SBC). With such a large drop in stock price and concerns about its future, this means the SBC is valued less by current and prospective employees, and they have to otherwise pay much more in actual cash which drives their cost up. Where would a talented engineer rather work if they look at SBC; AMD/Nvidia on an upwords trajectory, or Intel? Everything is a trade-off. So higher production costs via R&D, lower margin, higher pricing, less competitive offering, and you get a feedback loop.

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ElementII5@reddit

And stock price decreases don't make it more difficult to make money (curious how you came upon that conclusion!)

What is it with people stating false things so confidently?

Lower evaluation equals more expensive loans.

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PunjabKLs@reddit

I can't tell if that dude is an engineer or on Intel's finance team.

I seriously have never heard a stupider statement. Always the dumbasses who speak so confidently.

Like how can you make a statement that your 30+ yr old publicly traded companies stock price doesn't matter? Then why not let it go to 0 then...

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PainterRude1394@reddit

I didn't say stock price didn't matter. If you have to make up stuff just so you can personally attack people and call them dumbasses maybe you should rethink what you're saying.

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Exist50@reddit

When a company is doing bad in something, the fans always insist that thing doesn't really matter.

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PainterRude1394@reddit

When you say "valuation" do you actually mean market cap? Valuation is ambiguous, I'll assume you meant market cap.

Market cap and stock price are not the same.

Yes, having a lower market cap can make it more difficult to acquire loans which can impact investment in profit driving initiatives. Just as having lower revenue, profits, etc.

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Ok-Difficult@reddit

An example of distorting news would be how you have repeatedly commented Intel is close to bankruptcy and might not be solvent next year. But that's nowhere near true, it's just more Intel hater misinformation.

The comment you're replying to was written by someone who has dozens of comments on this subreddit in the last ten days ONLY criticizing Intel, no engagement on any other topic...

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PainterRude1394@reddit

Seen quite a few folks like that. It's really sus: not sure exactly what's going on. Investors? Just fanatics? Idk but it's super obvious lately because it's all over this sub.

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ProfessionalPrincipa@reddit

It's really sus: not sure exactly what's going on. Investors? Just fanatics? Idk but it's super obvious lately because it's all over this sub.

It doesn't take an investor or fanatic to tell you that Intel roadmaps for the last 10 years have been absolute BS but investors do get mad if you say it.

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PainterRude1394@reddit

This is a great example. We are talking about the people nonstop spreading misinformation/lies/hate against intel all over this sub and one of them couldn't help but lash out.

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Exist50@reddit

You claim it's "misinformation" that Intel's missed their roadmap for the last decade? Lol, some people really are in denial.

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PainterRude1394@reddit

No, I don't claim that.

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bob-@reddit

another anti-intel bot

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Exist50@reddit

An example of distorting news would be how you have repeatedly commented Intel is close to bankruptcy and might not be solvent next year. But that's nowhere near true, it's just more Intel hater misinformation.

An example of distorting news would claim a node being canceled because it was too garbage to use for a product was actually healthy and even ahead of schedule. Intel's in this position partly because of a history of dishonesty with investors. Of course they don't have faith in the company.

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ProfessionalPrincipa@reddit

The news is magnified and distorted quite a bit here. Most people don't froth at the mouth to hate on Intel like some folks in this sub.

A lot of the people taking the contrarian view to that are actually invested in Intel.

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Helpdesk_Guy@reddit

The CHIPS Act is subsidizing Samsung and TSMC too. Intel isn't getting any special aid.

Likely for the very reason, that even the U.S. government itself have lost any hope for a viable turnaround (under Intel's command, that is). Doesn't look too promising for everyone from the outside either, one could say …

Since the last time people were looking, instead GlobalFoundries got granted the Department of Defense's 'Trusted Foundry'-certification for military equipment, and in fact is actually considered a evidently (more) viable domestic semiconductor-source than Intel itself – Underscored by the DoD awarding GlobalFoundries (read: NOT Intel) a pretty prestigious 10-year long supply-deal for all kinds of military-grade Chips'nStuff being worth $3.1Bn for domestically American-made chips for military systems used on land and in the air, sea, and space and later on secured node-volume on GF's 22FDX-processes.

