Intel has just 18 months to 'land a hero customer on 14A' or its cutting-edge fabs are toast, says chip industry analyst
Posted by snowfordessert@reddit | hardware | View on Reddit | 305 comments
bubblesort33@reddit
If there is no limit on the price floor I'm sure that's not a problem.
Exist50@reddit
There's still a risk level where even free doesn't cover the RnD expense.
Mo-Monies@reddit
That's exactly it. Even if it was free, who would bet their supply chain on a company that is considering canning this whole part of their business? I'm sure everyone would rather go with the security of TSMC even if it is expensive.
Evening_Feedback_472@reddit
Lol security ? Not using Intel is the opposite of security
If Intel folds foundary you have a monopoly left.
Tsmc can price whatever they want also Taiwan already said leading edge will never leave Taiwan.
It will always be Taiwan gets leading edge. Na tsmc fabs get the same node a few years later.
ShredGuru@reddit
Well ya, that strategy is kinda crucial to the continued existence of Taiwan
secretOPstrat@reddit
Samsung is still trying to succeed in foundry.
Evening_Feedback_472@reddit
I don't think so they just announced their foundry results. They are keeping it to protect Korea.
Notably, the company’s Device Solutions division, which encompasses its memory chip, semiconductor design and foundry business units, reported a 93.8% drop in operating profit year over year.
Fabs are just not a profitable venture it something you do to protect your business / country
jmlinden7@reddit
There is only enough room for a single leading edge fab to be profitable. You don't have enough economies of scale otherwise.
nanonan@reddit
There's room for a few at the top. The only fab who struggles to profit is Intel.
jmlinden7@reddit
Samsung also struggles to profit. Global Foundries struggled so much that they quit leading edge nodes altogether
nanonan@reddit
Samsung is profitable. They aren't struggling for customers. GF deliberately abandoned the top, and are profitable.
jmlinden7@reddit
GF had to struggle to become profitable. Samsung's fab is not profitable
nanonan@reddit
Samsungs fabs are absolutely profitable, what are you talking about?
jmlinden7@reddit
Samsungs fabs are profitable if you include their memory fabs. Their foundry division is not profitable.
nanonan@reddit
Where are you getting that breakdown?
jmlinden7@reddit
You can extrapolate from their combined results.
Their DS (Device Solutions) division which includes memory, logic design (Exynos), and foundry only made $255 million.
Memory is making money hand over fist due to the insatiable demand for VRAM, which means that the foundry (which only has 50% utilization despite hefty discounts) must be operating at a loss.
In past years, they have had some years when their foundry was profitable. They've also had years like 2023 when their entire DS solution was unprofitable. This is largely due to shifts in memory demand, since memory makes up more than 70% of their revenue
nanonan@reddit
Your extrapolation is flawed. That shows $5billion usd in revenue from the foundries. Not sure why you think that means they are unprofitable.
jmlinden7@reddit
Foundries cost a lot more than $5 billion/year to operate..
moment_in_the_sun_@reddit
Classically economically yes, but I think the leading edge demand is so high right now that there is profitability for more than one player for a while.
got-trunks@reddit
Which is why I don't really see the US allowing intel to fold, and if they do they could probably rehome in Europe and get a ton of investment doing it.
I don't actually think they are going anywhere though. Not until someone can surpass their capacity and tech domestically.
imaginary_num6er@reddit
Both sides of the political spectrum did criticize Intel for the CHIPS Act since as soon as they approved funding, Intel just cut jobs. No one left in Washington is willing to defend them and would rather (and likely already assumed), TSMC and Samsung plants on US soil counts as "domestic" chip manufacturing.
FembiesReggs@reddit
As is right, because fuck intel for its greed
Strazdas1@reddit
The naivety of this one... as if the alternatives arent more greedy.
Exist50@reddit
What politicians would support that kind of spending? They'd rather invest in domestic TSMC fabs and at least get something out of it.
got-trunks@reddit
If the Intel fab tech is spun off and hamstrung like Global Foundries the US could just sit on old but reliable tech, but they would fall so far behind in long-term capabilities that hand-me-downs from TSMC wouldn't help.... If China invades Taiwan and it looks dire that company has a self-destruct plan in place to stop China from being able take advantage...
They could try to ramp-up elsewhere but that's still years and years long efforts to stand up and get productive, leave alone the possible loss of IP that couldn't be safely extracted.
Exist50@reddit
Intel has no "old and reliable" nodes anyone wants to use.
That claim is just false.
ProfessionalPrincipa@reddit
Samsung is floundering but they actually have an ecosystem with foundry customers and a memory business plus legacy processes to bring in revenue. Both are things which Intel really doesn't have.
rowdy_1c@reddit
Samsung is doing completely fine
ProfessionalPrincipa@reddit
They've been in a similar state to Intel where they have been using external for their flagship chips.
Pimpmuckl@reddit
Isn't that different?
Samsung's smartphone engineers like to use Snapdragon chips for their S-series flagships.
If they use Exynos, those are fabbed in-house though from what I remember.
So they use completely different products, but if they use their own products, it uses their own foundry.
ProfessionalPrincipa@reddit
Meant to say phones but that's just another sign that their nodes aren't as good as TSMC even if they match them in "nm".
nanonan@reddit
Making $300 million in a quarter isn't what I'd call floundering.
ProfessionalPrincipa@reddit
Trailing nodes not working great or living up to original forecasts. Latest nodes are worse than competitor's older nodes. Functional and parametric yields are an apparent big problem. If they're trying to keep up on the bleeding edge I'd call that floundering.
FembiesReggs@reddit
Yeah Korean Govt is stupid protectionist.
Tho, SK economy is like 1/3rd Samsung group so Samsung basically IS the govt lol.
nanonan@reddit
They had large R&D costs for GAA impacting those profits, which were still around $300 million USD for a quarter.
Exist50@reddit
Barely profitable is still a hell of a lot better than the state of Intel's fabs.
moment_in_the_sun_@reddit
And they just won the new tesla ai chip, in Texas
Tgrove88@reddit
They also just got Intel's best main engineer for glass substrate
FembiesReggs@reddit
True but that’s really only so long the SK govt wants/needs them to. Don’t think the SK govt is too trusting of the Chinese
Plank_With_A_Nail_In@reddit
Monopoly only at the cutting edge there are plenty of players on older nodes.
nanonan@reddit
By that perspective TSMC has a monopoly right now and nothing will change.
Exist50@reddit
Samsung still exists, and companies clearly have more faith in them than in Intel. You're assuming they ever considered Intel to be a TSMC alternative to begin with.
Vushivushi@reddit
The solution to this is Intel outsourcing some of their product design instead of their manufacturing.
Customers get the experience of designing with Intel's process technology, but all the risk is on Intel's products.
Adorable-Fault-651@reddit
There needs to be at least a few Fabs capable of supplying strategic chips domestically. Experts have been screaming for years that it was a huge risk and only when profits take a hit during COVID does government realize that the military uses computers and electricity. The boomers are stuck thinking we're flying wooden planes from 1942.
Bill_Brasky01@reddit
Biden passed the CHIPS act and Trump repealed it. What else can we do?
SherbertExisting3509@reddit
What Intel needs to do is to dedicate engineers to help transfer a customer's design to the 18A process for free
The product itself can't just be sold at cost, Intel needs to provide support and co-devropment for 18A
They need to get the PDK and tooling right, they need to provide high and low density options.
They need to provide a high power and low power optimized version of 18A.
Currently, 18A only had its initial variant, which, according to Intel's data is ok at low power and great at high power in PPW.
Maybe after Intel proves the nodes high-volume viability with Panther Lake (I'm hoping for Xe3P Celestial, but know there's a good chance it won't come) customers will be more willing to bite.
We don't know how good 18A is compared to N3 or M2. However, customer interest has dried up in the last 12 months, which says a lot about the node.
Apparently, there's still customer interest in the AFAIK low-power optimized 18AP node, so we'll see where that goes.
Vushivushi@reddit
Free is not enough if Intel fails to deliver and the customer loses opportunity in the market.
What Intel has to do is capitulate certain markets to their customers and license their technologies to be manufactured by Intel, for Intel products. Particularly, their high margin growth markets in design.
