Did Intel ever get its foundry business off the ground? I remember some announcements in the last year or two, and then some rumors of yields not being good enough for the customers to move forward, and now some rumors of Intel thinking of spinning off the business. This partnership might be a watered down version of those plans.
Buffalox@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Last I heard Intel claimed that their next process 18A should be on track and amazing.
But as far as I remember they said the same about the current 20A process.
It looks weird that they call it Angstrom when his name was Ångstrøm. I know that’s the name of the international unit, but still.
If you can’t spell or pronounce a name correctly, maybe you should call it something else.
It’s like they are struggling to be cool, but instead they look goofy.
Maybe we should call mr. Gelsinger for mr. Geringer here, which would mean smaller in German.
ShepherdPie@midwest.social 3 weeks ago
They didn’t name the node size after the guy they named it after the unit since it’s approaching sub-nanometer node size.
Buffalox@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I literally already wrote that:
GamingChairModel@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Intel canceled their 20A after bad results, and shifted focus to 18A.
It’s even to the point that their own Arrow Lake chips are going to be fabbed by TSMC.
Buffalox@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Oh I didn’t know it was completely cancelled, sounds like the infamous 10nm all over again.
But I’m pretty sure Pat Gelsinger claimed 20A would be amazing, right up until there were complaints that the yields were awful.
GamingChairModel@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I actually have fairly high hopes for Intel’s 18A and the upcoming technology changes presenting competition for TSMC (including others like Samsung and the Japanese startup Rapidus). And even if it turns into a 3-way race among Asian companies, the three nations are different enough that there’s at least some strength in diversity.
TSMC’s dominance in the last decade I think can be traced to their clear advantage in producing finFETs at scale better than anyone else. As we move on from the finFET paradigm and move towards GAA and backside power delivery, there are a few opportunities to leapfrog TSMC. And in fact, TSMC is making such good money on their 3nm and 4nm processes that their roadmap to GAAFETs and backside power is slower than Intel’s and Samsung’s, seemingly to squeeze the very last bit out of finFETs before moving on.
If there’s meaningful competition in the space, we might see lower prices, which could lead to greater innovation from their customers.
Do I think it will happen? I’m not sure. But I’m hopeful, and wouldn’t be surprised if the next few process nodes show big shakeups in the race.