Then the DoD even expanded the deal and upped the sum for about $1.5Bn in February 2024 (paywalled).

Thus, the DoD considers Intel not all too valuable and any bigger domestic asset over national security, as the Pentagon not only granted given contracts to their direct competitor (GF) – The DoD even paid GloFo to move their 45nm-node and relocate its SOI-process out of the former IBM manufacturing-plant in East Fishkill (Fab 10) to GloFo's new main-factory in Malta, New York (Fab 8) to further extend it.

Meanwhile Lockheed Martin sealed a direct deal with GloFo to produce their chips for fighters in June 2023, and so did shortly before General Motors in February '23, when signing a long-term direct-supply agreement with GloFo.

Even the British BAE Systems chose to enter a long-term manufacturing-collaboration while using GloFo's 12LP- and 12SO-processes to manufacture their stuff in light of tightened national security matters.

Bottom line: The U.S. government couldn't care less about Intel's fabs (which have been aged out of any greater usefulness anyway by now, thanks to their 14nm-forever node), and their actions (or the very lack thereof, at last) speak louder than words.

Lastly, the Pentagon itself pulled out of the former granted $3.5Bn Intel-contract in March and no longer wants to foot Intel's bills, and with that, let Intel know that they don't consider their manufacturing any domestic asset worth being funded ..

Yes, Intel got awarded some consolation money by being selected for the 3rd round of the DoD's Rapid Assured Microelectronics Prototypes - Commercial program (RAMP-C) on their leading edge processes like 18Å (if they ever become actually available in volume anytime soon) for "prototyping, tape-out and testing of early defense industrial base (DIB) product prototypes", but that's basically it. No actual contracts for actual volume never mind some supply-agreements like GF could reel in.

Yet even that $1Bn of government-funding is written in the stars, if they can't get their 18Å-process in order ASAP!

That being said, the DoD may have a sharp eye on Intel's IFS and its possible capabilities, yet they don't trust Intel's IFS enough to even grant them some ever so minuscule volume contracts over any military-stuff not even on their older running processes and keep even that to others like GF (who have a history to at least deliver often on time and NOT some secretly defective parts).

So the awarding of some prototyping with the DOD's RAMP-C program is consolation-money at best, as Intel AFAIK hasn't been awarded a single military contract for manufacturing any military-grade equipment to date.

What does that tell us about the DoD's and Pentagon's general standing and consideration of Intel as a domestic national asset, when it comes to any whatsoever military capacity? Exactly.
So the government's standing on Intel has become pretty clear all around – We've now seen other private-held companies and prominent Big Business like Qualcomm, Softbank or Broadcom pull out of Intel's Foundry Services over time as well.

No-one trusts them anymore to deliver anything as promised in the beginning, yet trust is the very crucial thus needed foundation any foundry-business was ever built upon – If you can't deliver on your promises, you're going out of foundry-business …

tl;dr: Domestic Intel-assets much …

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soggybiscuit93@reddit

Did Intel bid on the contracts that GloFo won?

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Helpdesk_Guy@reddit

You're such a sorry biscuit, dude … What point are you trying to prove here? Making the point in favor of Intel and desperately trying to give it any positive spin, by saying Intel didn't even bid on any contracts? What does it matter, if they bid on it or not?

There are and have been a bunch of public projects being virtually awarded a given company, despite said company never having formally bid on a contract in the first place – It was just assumed to be done by them regardless.

The point is, Intel has nothing to show for their foundry-efforts since well over a decade and also their newer IDM 2.0 trying hasn't been crowned with any whatsoever success – The exact contrary is the case: Everyone involved has been waving off and basically told Intel to wait for a call-back, which never came. You can't put it any other way …

There is no way to spin it any positive for Intel here, they're constantly failing since well over a decade and each and every business-partner rather steps backs an pulls out later on and refuses to order anything, as soon as they're involved enough, to get a look on the internal sorry-state of Intel's Foundry Services.