Nvidia GPUs inside Intel Core processors and AMD CPUs inside Intel Xeon processors.
Customers gain experience with Intel foundry, get paid, and proliferate their IP further across the market, influencing customer workloads.
Intel survives and competes in the high margin foundry business, but also still competes in client CPUs.
Quatro_Leches@reddit
As opposed to paying rnd and not getting customers at all lol
jeremiah_wright_@reddit
"sign on the dotted line or my entire foundry goes bankrupt" isn't exactly a risk free proposition for AMD
fastheadcrab@reddit
Technically they wouldn't go bankrupt, its more that the Intel CEO is openly proclaiming that if they don't make enough money, they won't bother with it and pull support for 14A
IMO that's even worse lol.
Strazdas1@reddit
They are a cutting edge fab. 18A is basically a 2.5N and 2N is super expensive.
fastheadcrab@reddit
No, they are close to cutting edge but no longer at that level. The lack of customers speaks for itself.
Strazdas1@reddit
Cutting edge is more than literally the best node.
Geddagod@reddit
How is that arrogance? Intel already is losing millions, if not billions of dollars, from their fabs already. If 14A is unprofitable without external customers, they can't fab 14A, not that they "won't bother".
Scion95@reddit
I mean, for the PS6, the risk is arguably as much or more for Sony than for AMD.
Like, my understanding is that the semi-custom chips don't have high margins, and a chunk of the r&d and design work for the chip is paid for by the customer.
The point was that it's reliable, relatively low-risk income for AMD, that's the reason Lisa Su pushed for it back before they had Ryzen.
Helpdesk_Guy@reddit
That's not for AMD to decide alone. I'm fairly certain Sony has a say in this, where the PS6-chips are manufactured …
ElementII5@reddit
There is NO WAY AMD is going to hand over their literal blueprints for their Ryzen and Radeon IP to intel.
DehydratedButTired@reddit
They already cross license features with AMD.
Nanas700kNTheMathMjr@reddit
lol'ed @ literal blueprints. You mean like Qualcomm to Samsung?
You assume they didn't think of this before investing billions into IFS?
Why does this sub not ban fanb0ys I wonder.
ElementII5@reddit
Samsung is a lot different to Intel. Samsung is more of conglomerate where business units are a lot more separate than with intel.
And intel did every shady and illegal thing they could think of to a lot of other companies but also especially to AMD.
Um, yes I actually think they didn't think of that. They probably thought like with most of their other endeavors: "What could possibly go wrong. We are INTEL after all!"
But also the proof is in the pudding. Spending tens of billions in Fab construction without ANY customers at all....
That'd be really refreshing. I have been telling this sub for years now what is going to happen to intel. I was downvoted year after year. Yet I was right...
Geddagod@reddit
What does that have anything to do with stealing IP?
Just like you were right about GNR vs Genoa perf/watt?
ElementII5@reddit
I was responding to the other guys argument.
Yeah, I have a very good post about that. You wanna see?
Geddagod@reddit
Sure, about how Intel wouldn't have made the decision behind IFS lightly.
Your claim is that since Intel overestimated how good their 18A node is, and how much people wanted it, this also means that they suddenly are also thinking about stealing customers IP?
I've already seen, and flamed you, for your napkin math estimations lol. Remember this comment thread?
But sure, keep whining about how you are always right (you aren't) and that you always get downvoted (for good reason).
ElementII5@reddit
All the evidence points towards that they saw an economic need for it. They were losing TAM share to AMD and ARM and developing nodes gets exponentially more expensive.
They wanted IFS so they could get extra revenue not because they knew that they could provide value to others. It looks like they assumed others would just line up because...?
Intel already stole IP from rivals. DEC? Intergraph? Just because AMD is a customer it does not mean it stops being the main rival.
And I just think that there is a multitude of reasons to choose TSMC over intel. One is that TSMC is not literally competing with most of them.
AMD knows Intel has a tight budget because foundry is loosing money. If all things were equal AMD would always choose TSMC because the mere idea of propping up your main rival with revenue is ludicrous.
Agree to disagree?
Eh, I have my moments...
https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/1bukz8a/intel_discloses_7_billion_operating_loss_for/kxzbyiw/
Geddagod@reddit
I would check out this comment.
That's what TSMC is doing with Intel right now.
Betting against Intel is usually a safe bet. Problem is that you pretty much always bet against Intel, with flawed or no reasoning what so ever, so you also end up with poorly aging predictions as well. Like the one I just linked above.
ElementII5@reddit
Its a good comment. It does not counter the argument though that it is a bad idea to give intel your IP.
Um, that is the other way around. Intel is giving TSMC revenue and directly funding their competitor. And it kind of proofs my point. Intel HAS to do it because they ran out of options. AMD does not HAVE to go with intel and therefor won't.
I am right for the wrong reasons or by being dumb? I'll take it. It's probably the best I am getting out of you. Better than being wrong by being smaht...
Geddagod@reddit
It does exactly that? He explains why there's no point for Intel to "steal IP".
And TSMC could easily have let Intel to the roadside, without letting them fab anything on their nodes.
Companies work with competitors all the time.
Your often wrong too.
hansrotec@reddit
I mean they have one customer themselves, it’s just they have been a terrible customer and producer as of late
Alive_Wedding@reddit
Because this sub would lose at least 40% of the subscribers
dparks1234@reddit
This is borderline an economics sub
996forever@reddit
except people don't know anything about economics, either
zacker150@reddit
This is stupid.
Chip design is like software - quite literally since it's written in Verilog. AMD doesn't hand TSMC the source code for their chips. They give them the equivalent of a pre-compiled binary.
nanonan@reddit
They already reverse engineer each other. This would make it a hundred times easier.
zacker150@reddit
Anything noteworthy about the chip design is patented.
nanonan@reddit
Anyone can read a patent, that's not what they would worry about being stolen. Patents are not implementations.
zacker150@reddit
There's no point for Intel to reverse-engineer the implementation, since those implementations would be covered by said patent.
Trust is built using lawyers and the threat of lawsuits, not technical measures.
0xe1e10d68@reddit
It’s not like they can just copy details from AMD‘s design though
DXPower@reddit
There are even tools to further encrypt that "pre compiled" binary if you really don't want anyone trying to reverse engineer it. I've had to deal with them, they're a huge PITA to work with.
0xe1e10d68@reddit
And if any details of AMD‘s designs were to show up in Intel chips Intel would get fucked in court. I assume they know better than to fuck around like that.
nanonan@reddit
Presumably the fab would decode it at some point.
Doctrina_Stabilitas@reddit
These things are legally firewalled, sure there might be some talk internally, but intel would lose so much more by acting on it
nanonan@reddit
Intel would never engage in unlawful behaviour.
Qaxar@reddit
When has the law prevented Intel from fucking over AMD? If I'm Lisa Su I'm not throwing Intel a lifeline even if it's beneficial for AMD. What Intel has gotten away needs to be answered for since the courts have repeatedly refused to hold them accountable.
Doctrina_Stabilitas@reddit
The law is why AMD exists after anti monopoly and the agreement between intel and AMD for x64
Qaxar@reddit
That's an instance of the law being applied. The landscape has changed dramatically since then. Monopolistic and anti competitive practices are no longer punished. You get a slap on the wrist and go back to what you were doing.
littleemp@reddit
The opposite. They gladly would.
Imagine the lawsuit if Intel was dumb enough to copy anything from their work.
ElementII5@reddit
I could imagine intel doing it. I could imagine the lawsuit.
Just like the lawsuit intel got around the world for bribing OEMs not to use AMD. I also remember how intel drew out the lawsuits for 10+ years almost bankrupting AMD. I also remember Intel getting out of paying the fines in Europe by promising Fabs in Germany, Poland, France and Italy. Pinky swear!
You guys are very naive...
Zenith251@reddit
Hah. Throw away the entire business just to copy some chip designs? AMD would either own Intel and it's assets by the end of the decade, or be picked apart by the cultures and dissolved as a company if they did.
littleemp@reddit
Lol use your head.
Imagine the reputation that their fab would get if something like IP theft happened there.
How to destroy your multibillion dollar investment overnight 101.
