No one wants to use their fabs because they’re bad!
(Not awful, but not cutting edge really any more)
Comment on Intel to Announce Plans This Week to Cut More Than 20% of Staff
simplejack@lemmy.world 1 day agoHonestly, Intel has been up shit creek for a while now. No one big wants to use Intel’s fabs because they’re afraid that Intel’s design team will copy their homework.
Vertical integration has fucked Intel. TSMC’s fabs get all the important contracts from Nvidia, Apple, etc. And the massive client volume allows them to accelerate the evolution of their fab tech.
Intel needs to break their chip design business and fab into two separate businesses, otherwise it’s a continuation of the death march.
Nighed@feddit.uk 23 hours ago
Mihies@programming.dev 1 day ago
AMD did that, but Global Foundry doesn’t do that well, at least compared to TSMC. Also Intel was going strong with their fabs until AMD started building better chips architecture wise. I’m just saying that splitting might not work.
HakFoo@lemmy.sdf.org 23 hours ago
The Global Foundries split was probably a way to get AMD out of the hyper-capital-intensive fab business. And without a tier-1 customer, Global had less reason to pursue smaller nodes.
Intel has that national-champion thing to keep it afloat. I can imagine there are defence contracts that will never go to a “TSMC Arizona Division” and they’ll pay whatever it takes to keep that going.
boonhet@lemm.ee 23 hours ago
Yeah for a long time there Intel was way ahead of the fabless AMD. Back then people were saying it was a mistake for AMD to split the fab business.
Mihies@programming.dev 17 hours ago
It still could be a mistake in the long term, though. Imagine the wise US administration slapping 1,220,332% tariffs on Taiwan? Or China wreaking havoc there. I still think Intel could fare well with better leadership handling their fabs.
boonhet@lemm.ee 14 hours ago
Yeah, having fabs in the US as well as other countries could pay off yuuugely. If potential fab customers are truly afraid of Intel copying their designs - Intel could enter an agreement with say Qualcomm that it won’t design any ARM CPUs for X years. Surely there’s a market for US made SoCs once you can assemble the logic board of a smartphone in the US, and a smartphone from parts. You’d still import some parts but shift production to the US for what’s possible - but you need to start with the end product and work your way down because otherwise you’re shipping components back to China for final assembly. And the more expensive the components you can produce in the US, the less you’re affected by tariffs.