You can refuse to call it 'falling' and call it 'not that much successful yet, but…' or 'there are multiple customers interested' or whatever else. As long as Intel isn't delivering in any bigger volume for a foundry-customer, their foundry is failing! Period.

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soggybiscuit93@reddit

If the government announces the winner of a bid in 2023, than the bidding process began years prior.

If Intel didn't have a node with which to bid at the time the bid process began (long before 2023) because IDM 2.0 was still in its infancy, then it makes your entire argument null.

Of course it matters whether or not they bid on those contracts. Your entire "government confidence in Intel Foundries" rests upon whether or not that's true. Intel 16 launched years after the bidding began.

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Real-Human-1985@reddit

They’re not stupid just like Qualcomm and others aren’t. They want to see the foundries will be good to go before going all in after so many failed nodes and delays.

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Helpdesk_Guy@reddit

They want to see the foundries will be good to go before going all in after so many failed nodes and delays.

Can you really blame them though?! It's the state, but even they have to have an eye on public opinion and can't really justify throwing more good money after bad, after the countless years of bail-outs over the last decade. People are just fed up and about to riot …

That's especially true for a company, who had their highest-ever revenue and profits since its existing just a couple of quarters before, which was already begging for tax-payers' money back then … Only to reveal, that they had internal manufacturing-issues via oxidation.

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Real-Human-1985@reddit

The US governament values GLoFo more than Intel right now. They're probably more inclined to try and invest in them making the leap to cutting edge manufacturing.

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Helpdesk_Guy@reddit

At least GF problem was mostly money 99% of the time. They neither had any trouble to act quickly and toss their own non-working approaches and processes to license others from a competitor. They're humble enough to lead the U.S. domestic Semi-alliance.

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Helpdesk_Guy@reddit

All this bad press and stock losses makes those missions far harder.

… and whose fault is that exactly?! Intel can only blame themselves – Basically every problem they tackle with, is self-inflicted.

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DaBIGmeow888@reddit

Well said.

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nugurimt@reddit

Alot of american "geopolitics" podcasts were droning on about semiconductors, and how u.s taking the lead with the chips act/sanctions on china meant for global hegemony and shit. So americans who were listening to that shit are understandably uncomfortable with intel's inability to actually manufacture chips competitively.

Reality is, a few billion $$ that barely covers the extra costs of building in america doesn't do shit for a company as down bad as intel.

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imaginary_num6er@reddit

All hail the latest victory for Intel. Their chip production nodes are so fantastic, that it's cancelled one and will instead ask TSMC to make even more Intel CPUs. Yes, really, that was the spin Intel put on its decision to bin the 20A node.

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Famous_Wolverine3203@reddit

20A was always rumoured to be a poor node. I think its better that they cancelled it instead of shipping something like Cannon Lake.

There’s nothing to point that 18A shares the same fate.

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Minute_Juggernaut806@reddit

What does a node mean?

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yongiiii@reddit

Node means technology used to for the CPU.

For example, TSMC N2 node uses 2nm transistors. Intel 18A node uses PowerVia(back side power) and RibbonFET(gate all around transistor).

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Famous_Wolverine3203@reddit

Little correction. They don’t use 2nm transistors. Thats just marketing.

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yongiiii@reddit

Yes, but it sure is easy to make people understand. Transistor sizes are all over the places.

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Famous_Wolverine3203@reddit

True that. I doubt N2 would actually see any reduction in transistor sizes. Density is just 10% than N3.

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TwelveSilverSwords@reddit (OP)

How can there be a density improvement without transistor size reduction?

N2 doesn't add BSPD (which does improve density)- that's for A16.

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Alpha3031@reddit

You are asking how foundries have been improving cell density without corresponding improvements in fin pitch and gate pitch, yes? In newer nodes with better performance, standard cell libraries have been able to use fin depopulation. If you are familiar with the different high performance vs high density vs ultra high density libraries, if the performance characteristics of the smaller cells improve, the foundries can essentially reclassify them.

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Famous_Wolverine3203@reddit

TSMC’s density claims for small density jumps rarely align with real world numbers.