ElementII5@reddit
But with all the shitt they pulled they already have that kind of reputation.
Jumpy_Cauliflower410@reddit
The two-tiered justice system. Yea...
Jonny_H@reddit
While they could use that to make a literal exact clone, the level the fabs tend to work at (no documentation, no "institutional" knowledge, often a processed gate net rather than the original HDL with descriptive names and comments etc.) means that understanding it and then modifying it to fit their other IP units and verifying the results is likely a similar order of magnitude of effort to implementing the "same" high level design. Same with the understanding required to then improve it for the next generation.
And that would start the development pipeline when the fab actually gets their hands on it - there's often a number of ongoing overlapping multi-year projects simply because the timescales involved are large enough, so in the 4 (or whatever years) it takes them to then understand and clone their "Intel zen6" core, it'll be a couple of generations old.
The "Drop-in Clever Tricks" tend to be protected by patents rather than secrecy. There's enough engineer crossover between the different companies in this space that they could just pay $$$ to hire and grill an ex-engineer from the competitor. They can't take things like source code with them, but they can't be expected to magically forget everything they've worked on.
nanonan@reddit
AMD might have a slight issue trusting Intel.
philn256@reddit
Just because they're competitors doesn't mean that they can't cooperate. There's plenty of other peoples "lunch" to eat since their market caps are only some $362B out of a much larger industry.
DehydratedButTired@reddit
You are forgetting how Intel came to dominance and how unfair they play any chance they get. I’m not saying AMD or Nvidia is better but all of those companies were terrors for decades to each other. AMD literally had to make a huge chip deal with China to escape the same fate.
jianh1989@reddit
If intel goes down, AMD monopoly means price will soar
djm07231@reddit
It seems pretty grim when Tesla thought that Samsung Foundry was a better bet than Intel.
If you are losing out to Samsung Foundry the outlook is quite dour.
Noteagro@reddit
It is crazy to me we are a little over 8 years from the first Ryzen chip being released, and that was seen as the last chance for AMD to survive a death to Intel dominating the market. It is now insane to see a company that had less than 10% the market share then now been poised to run Intel out of business due to Intel’s complacency and relying on a government that then pulled the rug from under them.
Intel dropped the ball hard thinking they already killed AMD, and then Lisa Su absolutely killed it keeping AMD from dying when she took over.
Folsdaman@reddit
Half of AMDs success is because of TSMC beating Intel and not because of anything AMD did.
AMD and Intel are barely comparable companies. AMD gave up on its manufacturing a long time ago.
Eastern_Ad6546@reddit
Ryzens till had to truly slap and not just win due to the process edge TSMC provides. Bulldozer would like blow the same volume of chunks if intel fabbed the design.
We even got verification AMD is indeed ahead purely on design when meteor lake and lunar lake still didn't outcompete ryzen.
Dazzling-Cabinet6264@reddit
I think I’m learning something new right now. I didn’t know. Until produces all of its own chips, but AMD does not?
TheMooseontheLoose@reddit
Arrow Lake is made on TSMC 3nm.
nanonan@reddit
Both did back in the day, in 2009 AMD spun off its foundries now known as Global Foundries. Intel stuck with them.
Hundkexx@reddit
Had they not ditched GF, we would probably have a much different set of CPU's today. Man that ATI deal really made a number on AMD just at the same time the knockout came from Conroe.
People should know though, it wasn't all too far that AMD would own Nvidia. Had AMD been richer, it would most likely be the case.
TheRudeMammoth@reddit
I think they did something though. They made sensible decisions about their choice of foundry.
Strazdas1@reddit
No they didnt. AMD did not want to sell GloFo. they were forced to.
Adorable-Fault-651@reddit
The FX dual core chips beat intel to market and operterons had more cores than intel per generation. AMD stumbled with bulldozer because of the FAB tech, not design.
Once they matched lithography, they ran away with it.
Pentium 4 was horrid. And they're doing the same thing of throwing wattage to compete.
SherbertExisting3509@reddit
The bulldozer floor plan would've been large to begin with if 32nm turned out like they thought it would.
There were some changes to SRAM in 32nm that made 64kb L1d not viable.
The fact that 64kb of L1d cache stuck out the sides of the core on 32nm is AMD's fault for taking too much risk with the design and floor plan.
This forced them to cut L1d to 16kb write-through with a 4kb Write Coalescing Cache insulating it from L2 write bandwidth.
But 4kb is small, and once you exceed it, write bandwidth plummets to L2 levels.
Poor L1d is one of the main reasons why Bulldozer is crap
Big-Height-9757@reddit
bulldozer what a messy design, there’s plenty videos in YouTube explaining it.
buildzoid@reddit
Bulldozer on 32nm is literally lower IPC than Phenom II on 45nm. Bulldozer is a trash architecture and unless it got fabbed on process that could get it to 6+GHz on ambient it was never gonna be competitive.
randomkidlol@reddit
first couple generations of ryzen were built on gloflo not tsmc. those chips were extremely competitive with comparable intel parts in price and performance.
ResponsibleJudge3172@reddit
Nah, don't be framing early Ryzen vs Intel entirely differently than Intel vs Ryzen right now despite having the exact same characteristics.
AMD was far away from gaming performance but had good multi core.
Intel is far away in gaming performance today but has good multicore.
porkusdorkus@reddit
Yea, early AMD was awful. They crashed and overheated a lot. Intel is still fine for gaming though, comparing stats is silly when practicality is what matters. Does it work, and is it cheap. I got a used 12900k for $100 that plays any game just fine and still got plenty of power to spare for multi-tasking.
Ok_Antelope_1953@reddit
not on thermal regulations. those chips were prone to overheating and self-throttling. tsmc 7nm zen 2 was revolutionary compared to zen/zen+.
Zenith251@reddit
That's not the whole story, not at all. Intel could have squashed AMD's resurgence before Zen2 came out if they actually had >4 cores designs in the pipeline years prior, and been more aggressive with their pricing after Zen launched.
But they didn't. They had every intention of resting on their laurels, and only bringing more cores and IO to their Xeon lineups, ensuring that stronger compute was locked behind commercial pricing.
Dasboogieman@reddit
Don't forget Spectre and Meltdown. That debacle bled Intel's IPC really hard.
Helpdesk_Guy@reddit
Fair enough.
So did Intel, obviously.
Exist50@reddit
Which Intel should have done as well. They would be a healthy company now if they gave up the fabs years ago.
Admirable-Lie-9191@reddit
Well that, and taking AMD more seriously when they launched first gen ryzen.
Bill_Brasky01@reddit
Or Athlon…
the_nin_collector@reddit
AMD could have thrown its hands up in the air and given up. Or tried to go a different direction. They kept motivation up when morale was looking down.
PlaDook@reddit
Had Intel agreed to make chips for iPhones then TSMC wouldn't be able to beat Intel today so that's on them too.
csprofathogwarts@reddit
To give AMD a little credit, they worked really hard to extricate themselves from GlobalFoundries' exclusive contract just as TSMC was taking a lead. It paid off.
Pimpmuckl@reddit
The funniest shit in all of this is the pure hubris that Intel not only will slaughter AMD (as they did with the Core-series before) but also invest exactly zero in any form of hedged bet.
They didn't bother to even think about opening up their leading edge nodes for external customers and have their Foundry-business get into a similar position as TSMC is or I suppose Samsung.
Then just buying random ass companies because it felt like a cool move to make and here we are, with a company too big to fail on their last legs.
I still hope that the Foundry business is spun off at some time so that could finally jumpstart some gov subsidies/investment and have no baggage of the product division. If that works or not is a big questionmark but hey, it would finally be something fresh.
gnexuser2424@reddit
Intel stagnated and got way too complacent..
mishrashutosh@reddit
the thing is intel still pulls in far more revenue and profit than amd. market cap is one thing, but intel is still much bigger than amd for the "casuals" market. it's the enthusiast and increasingly datacenter markets where intel is losing steam. was recently checking firefox's usage stats, and 80% of its users are still on intel. https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/hardware
intel just need to get their shit together, eat the humble pie, and clean up their house. if they can pull this off they will be back in business.
porkusdorkus@reddit
From their recent moves it appears they are doing exactly this. They have market share in the area that matters, office desktops. 20 to 1 price to revenue, would sound like a good time to buy intel, but the future is uncertain. I don’t think they are going anywhere, personally, but who the hell knows.