For eg, according to them N4 is 6% more dense than N5. You’d expect a reduction in transistor sizes right? But none of the products on N4 compared to N5 have seen that improvement.

Unless TSMC reveals actual physical characteristics of the transistor, we’ll never know.

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TwelveSilverSwords@reddit (OP)

Take A15 Bionic (N5P) and A16 Bionic (N4). Divide the number of transistors by the area. You'll see about a ~5% difference, which lines up with TSMC claim that N4 is 6% denser than N5.

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Famous_Wolverine3203@reddit

It doesn’t. Because you forgot one major aspect. The A16 actively cut down the amount of System Level Cache available on the A15 from 32MB to 16MB.

This is what helped density since SRAM scales less easily than logic.

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Minute_Juggernaut806@reddit

Thanks for condensing

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LeotardoDeCrapio@reddit

It's the name of the silicon process used to fabricate the chip. Each semiconductor manufacturer, like TSMC, Samsung, or Intel, give a specific name to each of their manufacturing processes to differentiate among them.

Usually it is a number and a bunch of letters. The number usually reflects the resolution/generation of the optics used on the lithography for the process of laying out the chip design on the die. And then a letter denotes if that node is for low power designs, high performance stuff, etc.

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grahaman27@reddit

I wish 20A was still a thing, but it's not because it was a poor node. It's because basically no products were planned to use it, even from Intel it was going to be for testing only. But now with the financial troubles, it's too expensive to keep around as an internal testing node when it's cheaper just to use TSMC and focus on 18A.

Again, I wish 20A was still going to be a thing from a curiousity, for consumer tests and benchmarks, but hey, this is where it has to be.

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Exist50@reddit

I wish 20A was still a thing, but it didn't get cancelled because it was a poor node

It was. 20A was never intended for more than ARL, so why would they choose to cancel it now? It's more important role was as a demonstration vehicle for the health of 20A/18A, but it's incapable of that.

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WHY_DO_I_SHOUT@reddit

20A was never intended for more than ARL, so why would they choose to cancel it now?

Not having enough funds to afford ramping the node for full mass production?

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Exist50@reddit

If they don't have the funds to finish their roadmap, why are they spending a single dollar on fab buildout? They won't have customers without nodes.

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grahaman27@reddit

No, absolutely not. Intel doesn't need a limited release to demonstrate it. They are providing 18A samples to potential customers already, that's much more valuable than Intel selling a handful of consumer i5's built on 20A

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Exist50@reddit

Intel doesn't need a limited release to demonstrate it

They do, which is why 20A exists to begin with. Most companies wouldn't even put in the effort for a test chip when the company can't even trust the node for their own products.

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Real-Human-1985@reddit

18A is rumored to be poor.

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tacticalangus@reddit

Did you read the article and understand it or did you just go by the click bait title?

This is a more accurate read on what this says:

"Potential foundry customer allegedly found that test chips are not yet meeting yield or performance criteria 3 quarters before process node ramp. Foundry customer is still working with foundry to evaluate process node"

An article like that wouldn't be very effective in farming clicks though, right?

FYI, it is quite normal for a customer and a foundry to go back and forth with test chips and coordinate on reaching an expected level of performance and yield over months. You don't just get a sub-optimal result, give up and declare the process node dead. Pretty doubtful that is what is happening and certainly the Reuters doesn't even claim anything like that. However, you have a handful of characters in this subreddit that consistently are spewing misinformation and nonsense.

I'm really not sure if it is because they have a financial interest in doing this or if it is some kind of anti-Intel dogma. It is ok if you dislike Intel and want it to fail but be honest about it and at least try to be objective with your arguments and sources.

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Exist50@reddit

Potential foundry customer allegedly found that test chips are not yet meeting yield or performance criteria 3 quarters before process node ramp

They have intermediary milestones that they haven't been hitting. Qualcomm bailed for the same reason.

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tacticalangus@reddit

There are lots of reasons other than the node itself for why someone would choose to not use Intel foundry. The EDA/IP ecosystem and the PDK could be less mature than what a customer would consider ideal. It is also the case that intermediate milestones can be missed but you eventually hit the final targets anyway, that is not particularly unusual.

Most of this boils down to making sweeping conclusions and speaking with certainty and confidence about the health of the node based on incomplete information and clickbait. Intel is talking to many potential customers, plenty of them will probably choose to not use Intel, but they have a chance to land at least a few customers.

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Exist50@reddit

The EDA/IP ecosystem and the PDK could be less mature than what a customer would consider ideal.

That's still a bad look, and the PDK part at minimum is still Intel's responsibility.

It is also the case that intermediate milestones can be missed but you eventually hit the final targets anyway, that is not particularly unusual.

It's not unfathomable, but certainly not anything a customer would bet on.

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Famous_Wolverine3203@reddit

By whom? The Reuter’s article?

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SlamedCards@reddit

Can't forget 18A-P

Which is a 10% bump over 18A. I do wonder what issue was for downgrade. And where 18A-P picks up the performance benefit

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Famous_Wolverine3203@reddit

18A-P is a 5% bump over 18A.

Intel records any node with more than a 10% jump as a full node. For ref, their claims for 10A is 10% and it is regarded as a new node.

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SlamedCards@reddit

https://www.anandtech.com/show/21271/intel-foundry-future-14a-foveros-direct-beyond

Up to 10%, so 18A-P is 5%?

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Famous_Wolverine3203@reddit

Case in point. Upto. I wouldn’t expect a 10% bump if I were you though.

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Exist50@reddit

It's taking comments from Broadcom.

They article is stating that 18A is not ready for HVM by the end of 2024

Not quite. It seems to be saying that they don't expect 18A to be healthy enough for when they'll need it, which is more like 2026.

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TwelveSilverSwords@reddit (OP)

The one thing I’ll concede is that Intel’s inital plan for 18A was a 25% performance improvement over Intel 3 back in 2021. But its been whittled down to 15%.

That's key. I wonder if this reduced version of 18A is enough to take process node leadership from TSMC?

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jaaval@reddit

Do they need to take leadership?

TSMC N3 (various versions) is a leadership node. So much so that two years into its existence it has apple and intel as customers and that’s it. It doesn’t seem like people are that interested in being at the most bestest process.

What matters more in my opinion is what 18A costs. Intel has had a bit of an issue with process cost being too high. 18A is supposed to be better.

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Famous_Wolverine3203@reddit

N3 is a unique case where TSMC fumbled. The original N3 node was scrapped and had to be fixed with “N3B” which still had issues.

Previous leading edge nodes like N5 and N7 saw fast adoption from Nvidia, AMD and Qualcomm.

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jaaval@reddit

N5 too was just apple for a long while. AMD adopted it with zen4 about two years after it started production.

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Famous_Wolverine3203@reddit

True. But Qualcomm didn’t have a problem adopting it months after Apple.

It might be that yields were poor for bigger chips being a newer node and all.

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Famous_Wolverine3203@reddit

Considering the older version of 18A meant Intel would be equivalent to N2P lol.

It won’t be process leadership. But it would mean process parity for 6 months.

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Legal-Insurance-8291@reddit

This sub is fucking ridiculous. You reference unsourced rumors about 20A being bad, but then balk at sourced information about 18A being bad. The pro-Intel bias here is insane.

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Exist50@reddit

20A was always rumoured to be a poor node. I think its better that they cancelled it instead of shipping something like Cannon Lake.

This is revisionist. Just a month ago everyone was swearing it was going well.

There’s nothing to point that 18A shares the same fate.

It's a derivative of 20A, and shares the same problems.

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Famous_Wolverine3203@reddit

This is revisionist.

That is why I said rumoured. According to Intel, everything was fine and dandy. But reputed insiders acknowledged that 20A wasn’t going well.

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Exist50@reddit

But reputed insiders acknowledged that 20A wasn’t going well.

Do you have some examples? Would be useful to reference to those claiming there were no such issues.

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Famous_Wolverine3203@reddit

Well. I took your word and you were right. Thats what I meant.

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Exist50@reddit

Ah, got it. Lol, was hoping for a 3rd party source. I'm apparently not the most convincing ¯_(ツ)_///¯

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Legal-Insurance-8291@reddit

A lot of people don't WANT to be convinced.