Big-Height-9757@reddit
Intel is not running out of business yet, they are having the same “moment” AMD had 10+ years ago when they decided to spun off their fabs.
intel will still exist, but won’t fab their chips like they have done their whole lifetime. Their margins will reduce, but they still have a lot of money and market available to exist.
Dazzling-Cabinet6264@reddit
I still remember all of the reviews around the first ryzen like it was yesterday. People were generally impressed with it. The multicore performance was strong, but Intel still blew it out of the water with games.
I remember thinking “darn that was AMD’s last chance” and they freaking kept making the improvements year over a year and winning people over
Dasboogieman@reddit
It really helped that they released the original Ryzens at pretty good prices in addition to a reasonable chipset. Like, there were a few SKUs (IIRC the Ryzen 5 1600 was a real darling) that were basically good enough thus allowing such a low platform cost of ownership that any aspiring gamer could re-invest the savings to bumping up their GPU tier or better storage.
The net result was a much better overall experience than Intel because the best value on that side was the venerable i5-8400 that had a higher platform cost. Things then got progressively worse for Intel as the Meltdown and Spectre mitigations started filtering in.
I remember advising many a new Buildapc peeps to consider the 1600.
nanonan@reddit
No government has pulled any rug from Intel. Intels struggle to meet deadlines is nobodys fault but Intel.
FembiesReggs@reddit
Yeah, this. Fucking weird ass agenda to throw in there lol.
Intel kills itself by being complacent and greedy. Not releasing anything remotely competitive for like a decade…
How could the US government do this to intel!?!!??
FembiesReggs@reddit
Why are you blaming the government for intels own shit management? Dude…
the_nin_collector@reddit
Kinda proves "I am not dead yet" Keep fucking fighting and getting back on the bike or horse or whatever until you are dead and buried in the ground.
imaginary_num6er@reddit
Pat uttered those magic words: "All of a sudden, boom, we are back in the game. AMD in the rear view mirror in clients, and never again will they be in the windshield"
And all of a sudden, boom, Intel in the back of the market.
Vushivushi@reddit
And when AMD began putting up a fight, Intel thought it'd be smart to spend billions on incentives for their supply chain to mute AMD's share gains instead of spending that on fixing their internal problems.
They also did buybacks until Q1 2021 as 10nm fully ramped 5 years late.
Financial engineering, market engineering... Intel invested in anything but real engineering.
Noteagro@reddit
Oh let’s not forget the paying studios and developers loads of money to purposely hamstring their game/program on AMD equipment with those “Powered by Intel” shit when you launch games.
snowfordessert@reddit (OP)
I mean, if you look at it differently, Samsung is the only foundry catching up to TSMC. There's literally nobody else
Thicc-Donut@reddit
SMIC?
nanonan@reddit
Still need to crack EUV, but I doubt that will take long.
Asleep-Card3861@reddit
Can’t say I’ve looked into it, but I heard Japan was near to having a leading edge node again
Death2RNGesus@reddit
It also strengthens Tesla in Korea, making it virtually impossible for the government to pass bills that penalise Tesla in the Korean market.
CeleryApple@reddit
They have not demonstrated HVM with 10++++ super nm, cancelled 20A and 18A is also in trouble. How do you expect customers to have faith in 14A. Even Intel's top of the line chips are made at TSMC.
Geddagod@reddit
Yes they have?
CeleryApple@reddit
When they don't even make their consumer products on it you know the yields are bad enough that it wipes out profit margins.
Geddagod@reddit
It's not yields, they have massive what, 400mm2+ compute tile on Intel 3 for server.
And they have like 600mm2+ compute tiles on "10++++ super nm".
CeleryApple@reddit
Intel has also never released yield information and defect density information publicly which does not help build confidence.
The problem is the only chips made on Intel 7 4 and 3 are Intel's own chips which mean the process can be infinitely tailored to chips to increase yield and vice versa. But now they are trying to a be a foundry for everyone. Their process must be able to reach an acceptable yields and performance targets for chips from various customers. It is not possible to tailor your process to every customer or expect your customers to tailor their designs to your process unless you provide a huge amount of support (TSMC does).
If the yields and performance is there orders will come because TSMC is already short of capacity for their advance nodes and it gives clients more power in negotiating pricing. If Intel Foundry is to succeed they need to lure their first major third party customer by making their chips at lost, similar to what Samsung is doing with Tesla.
Strazdas1@reddit
Neither has anyone else in decades.
CeleryApple@reddit
TSMC does .... https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/tsmc-discloses-n2-defect-density-lower-than-n3-at-the-same-stage-of-development
gg06civicsi@reddit
Intel is too important to the US govt and national security to just die. I have a feeling they will get bailed out if things really go bad.
Exist50@reddit
There doesn't seem to be any political will for that. And even then, what would a bailout do besides delay the inevitable?
hansrotec@reddit
In the end DoD may save it, as it’s strategically important, and we need to increase production natively, as it is now we have left ourselves quite open to all kinds of disruption
sasquatch_melee@reddit
Or will they just try to get TSMC to operate certain Intel US facilities once Intel fails?
The need for domestic manufacturing is still there but there's no guarantee it'll be Intel filling that void.
hansrotec@reddit
True, but the DoD has a long history of two suppliers rule, while not how we got amd, I am sure ibms exposure to that helped them implement their own rule leading to amd
jmlinden7@reddit
DoD has their own fabs, just nothing leading edge.
jeffscience@reddit
They outsource to contractors. https://www.acq.osd.mil/asds/dmea/tapo/trusted-supplier-programs.html
imaginary_num6er@reddit
Also Texas Instruments. They don't only make calculators to stay in business
jmlinden7@reddit
Sandia National Labs is on that list and is a government laboratory. But regardless, there is plenty of domestic fab capability for DoD needs
Exist50@reddit
The DoD doesn't have the volume. They don't even use cutting edge nodes.
RandomFatAmerican420@reddit
The most ironic part is… the obvious move to save Intel is… tariff, and incentives for companies to buy domestically owned silicon.
Problem is Tariff guy loves TSMC. They rolled out the red carpet for him, gave him tons of stuff he could say about “investments”(that may never happen). So Intel is fucked.
The fact that there is no political will for this is absolutely mind blowing. Even CHIPS act. They gave almost as much money to TSMC… the company Intel needs to beat to survive. In reality I think TSMC actually ends up receiving more, because TSMC was strong enough to follow through whereas Intel is dying before it could.
What Intel needed was us government or DOD to buy a 10% stake in Intel to give them cash. Then carrot and stick the mag 7, by making a law that says something like “25% of silicon used must be domestically produced, 10% must be made by domestically owned company, or else you have to pay a 25% surcharge for any amount you go over those limits”.
Even if you forced people to just buy 10% or 5% of their silicon from Intel, it would have been enough to spur relationships, trust, and the long term stability needed to make these fab investments with confidence.
Exist50@reddit
Nah, Intel is a global company. They can't just survive on protectionism.
RandomFatAmerican420@reddit
Sure they can. Why couldn’t they. The vast majority of companies buying to most silicon are American. And these are the same companies that will literally potentially go from trillion dollar companies to bankrupt if China invades Taiwan.
To me it is like buying insurance. It is a small price to pay for these companies to pay a few billion dollars to protect their trillion dollar valuations.
Intel’s main value is as a hedge against a China/Taiwan war. And as a hedge against a TSMC monopoly. These are free market facts. The problem is sometimes it is hard for the free market to act rationally, when it requires cooperation. That is where it makes sense for the government to step in, and allow these companies to protect themselves by protecting Intel. But without an agreement , where they all agree to help Intel in a way in which they all share the burden… no one company is going to do it alone.
More-Ad-4503@reddit
The China invading Taiwan is both CPC and CIA propaganda. China actually doesn't want to invade. They just have to make dumb overt statements because of a legacy face issue. The CIA says it because it's $$$$$$$$$$ for the MiC and is just another way of saying "China bad", which is literally their job.
RandomFatAmerican420@reddit
Yup. Just like Russia will never invade Ukraine, and China will never invade Hong Kong.
On a serious note… what makes you think this. Like 90% of nations on earth, including the USA consider Taiwan a part of China. So China has a pretty darn good argument that legally… this is an internal issue, and they can deal with it as they wish. On top of this, Taiwan is necessary for them to become both a deep water navy and a superpower.
So from a Chinese perspective not only does it make sense… it is necessary. And their military has been fine tuned for decades to accomplish this one goal… while the USA has been scatterbrained, and while it spent more… it is very ill prepared for the specific task. Most us think tank estimates from years ago say USA likely lost 2-4 carriers/supercarriers. Wonder what that number is up to now.
For china… they have a few years until F47 and B21 raider bomber come out. Until then the USA doesn’t really have any jets or naval assets capable of defeating their medium range anti ship missiles effectively. So once again… not only does this legally make sense for China… and politically make sense… and strategically make sense… it tactically makes sense for them to do it in the next 2 years before the B21 or F47 are fielded in high enough numbers. The USA massively ramped spending of B21 and F47 programs, and even cancelled/paused their next naval fighter program, because it is trying to rush the B21 and F47 out as fast as possible because how vulnerable the USA currently would be in this conflict if fought today.
Exist50@reddit
They may be, but their customers aren't all Americans. How do you think other countries would react? Especially when alternatives increasingly exist.
It should say something that no company seems as bothered by this risk as reddit and the defense hawks claim they should be. But let's put aside the actual probability of such a scenario for a moment.
How would using Intel to fab a few parts protect them? It's not just compute silicon. The vast majority of their supply chain goes through some combination of China and Taiwan at some point. A CPU is useless if you can't get a motherboard for it, or one of the thousand other components needed.
Not to mention, China alone is a huge portion of the global demand for electronics. If you assume they're out of the equation, then you probably have an economic crisis everywhere else, and who's left to actual buy their products to begin with?
RandomFatAmerican420@reddit
Not sure what you mean by this. First off I don’t know what you mean by “how will they react”. Secondly… who is the other option? Thirdly… I assume you are insinuating that this would somehow make American companies less competitive. There are 2 problems with this.
1.) most American companies only compete with other American companies.
2.) just because companies pay more in tariffs doesn’t mean their taxes could be 1:1 offset in other ways… meaning the company still makes the same exact amount of profit selling things at the same exact price, even with a tariff. It doesn’t matter if a company pays $50mil in corporate tax, or $25 mil in corporate tax, $25mil in tariffs… it’s the same result for both the consumer and the company. The only difference is whether the irs collects the “tax” or customs collects the “tax”.
No-Relationship8261@reddit
TSMC did when Intel was dominant.
In fact TSMC is a literal example how government support can make all the difference.
Government probably made their money back 100x on taxes from TSMC
Exist50@reddit
TSMC never got a bailout, no. You can argue that government support can help accelerate an already healthy company, but when has it ever turned around a sick one? We've seen this with the auto industry. Decades of government support, and still dependent on protectionism to survive.
Strazdas1@reddit
TSMC got a lot more than a bailout. They had protected land carved out for them which no other company could touch.
No-Relationship8261@reddit
Well TSMC would have never invested in newer nodes if government didn't step in.
Which is basically the same state as Intel right now.
They would survive as global foundries did, but even without the bailout Intel will survive as global Foundries did as well.
Situation is quite mirrored actually.
Exist50@reddit
You say that based on...?
Intel doesn't have viable legacy nodes to sell. And GloFo is hardly the model to aspire to.
No-Relationship8261@reddit
They will survive as global foundry even without government model I have no doubt in that.
Intels problem is they are turning 4$ into 1$, it's not that they didn't invest.
So 250bil invested will earn gloFo levels.
They need a government bailout to be more than global foundries.
For TSMC bit, just look at ownership. Government still owns about 10%. It was much higher, they have been selling it at insane profits.
Just check how they got those shares and when, you will understand what I mean.
bluehands@reddit
In the current climate there is always the political will if you buy the correct memcoin
Evening_Feedback_472@reddit
The amount of money to bail them out would be insane. We are not talking about current projects we are talking about ongoing development costs
Exciting-Ad-5705@reddit
It's the US government they have enough to pay for it. Especially when you frame it as a national security issue
NamerNotLiteral@reddit
The CHIP act put 8 billion aside for Intel.
Elon's little posse blew 21 billion in three months doing jack all except making the world a shittier place.
Evening_Feedback_472@reddit
Sure but they only paid out like 2 billion out of 8
nanonan@reddit
Which is entirely on Intel dragging its feet on the associated projects.
DetouristCollective@reddit
I agree that it is important to the US govt to have leading node foundries, but no reasonable amount of bail out is going to help Intel have that.
I think the time for the US govt to do something meaningful was years ago, creating incentives for customers to use Intel's 18A, and create incentives for companies to seriously explore 14A at least 6 months back.
Whether that "incentive" involves carrots or sticks for domestic and foreign customers, that's up for an interesting discussion.
DabuXian@reddit
The only thing that matters in the US is money. If it's cheaper to produce something in Asia, then the US counterpart is doomed to die. Happened thousands of times before, and it'll happen again with chip manufacturing.
jeremiah_wright_@reddit
Correct. Intel was already given a stay of execution in the 1980-1990s when the US kneecapped nippon electric and other japanese contenders:
Qaxar@reddit
There are limits to even what the US government can prop up. The best they can do is sell Intel for parts. There's no recouping the billions spent on fabs if there are no customers for those fabs.
AttyFireWood@reddit
I was curious what the stock market had to say, and Intel stock is at a 15 year low.
logosuwu@reddit
The stock market also gave us the 2008 financial crisis so perhaps finance bros are not who you should be listening to
Strazdas1@reddit
Bad loans gave us the 2008 crisis.
logosuwu@reddit
I'm not arguing with someone who says that "Woke pagan ideology is weakening America" and that "Mexican Cartels have massive representation on the UN"
Strazdas1@reddit
Then you have no sense of humour. And the first one isnt even what im saying, im just describing what the guy in video said.
AttyFireWood@reddit
It just shows whether investors have confidence in a company's future performance. But no shit, they aren't infallible.
logosuwu@reddit
And investors are amongst the worst people to get your hardware opinion from.
AttyFireWood@reddit
No one is getting a hardware opinion from an investor...
imaginary_num6er@reddit
It will never get back to the original value since that value was partially coming from dividends. Now, the stock's value is purely based on no dividends.
Quatro_Leches@reddit
Still overvalued they should be at what amd was at in like 2010 lol
AttyFireWood@reddit
So like $10? (For anyone who is not current with the stock prices? It's currently at $19. AMD is now at like $170.
Quatro_Leches@reddit
most companies are overpriced including amd, but intel is worthless imho, they literally cant get their shit together and there is zero sign or hope that they will.
No-Relationship8261@reddit
Even just the land Intel owns puts them at 10$ share.
It's really insane how the mighty have fallen.
As proving point, Intel invested 200 billion dollars of profit into fabs and R&D in last 5 years.
And 50 billion dollars of debt on top of it.
But now their market cap is less than 90 billion dollars.
They would be 3x if they just kept the cash in an interest account, Pat truly lost money faster than one could burn it.
Quatro_Leches@reddit
Pat wasn’t around long enough to make a difference on way or anotber
No-Relationship8261@reddit
No he extremely heavily invested in fabs. You can see before vs after in earnings.
He didn't get to stay around enough of a time.
But consumer wise Panther Lake should be first Pat project.
But given Pat basically got fired, probably 18A and Panther lake is not looking good.
He probably lost his job due to 20A getting fired. Board didn't like he spent 250 billion dollars and still couldn't get a TSMC 3 competitor.
ZeroInfluence@reddit
They’ll be alright. A lot of great latent R/D they’ll eventually figure out how to implement. lmao
deltron@reddit
I'm just so disappointed in capitalism, it destroyed a storied tech company.
colablizzard@reddit
I think something is wrong in the Public Company space that leads to extreme short term thinking.
I think all top execs and board members are in some clique. Same persons are on boards all over the corporate space and have no responsibility.