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Real-Human-1985@reddit

Yea, 20A was the latest big comeback showing off Lunar and Arrow (and announcing Qualcomm as a customer)literally until they announced both Lunar and Arrow on TSMC.

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DaBIGmeow888@reddit

Broadcom engineers unofficially casted doubts on viability of 18A, which you can argue is expected at this stage and they have some time before HVM, but if the cancellation of 20A is any indication, I am not optimistic about 18A

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Legal-Insurance-8291@reddit

There’s nothing to point that 18A shares the same fate.

18A is a refinement of 20A it's silly to say 20A being bad doesn't reflect poorly on 18A

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Famous_Wolverine3203@reddit

18A is actual 20A at this point. 20A was an unfinished testbed for all the new tech that Intel’s stuffing into this node with a single library.

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no_salty_no_jealousy@reddit

I do hope Intel delivers because Amd has been shitty, they became greedy ever since zen 3 and radeon 5000 series.

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Quatro_Leches@reddit

they have nearly fucked everything up since 14nm. lets see if this pans out

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HTwoN@reddit

Intel 3 is a decent node. Literally met all their expectations.

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996forever@reddit

Show me an Intel 3 product?

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tacticalangus@reddit

X14 Systems - Systems (supermicro.com)

You can order it right now and have it delivered to your home in 3-5 days. Sierra Forest Intel 3 Xeons.

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Zednot123@reddit

People just doesn't realize because of Intel's accelerated cadence. Doesn't allow or justify ramping all products on every new node they are launching and neither did they plan for that much capacity.

Especially since they are sourcing some products from TSMC as well as a contingency (which was set up years back). High-NA is always where the big bet of volume being back in house were. Not even with 18A are all eggs in their own basket.

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Ghostsonplanets@reddit

Sierra Forest and Granite Rapids are sampling and will be out in Q4 24. Arrow Lake U uses Intel 3 and will be available in volume starting at CES 2025.

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HTwoN@reddit

Sierra Forest. Launched a couple of months ago… granite Rapids is launching soon.

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Real-Human-1985@reddit

It’s a secret.🤫

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Gumba_Hasselhoff@reddit

Quite literally a case of "Is this Intel 3 node in the room with us right now?"

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HTwoN@reddit

Google Sierra Forest.

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Gumba_Hasselhoff@reddit

It this generation is gonna be this good, then why doesn't Intels share price reflect that?

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soggybiscuit93@reddit

Their share price is largely been revolving around their foundry expenses.

Share price isn't moving based on reviews for the new Xeons. It'll move based on the sales data of those Xeons over the next few quarters (and it'll have less impact on share price than whatever foundry's Financials are.)

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Kougar@reddit

Even by Intel's roadmaps Intel 3 is a year late, and Granite Rapids isn't out yet to prove it can sustain volume.

https://images.anandtech.com/doci/16823/Intel%20Accelerated%20Briefings%20FINAL-page-006.jpg

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HTwoN@reddit

From the image you linked, you can argue it's half a year late. 2H2023 means end of 2023. A volume product using Intel3 is already out. Don't move the goalpost to Granite Rapids.

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SemanticTriangle@reddit

Rare Intel 3 prop seen in the wild.

No one on hardware knows this node is decent because it has no external foundered products and no desktop or mobile consumer chip. Only a single release out of the four Xeon 6 releases. And next to no one here has s TechInsights sub to have read the analysis article. Even its wikipedia article is incomplete.

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ProfessionalPrincipa@reddit

It's been 5 hours and I'm surprised nobody has referred you to the ServeTheHome review as proof that IFS execution is on time and on target.

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ExtendedDeadline@reddit

This sub is mostly dominated by people with financial interests (stocks, notably) in Intel competitors. The posts reflect that reality and most Intel negativity is largely amplified here these days.

r/hardware is still a great sub, but the undertones have changed quite a bit over the last couple of years.

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LeotardoDeCrapio@reddit

The average reader of this sub is either an adult male gamer parroting stuff they read somewhere on the net, astroturfers, or interns from corporate combing for keywords.