It's time to force all top exec compensation to be ONLY locked in long term stock that vests very slowly, maybe over 15Y.
SubstantialEmotion85@reddit
Nvidia and AMD don’t seem to suffer the same issues. Private companies are even more guilty of short term thinking in the startup space imo. This is just bad management
colablizzard@reddit
Nvidia is lead by their founder. 30Y after he retires you see what will happen.
Strazdas1@reddit
They do though. Nvidia is chasing the AI dragon and AMD did everything in its power to make this years releases as unappealing as they can be despite being good tech.
More-Ad-4503@reddit
no offense but Intel needs to hire more Asians and probably less of everyone else
Vushivushi@reddit
I hate this idea as a gamer, but I think Intel should completely cut its GPU division in order to land Nvidia.
Intel's GPU division last we heard before they stopped reporting on it was losing >$2b a year. Even if they've reduced that to $1b a year, that's still a large portion of their losses. They could then repurpose operating expenses from GPU back into CPU to better compete against AMD/ARM.
The goal here is to have Nvidia IP manufactured in Intel's foundry for Intel products.
Nvidia's brand and IP will help sell Intel CPUs, cease all outsourcing of Intel compute silicon and return it to Intel foundry.
I know Nvidia has its whole ARM PC push, but they're starting from zero there. A deal with Intel would launch Nvidia straight to the top, not to mention Nvidia might even be able to continue with its ARM push anyways.
Over 15 years ago, before Intel had integrated graphics, Nvidia used to make chipsets for Intel.
AranciataExcess@reddit
Expectations need to be realistic, Intel will need time to catch up and produce a GPU within striking distance performance wise ~10%.
Not having a third player in the GPU space is bad for consumers. Nvidia will just direct all their effort to AI processing the way its going.
Vushivushi@reddit
So is having only TSMC as a foundry.
nanonan@reddit
Intel went to TSMC for their gpus. I'm not sure Nvidia would want Intel nodes.
Vushivushi@reddit
Nvidia would only be using Intel's node for a chiplet used in Intel's products.
The stakes would be low for Nvidia, high for Intel.
Illustrious_Bank2005@reddit
Intel must go bankrupt, this is for the world
Salkinator@reddit
I don’t understand how their own chip volume isn’t enough
Vushivushi@reddit
Because the datacenter business is straight up collapsing.
Now just 55% market share and margins in the low teens and recently in the single digits!
This is the most profitable end-market and Intel is making almost nothing from it while volume continues to shrink.
If Intel had 50% datacenter margins and 70% market share, instead of just $600m in profit, they'd be making $2.5b in profit from DC and the $3.2b loss in the foundry would be lower from higher utilization.
It'd be around even
Helpdesk_Guy@reddit
This 55% figure is no longer up to date anyway – Tan has merely repeated his statement about their 55% market share in the server sector, but it actually dates back to May this year at CompuTex in Taiwan.
Though who knows how old those figures already were back then, when he got briefed with that info? Likely from end of 2024 as per usual when statistics are gathered/presented – Marketing-staff always sneakily oversell themselves.
At the end of the year (that's the point in time by which Intel would hope to have at least 50% in this market), we can still put the topic back on the list of curiosities, by then probably for the sake of comedy.
Reuters – Intel's new CEO says the company has 55% of the data-centre market (19th May 2025)
ProfessionalPrincipa@reddit
What do they have that needs bleeding edge? A couple hundred million CPU's a year and some unknown quantity of GPU? And that has to pay for $5 billion node R&D and $30 billion fabs with each successive node costing more than the last. TSMC gets that volume from Apple alone.
Adorable-Fault-651@reddit
They have to give away chips to OEMs to use them
Microcenter has enormous discounts on Intel gaming systems because no one wants to even spend the same amount on intel if you can get an AMD that uses half the power and won't degrade from normal use.
Quatro_Leches@reddit
Compute is killing cpu farms
Evening_Feedback_472@reddit
It's not that it isn't enough. It's it doesn't make sense to incur the cap ex. Someone else already built it use them instead.
Exist50@reddit
In part, because they cut their internal product development to help fund new fabs. Ironic, isn't it?
Geddagod@reddit
They are losing market share, missed out on two massive areas of growth (mobile + AI GPUs), and remaining on the bleeding edge is becoming more and more expensive, not even just in terms of manufacturing but also design.
jmlinden7@reddit
New nodes be expensive
menstrualobster@reddit
It will >!be AMD,!< Just like in the good old days back then
HippoLover85@reddit
18 months seems like the latest possible date, as placing orders for equipment and starting construction needs to take place in 2026 if they want to start HVP in 2028.
They might not need WSA's signed in the next 6-12 months. But they need to be sure they are going to get them sometime in the next 6-12 months. that is my guess.
anival024@reddit
Intel can't afford to "invest" in 2026. They will make the decision this year (it's likely already been made) and announce it by the Q4 earnings date (1/29/2026).
HippoLover85@reddit
Yeah, you are probably right given asml lead times.
ecktt@reddit
So they cannot do what they always did and produce their own chips?
jaaval@reddit
They are saying making new production processes is now so expensive a single customer, even the size of intel, is not enough to make it make sense financially. It’s cheaper for them to just buy capacity at TSMC.
ProfessorNonsensical@reddit
Except it isn’t because they don’t have the capacity for them. They would have to pay a premium if they wanted priority over Apple, Nvidia, and AMD, since their chips are actually selling.
The consumers who matter aren’t buying Intel anymore because they didn’t plan for actual cutting edge nodes, just pushing the same old tired crap out off of brand recognition.
They did not expect AMD to so throughly trounce them into the ground. And quite frankly, given the first Ryzen that came out, they should be embarrassed.
AMD rightly monikered it a new Horizon for the company. People thought it was exaggeration, I knew as soon as I picked one up. They were changing the entire game.
jaaval@reddit
Intel has more than half of the entire server market and something like 70% of PC market. But sure, nobody buys them.
Intel has used TSMC and has no issues bidding for capacity.
ProfessorNonsensical@reddit
Yes and with their aging designs that are not AI ready who do you think people will purchase from?
Who else can mass produce 96 core CPUs to handle the GPU racks across a stack?
There is a reason AMD raised their prices 70% last week and it’s not because of Intels server share.
It’s because there is no competition to speak of.
Geddagod@reddit
They have copilot plus PCs with LNL. But also, this it at best an OEM/marketing thing, I don't think regular people care all too much about copilot plus so far.
And despite that, they still retain >70% of unit market share.
For AI GPUs, not for CPUs.
ProfessorNonsensical@reddit
Their market share is dropping lol, they had well over 90% less than 5 years ago.
And they admitted they will not be competitive until at least 2030, and that is assuming they can, not only keep pace with AMD development, but regain mindshare by outpacing them.
So nearly 5 more years when a lot of companies are looking to upgrade as a defacto monopoly.
Which direction do you think their marketshare will go?
Geddagod@reddit
No one here is claiming that AMD isn't gaining market share. But pretending like nobody buys Intel, despite them still retaining the majority (by a good chunk too) of market share, is hilarious.
And not to mention the even more ridiculous claim that Intel can't bid for TSMC wafers, despite them having done exactly that with N3, and are projected to use even more N2 wafers than AMD in 26'. Which, even if is not true (more than AMD), they will still be using a shit ton of.
For server, the claim in 28-29 with Coral Rapids. For desktop, it's whenever they can get a X3D competitor out, which is rumored to be a thing with NVL. And for mobile, not only will PTL likely be the premier mobile product for a good bit of 26' (until Zen 6 mobile comes out), but Intel is very competitive here already, with them only losing 0.5% revenue share, and gaining 1.2% market unit share, QoQ.
There's not much mindshare for them to "regain".
What?
Nanas700kNTheMathMjr@reddit
Genius here thinks market share counts all already installed (and active, otherwise Intel would have been probably 95%) systems somehow.
jaaval@reddit
BTW just to clarify, the market share is share of new systems sold, not share of already installed systems. So when we say intel has 70% market share we say that of all machines sold today 70% are intel.
FlyingBishop@reddit
Their share is dropping, but who cares if their volume is going up...