People, who either works in industry or have the necessary academic background, are rare.

It truly is bizarre to read posts with people, with zero understanding of the basic Electrophysics involved, having huge emotional blowouts over semiconductor node names for example.

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Quatro_Leches@reddit

keyword 'nearly'

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Helpdesk_Guy@reddit

22nm was no better and was also already well delayed, yet sneakily covered for again with a mobile-first launch.
Now guess what happened with their 32nm-node. Yup, also the first ones were the low-end parts at first.

Their first major slip-up on their 14nm they just couldn't no longer cover for, was a mere sneak-peak of what was about to come…
Quod erat demonstrandum. Since 10nm was the first utter fall-out being delayed ever so often.

It always gets wrongfully parroted and repeated ever again and kept as the overall notion (that their 10nm was the first time they struggled to ramp a node), despite it being just plain wrong – We've seen the same on 14nm before and so on 22nm as well, Intel 32nm was the last time they were at least largely on time, as you already mentioned.

They were also late on their 14nm-node before that, and their 22nm-node before that. All of them had the very same issue: Yields!

In fact, all their processes ever since their 32nm they had trouble with yield-issues and had to delay – It just not occurred as delays to the public, since the internal several months-long sanity-buffer and time-window (to provide for all contingencies, if some things may go wrong) was still largely covering the internal struggles they already had back then due to their already then infamous execution.

See the issue here? Intel had trouble with yields and always (even publicly) delayed their nodes on ALL THEIR PROCESSES since their 32nm back in 2010. I mean, even Toshiba had their own 32nm-process already running, in high-volume production and shipping said 32nm-products about a year earlier than Intel itself.

Toshiba had their 32nm-products in market by February 2009, when Intel shipped their first 32nm-CPU in January 2010.
Did you knew that? That even Toshiba had their own 32nm up and running and were shipping 32nm-products a year ahead of Intel itself?! And even back then, Intel only was able to ship the lowest-end and bottom-line SKU (it was the 2C/2T Celeron G1101) on 32nm.

Sounds familiar? With 22nm? Or their 14nm having their mobile-first release? Or their broken 2C/4T Core i3 8121U with fused-off graphics on their disaster 10nm™ no-one could ever buy, due to being released only for share-holders to some unknown no-name Chinese retailer no-one had heard before, only to legally comply with former statements and appease to their shareholders?

The thing is, it wasn't necessarily materials or too high ambitions all these years even well before 10nm. It was mainly their way of executing things, middle-management eff-ups and the upper floor keeping their struggles under the hood on purpose.

Either way, their struggles to ramp up nodes and their everlasting yield-issues on new processes ever since, which eventually always led to increasingly delaying and lots of cover-ups in with small-die and/or mobile-first launches node after node while covering for it with well-written stories, had been a long time in coming and had been knocking for eventually get its greater appearance already way, way before anything 10nm.

Yet after their 10nm, the gate-crasher and unpleasant friend Mr. Yielding finally made itself comfortable and was here to stay …
Intel just never had the balls to call up Dr. Sanity, to let him clean up the decks and finally throw out Prof. Hubris and his gang for good, who's not just Yielding's best drinking buddy, but a heavy drinker itself, and always loves to drink with the kool aid while holding hands.

“Empires always have the hubris to think they are indestructible, when in fact they are always unsustainable.”
– Marianne Williamson, american author

tl;dr: We've seen the hubris. And now we're seeing the scandals.

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Real-Human-1985@reddit

Yup. Been an issue getting worse and worse over time since 22nm.

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AstralBull@reddit

Hopes are up, expectations are down.

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SERIVUBSEV@reddit

18A wouldn't save Intel Corp. It was a sequential improvement that turned into a big bet because Intel couldn't deliver on 20A like they promised.

Moores Law is on it's last leg. The improvements from N3 -> N2 are significantly lower than those from N5 -> N3 but cost increase is bigger.

Those who adopt top line products like Apple have demand problems because M3 chips aren't that much better than M2 or M1 in terms of performance, for the same reason.