Vushivushi@reddit
Intel will absolutely have issues bidding for TSMC capacity if they try to service 70% of the PC market with TSMC.
The vast majority of their volume is still internal, Intel 7.
Their outsourced chips have poor margins and if they would absolutely lose a bidding war.
DerpSenpai@reddit
Their outsourced chips are worse in every metric vs ARM. There really isn't 1 "saving grace" except GPU drivers being better than anything ARM vendors have.
Their cores have worse IPC, use more space, have the same performance (for now), worse PPW. Their GPU is specifically Horrendous density wise. for a 250mm\^2 die, they can churn the performance of a Nvidia/AMD die that has the size of roughly 160-170mm\^2
Vushivushi@reddit
Yeah people seem to believe Intel is better off using TSMC, but their earnings just show that Intel products are pretty much dependent on internal capacity to succeed in the market.
Unless Intel is okay with inverting their market share with AMD, they need to keep doing IDM or completely leapfrog AMD/ARM.
DerpSenpai@reddit
If Intel is using TSMC for capacity, TSMC will do giant investments for capacity and then AMD/QC will also bid for that same capacity. So if Intel has worse products they will in turn continue to lose marketshare till bankrupcy. They are 70% of the PC market because of Intel Foundries, Instead of looking this problem as PC marketshare by CPU, we should see it by Manufacturer. 40% TSMC 60% Intel Foundry. If Intel continues to drop their share, the more share can AMD and QC pick up
lally@reddit
It used to have much larger shares. I didn't think that trend will turn around without major changes.
ResponsibleJudge3172@reddit
Don't have capacity?
Since when was Arrowlake capacity constrained?
ProfessorNonsensical@reddit
TSMC fulfills purchases in this order: Apple, Nvidia, AMD, Intel.
They are last priority when placing orders on an advanced node, which means, until Apple moves to the next advanced node, they cannot scale their output for Intel, because they are producing as many chips as they can, in the order of their highest paying customers.
If Intel wants an advanced node they cannot fabricate themselves, they are last in line.
And their customers are not happy about that.
DerpSenpai@reddit
TSMC would prioritize Nvidia if they wanted, Nvidia uses older nodes because newer ones don't work for GPUs
996forever@reddit
Not true, AMD's Instinct Mi350 series uses N3P.
DerpSenpai@reddit
Yes and AMD is using chiplets, not full blown dies. Is this an attempt at a gotcha?
996forever@reddit
What are you even talking about “gotcha”, you made some vague ass comments about “don’t work for gpus” without explanation and we’re supposedly to know what you mean exactly and not allowed to comment without you taking it as some sort of snark? Weirdo
Cheerful_Champion@reddit
Except we know as a fact they don't. Intel is already using N3, nvidia and amd aren't. They even had test run sooner than Apple. They would have their product on market sooner too (Arrow Lake) if not delays on Intel side.
Vushivushi@reddit
The reason Intel was able to get N3, N3B, to be exact, is because no other customers besides Apple wanted to use it. Everyone else waited for N3E which is a different process and not IP compatible with N3B.
If Intel wants to use a TSMC node other than N3B, they will face more competition and Intel identifies this risk going forward in their 10-Q.
Cheerful_Champion@reddit
Key point is:
Because they were still hoping on cooperation with TSMC being short term, that they will resolve their issues and go back to manufacturing in house.
Would they sign long-term contract, they wouldn't have this issue.
And yet, Intel was first to use it. Not Apple. Despite previous commenter stating Apple is way higher in priority than Intel.
Vushivushi@reddit
It will be more difficult to sign a long-term contract with favorable prices on a node where there are more customers.
The key point: favorable prices.
The nodes don't get cheaper and Intel's ASPs can't get any higher.
Apple was TSMC's first 3nm customer. They launched A17 for the iPhone 15 Pro in 2023. Intel launched Lunar Lake in 2024.
Also just ignore the last part where Intel acknowledges they may be disadvantaged as other customers have longer more established relationships with TSMC.
Geddagod@reddit
Intel was rumored to be a leading edge N3 customer right there with Apple. Hence why they used N3B instead of N3E, despite AMD using N3E for Turin Dense the same year as Intel used N3B for ARL. Intel was planning on launching on 3nm even earlier.
Intel was willing to do a large prepayment for N3 capacity, and hence they got capacity.
At best, TSMC cuts better deals with larger customers for better value. But TSMC will build out capacity if a customer is willing to pay for it- yes fabs takes years to construct, but chips also takes years to design.
As u/ResponsibleJudge3172 pointed out, why would they not be happy? ARL has no supply issues.
Where is this figure from?
RandomFatAmerican420@reddit
We obviously cannot know for sure.
But from what I heard nobody wanted N3B because it was more expensive, worse, and was a dead end branch. I would guess that had more to do with it.
Geddagod@reddit
Yes, and Intel likely would have wanted to use N3E rather than N3B too. I wouldn't be surprised if PTL's high end iGPU tile, which is rumored to use TSMC N3, is on N3E rather than N3B.
The reason they are stuck with N3B though is likely because they thought they would be launching their N3 products ahead of when N3E would be available. Delays on previous products (MTL) pushed them back, so now them using N3B rather than N3E just looks weird.
Evening_Feedback_472@reddit
Uhh Intel has a good relationship with tsmc I think they are there top 5 customers
Vushivushi@reddit
Intel doesn't think so.
Source: Intel 10-Q
BatteryPoweredFriend@reddit
Top 5 doesn't really mean much when there are massive disparities between many of them. I think Huawei pre-ban still sits at #2 as a proportion for any single client.
There are also other things inflating the amount TSMC are getting from various clients. Like I doubt QC or Mediatek are spending very much on CoWoS at all, whereas someone like Nvidia had bought up about half of all CoWoS capacity for the last 3-4 years.
ProfessorNonsensical@reddit
There are only 3 major players in CPUs, I would hope they are in the top 5……
That’s like saying Micron is a top 5 memory producer.
They damn well better be if 3 of them own 95% of the market.
That’s almost a categorically nonsensensical statement to make.
Geddagod@reddit
From what dubious sources I have seen about TSMC's largest customers, Intel is not in the top 5.
And the very obvious reason for this is that Intel still fabs a bunch of silicon internally.
And despite that Intel was planned to be an earlier customer of N3 than either Nvidia or AMD.
And this line provides no evidence for how well Intel can get leading edge capacity.
12A1313IT@reddit
1st two generation of ryzen was not impressive. Only until 2021 (5 years after initial release) was AMD better
SchighSchagh@reddit
Right. Ryzen 1 and 2 were fine. So they weren't impressive in terms of raw performance. But they were a massive step up from AMD's previous gen stuff, and that uplift was rather special. Then once they managed to crank out a few more uplifts like that, they took off. It really did start with Ryzen 1 even if on its own it would've been a forgettable chip.
GumshoosMerchant@reddit
Zen was a bit slower than Kaby Lake at the same clock, but its main selling point was it offered more cores at a time when Intel was content to continue the 4c/4t i5 and 4c/8t i7 thing going.
ProfessorNonsensical@reddit
And for a third of the price.
jmlinden7@reddit
It would be cheaper to pay TSMC to build a brand new fab
surg3on@reddit
It's cheaper now. If TSMC becomes a monopoly it sure as fuck won't be
Alive_Worth_2032@reddit
That doesn't really matter, because all the competitors would be in the same spot as well and would face the same pricing.
Which makes Intel's products just as competitive (or not competitive). Using TSMC is safer because it removes manufacturing from the equation. If TSMC has a problem, all the products and companies you are competing with also has a problem.
Just look at AMD and Nvidia. TSMC and Samsung both fucking up 20nm planar didn't really hurt them in a competitive sense. It just meant they both launched another generation on 28nm (Maxwell and Fiji).
Now imagine instead that one of them had been at Samsung and one at Nvidia. And only one fab had fucked up at 20nm and gone straight to FF instead (TSMC 16 and Samsung 14nm FF is essentially 20nm with FF transistors).
Imagine Nvidia having Pascal in 2014 and AMD at best porting and getting their product out on the same node 12-18 months later.
surg3on@reddit
Not quite right. If TSMC is a monopoly they can demand more of the chips cost. Let's say Intel and AMD determine that the most 95% of customer will pay is $1000 USD. TSMC will take as much as they can without bankrupting them.