Others like Nvidia, riding billion dollar AI hype, will still ship their 2025 line on N4 node, because they don't think paying more for newer nodes is worth it.

That said Intel isn't dead yet like all the other articles imply, they still have 2-3 years more of bad decisions left.

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LeotardoDeCrapio@reddit

I mean if AMD could survive over a decade of poor performance...

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Helpdesk_Guy@reddit

AMD never had the issue of being a arrogant place nor ever had a culture reflecting Intel's toxic, backstabbing corporate wasteland.

They're both not even remotely comparable when it comes to culture and work-climate. AMD always held on to being culturally more like a start-up (and does so to this day) than a bureaucratic behemoth with red tape-procedures like Intel always was from back in the days in the 70/80s.

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LeotardoDeCrapio@reddit

LOL. What are you even going on about?

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Helpdesk_Guy@reddit

Both their cultures, which has a enormous impact on their likelihood of survival. AMD was able to quickly adapt to a very lean and efficient style of doing business, which ended up as AMD being almost brisk in their ability to adapt quickly and refuel its perspective.

Intel not so much, as the people over there never really learned to do so nor was Intel ever in a position to be forced to do due to being any money-constrained (thanks to their tight grip on their de-facto subsidiaries in Far East aka OEMs).

Intel just will not be able to survive off a small-income stream like AMD's consoles-deals back then and adapt to a lean course of business, before they're running out of money and have to file for Chapter 11 – Intel just needs several metric tons of money a day, to just keep the lights on alone, never mind doing any business.

Though it's nice to know, that it really needs to be expressively explained to you, like speaking to a five-year-old and that you couldn't possibly draw a line from Intel's nature to their business-survival by yourself in the first place. Says a lot, to say the least …

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LeotardoDeCrapio@reddit

LOL. Keep digging.

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iwannasilencedpistol@reddit

Intel Corp you say?🤨📷

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vhailorx@reddit

Moore's law was always a rule of thumb more than a law, so it would not be surprising to see the rate of improvement go up dramatically as transistors get so snall that they are close to molecular size.

But we should also remember that high performance microchips are now more or less a monopoly, but the fabs and the lithographu. So lower performance gains and higher pricing likely reflect at least some monopolist behaviour.

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TheComradeCommissar@reddit

You can't keep reducing transistors' size indefinitely; sooner or later, the wave properties of electrons would catch up with you.

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Legal-Insurance-8291@reddit

You don't have to keep making them smaller though. You can make 3D structures to keep increasing density. There's already flash memory hundreds of layers tall.

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Astigi@reddit

Intel 18A is the ultimatum, if it isn't a proper TSMC alternative, Intel is finished as foundry.

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juGGaKNot4@reddit

I don't assume anything. I just see they haven't launched anything on time since 2016 and point it out to people who are always overly optimistic with every Intel delay and cancellation.

Like the latest. 20a cancelation is great for Intel they can focus on 18a. Give me a break.

I'm waiting on arrow lake before I decide if I'm buying amd or Intel right now but that's all tsmc. Not Intel.

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1600vam@reddit

20A was always planned to be a stepping stone to 18A. The fact that 18A is going well means that 20A is no longer needed. That's a good thing.

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juGGaKNot4@reddit

Sure it is

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dztruthseek@reddit

Whatever you want investors to believe...

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College_Prestige@reddit

There are so many 18a articles on this sub and the only thing I have to say is I'll believe it when I see it. Intel lost the benefit of the doubt for me. It's the tech version of Boeing rn

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Lalaland94292425@reddit

/r/hardware still mostly in denial I see. Intel is done as a company, they'll be in the annals of history before the end of the decade, and study material for students soon thereafter if not already.

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Lalaland94292425@reddit

Spoiler alert: it is over. Intel's bet on 18A was dumb. Gelsinger most incompetent Intel CEO; was a mouth piece to uphold the stock value lol.

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Famous_Wolverine3203@reddit

The duality of u/TwelveSilverSwords loll.

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TwelveSilverSwords@reddit (OP)

Eh?

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Possibly a new branch of computing progress will emerge that actually has growth potential. It doesn't exist yet.