You see similar with NVIDIA and it's board partners
Alive_Worth_2032@reddit
But that does not impact how competitive they are AGAINST EACH OTHER. Which is my point. Meanwhile if AMD or Intel is on a worse node. That creates a competitive advantage for the other company.
Being on a inferior node can straight up kill your product and company. If Intel had still been Intel back in 2017. And actually kept up their node advantage. Then AMD and Zen would have gone nowhere.
surg3on@reddit
I'm not saying they have any good choices. They are boned either way
Death2RNGesus@reddit
Public businesses operate on a short sighted business model, long term planning is generally reserved for private and sometimes government, sadly.
Dziadzios@reddit
Well, they fired so many people that they can't make as many new designs as they used to.
ecktt@reddit
I know it was popular to hate intel but them going under will be a massive loss to the consumer. They are slow changing the graphics market. They typically have that one CPU that is balance of price and performance (14600K right now). They keep AMD innovating.
nanonan@reddit
They can't sell enough to sustain the overenthusiastic foundry expansion plan, that's their whole issue right now.
ecktt@reddit
OH!
Then they should get back into the Storage game since, AI storage demands are exploding. Intel had some the fastest at one point.
Vushivushi@reddit
The IDM model is unraveling.
The cost of developing and building capacity for new nodes is increasing while Intel's products are losing market share and pricing power.
And it's a vicious cycle because as Intel flops in process development, their products perform worse.
At the same time, Intel's execution on products is not at its best either.
ecktt@reddit
AMD pressure force Intel to break their tick-tock model which spread the risk and allowed for continual improvements.. When they tried to get back into it, they had the degradation fiasco. damned if they do, damned if they don't
Exist50@reddit
They're slashing those businesses left and right, and even the ones not being outright cut are losing market share. Ironic, partly thanks to budget cuts used to fund the fabs.
FruitsOfHappiness@reddit
What's the likelihood that Intel's fabs never find a buyer and become abandoned for the scrappers, junkies, graffiti artists and urbexers? Would be wild seeing ASML machines gutted to pieces in a setting akin to a hastily abandoned hospital with tons of expensive equipment like MRI machines left behind.
If you don't think this lurid scenario is possible, then please elaborate on who you think would buy the fabs or pay enormous sums for indefinite airtight grounds security.
Adorable-Fault-651@reddit
Some big tech will buy them out and subcontract nvidia designs probably and win a defense contract.
Or we'll just buy chinese optics for Navy SEALs like we do now and wonder why we lose the next war.
FruitsOfHappiness@reddit
"some big tech"
There's only really Broadcom and Qualcomm that could be interested, and Broadcom is semi-foreign and viewed unfavorably by protectionists in power. TSMC has already made it clear they're completely unwilling to touch fabs that weren't designed by them with a 10-foot pole due to unfeasible costs of getting them up to their standards and the president has said he doesn't want to see any acquisition by TSMC. Overall, no significant politician wants to bail out Intel. Qualcomm has realized it lacks the capabilities to run fabs and so its interest has cooled. Google everything I wrote; it's all been in the news in the past several months. The scenario I described is more likely than people want to acknowledge.
Edit: Also, ASML machines after being extensively modified by Intel are probably useless to TSMC and Samsung, who would rather buy new than spend billions trying to retool/refit them to their specific requirements.
Asleep-Card3861@reddit
I kinda think that the board weren’t up to seeing through the turn around under Pat Gelsinger, well the new guy might as well be saying intel is up for a fire sale to keep investors happy and sell it off in parts.
nanonan@reddit
Gelsingers plan required at least one major external customer. He failed to secure one, yet went ahead with the plan regardless. The new guy is being sane about it, finding the required customer before spending billions.
logosuwu@reddit
LBT is chasing short term profitability over long term viability, the thing that this sub claims to hate, but is now OK with?
nanonan@reddit
Does he have a choice? The foundries have no long term viability if Intel is the only customer.
logosuwu@reddit
He doesn't need to be making sweeping cuts to most aspects of Intel if foundry is the only concern.
nanonan@reddit
Absolutely, I'm highly critical of his decision to spin off networking for example, and I wouldn't be approaching the foundry mess how he is but I do think it is a far more realistic approach than what they were doing.
wizfactor@reddit
It would be interesting to know which product from which vendor would be worth the risk of putting it in Intel fabs. It has to be a fairly low stakes product line in order to be worth foregoing TSMC.
My guess would be something like the Nvidia GT series like whatever succeeds the GT 1630, since that is a low-stakes product where PPA and general efficiency aren’t important. Or perhaps a set of Semi-Custom chips from AMD for non-console use-cases, with Intel willingly eating the cost of defective dies.
Plank_With_A_Nail_In@reddit
Who was Intel's last non Intel fab customer?
Intel don't even use their own fabs lol.
vexargames@reddit
Bye bye big blue. Over priced - Over heat - Chips Rust? Who knew - Jackass leaders, and the biggest ego's the world has ever witnessed as if they actually invented the micro processor with their own hands.
I still hope they can turn it around - maybe it can be a national security issue where the government gives them jobs.
Astigi@reddit
Neither Intel wants their foundry
anival024@reddit
Industry analyst is about a year behind.
Intel has until the end of the next fiscal quarter (earnings date on/around 1/29/2026) to land a miracle, announce selling off the fab business, or enter bankruptcy proceedings.
KeanusCar@reddit
1A! 1A! 1A! 1A! 1A! 1A! 1A! 1A! 1A! 1A! 1A! 1A! 1A! 1A! 1A!
HorrorCranberry1165@reddit
The rescue for Intel is simple: they must go to NV, and beg for orders, while assuring that they will drop their ARC GPU, NPU work and use Geforce IP as GPU tile in their desktop / mobile CPU.
dropthemagic@reddit
They have been toast for a while. Fuck this company from stealing US tax payer dollars and literally running businesses down so they can keep they execs happy
TurnUpThe4D3D3D3@reddit
This is a bit of a sensationalized headline. Intel has a very strong balance sheet and will have no problem raising debt to stay afloat.
Exist50@reddit
Intel themselves have said they may cancel 14A if they can't get a 3rd part customer.
Why would they?
TurnUpThe4D3D3D3@reddit
Relying entirely on Taiwan for chips is a national security threat. China has a very powerful navy in that region and could easily enforce a trade embargo. If we ever get into a serious conflict, the supply of chips could be cut off completely. Realistically, it will probably never get to that point, but it's a possibility that must be planned for.
Exist50@reddit
The supply of many other things would be as well. Chips aren't useful if you can't get the rest of the components for a computer.
More importantly, that's a strategic argument, not a political argument. In today's environment, what does a politician have to gain from supporting yet more subsidies for a company Americans widely see as failing? Who is going to stick their neck out for Intel when the last handout was followed by mass layoffs? It's politically untenable.
hackenclaw@reddit
because their yield is bad and not getting cheap enough to land a customer?
Nvidia would have no problem landing one of their many consumer GPU on this node. Nvidia dont need to risk entire consumer GPU, just one of chip like those tiny chip planning for RTX7050 etc.
I think intel still not price good enough to beat Samsung/TSMC.
Sirneko@reddit
Intel executives digging themselves into a trench for a decade… how did we get here?
IGunClover@reddit
Problem is intel still use TSMC for some of their product. Intel need to use their own fab for all of their product and the product must work without those degradation fiasco after a certain amount of time for potential customers to have a certain level of trust.
OutrageousAccess7@reddit
Incoming Maiden Lane IV and V for Intel and their foundry.
kuddlesworth9419@reddit
I would be surprised if they find a customer worth keeping a whole fab division for. Last customer went to Samsung instead of Intel. They would probably get more customers if they weren't high end and focused on cheaper low end nodes. Maybe Intel should just be their own customer? But they would have to have some competitive designs to get anywhere for that.
DYMAXIONman@reddit
Well they can use it to produce their own products but they need outside customers to supplement that.
kuddlesworth9419@reddit
I don't disagree.
WarEagleGo@reddit
Love the subheading for an Intel Fab and Node article