[HN Gopher] Intel's New IDM 2.0 Strategy ___________________________________________________________________ Intel's New IDM 2.0 Strategy Author : addaon Score : 54 points Date : 2021-03-23 21:12 UTC (1 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.anandtech.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.anandtech.com) | trynumber9 wrote: | Foundry service seems like a good idea. 14nm may be a bit long in | the tooth for modern phones, laptops, servers but it would be a | cutting edge process for most embedded products. Intel built more | 14nm capacity than usual because of the 10nm problems. As they | finally move to 10nm and 7nm EUV processes, it makes sense to try | to sell their 14nm fab space/time to anyone who wants it. | varispeed wrote: | Or maybe they could pivot and work on foundry equipment that | small businesses could setup in their garage? I think it should | be a good time to start democratising the chip production and | so far there is probably no company who can provide tools in | this segment affordable for small and medium businesses. | Macha wrote: | First of all there are serious economies of scale to chip | processing, especially at these low scale, that I think it's | unlikely a SME could compete in this space. | | Secondly chipmaking is not always the most environmentally | friendly process, at least on a local level (Intel[2], AMD[1] | have superfund sites at former plants, they aren't the only | one), so I'm not sure people should want someone running one | "from their garage" | | [1]: https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/SiteProfiles/index.cfm | ?fus... | | [2]: https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/SiteProfiles/index.cfm | ?fus... | camdenlock wrote: | I have nothing relevant to add here, except to ask: is it just | me, or does Intel's branding suck? How do I pronounce X^e | exactly? | wmf wrote: | Xe is officially pronounced as the letters X E. | | I suspect large companies have too many branding people with | too little to do. | slashdot2008 wrote: | X to the e | | Like the Xzibit song "X to the Z", which might have been good | branding as it comes with a theme song | [deleted] | cjdell wrote: | I wonder if Intel would allow AMD to build chips using their | fabs. That'll be interesting to see. I believe it happened once | before in the early days. | frabert wrote: | I believe the opposite was true, when AMD was an OEM for Intel | CPUs | RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: | Hopefully Gelsinger will be to Intel what Nadella was to | Microsoft. Both are engineers following finance people who while | they still made a lot of money, lost the tech initiative. | | I would love to see a 3 way competition between Intel, AMD, and | Apple for consumer chips. | nicoburns wrote: | And indeed a continuing 3 way competition between TSMC, Samsung | and Intel for actually fabricating the chips. | adamcstephens wrote: | I wouldn't put Apple in the same category. They'll never sell | chips except as part of their vertically integrated systems. | ISL wrote: | Even if they remain vertically-integrated, if they can sell | an Apple datacenter blade or produce bespoke architectures | for major cloud providers, the market is large -- Apple- | scale. | gh02t wrote: | It would be interesting to see how that would work and what | sort of unique features Apple would offer in a proper | enterprise product, but I'm struggling to imagine Apple | returning to that market in earnest. Even Xserve was not | really about being a server in its own right so much as it | was for providing infrastructure to support their desktops. | colinmhayes wrote: | Apple sells luxury goods. They don't seem interested in the | datacenter market. Plus it seems like all the cloud | companies are designing their own ARM chips, I doubt they | want apple's. | dkjaudyeqooe wrote: | Apple is a consumer electronics company and they keep | reiterating that. Their whole strategy is to be an island | unto themselves where they can maintain high gross margins | and squeeze their suppliers. | | They're not interested in competing on other people's terms | in commoditized markets. They sell luxury goods. | jlawer wrote: | Cloud providers want dependable suppliers with low costs, | openness with design, integration with other suppliers and | long term roadmaps and support. Outside dependability, | Apple is not good on any of the other aspects. Apple run a | high margin business, and their processes reflect that. | | Apple are a high margin business. I highly doubt they want | to harm their gross margin, but its possible. Apple however | have not been that successful co-designing.... well, | anything. They are highly opinionated that they are correct | and this has typically lead to them blazing new trails, but | has also lead to mis-steps. For bespoke systems, that would | rely on building what the customer asks for. Apple's | generally isn't great with working with outside suppliers, | generally trying to bring the work inside. Finally this | would require apple to tie their hands (in the same way | microsoft has) with compatibility to provide the long term | support that the vendors require. | | Apple would never become the suppliers the cloud providers | want. The only way they would be chosen is if the product | is significantly better then what otherwise exists. I can | easily see Apple leapfrogging incumbent server vendors for | performance or such for a short term, but I expect the | others will catch up very quickly. Cloud hardware is | already well integrated by companies motivated to eek out | every little bit of performance (see facebook and the OCP). | Despite being significantly more different from an | engineering perspective, I actually think manufacturing | cars is more similar from a business perspective for Apple. | ncw96 wrote: | I'd expect to see Qualcomm in the mix as well, at least for | laptop chips. | wyldfire wrote: | They are in the mix, though their share is likely extremely | small. But there's several Snapdragon-based laptop designs | currently on sale. | varispeed wrote: | This is underwhelming. By the time they manage to get 7nm fab it | will already be obsolete. Why not something more ambitious or | admit they cannot compete with Apple and AMD any longer and focus | on chipsets or other peripherals? They could free x86 | specification and let other companies with more energy pick a | fight with ARM, no? | bgorman wrote: | No one builds a leading-edge fab for one process node. The new | factories will be able to support more advanced processes, | unless Intel is wildly incompetent. | bryanlarsen wrote: | Intel 7nm is roughly equivalent to TSMC 5nm. | cronix wrote: | I wonder how Intels chips would stack against Apple/AMD if they | were to also use TSMC for outsourcing manufacturing instead of | doing it themselves. | [deleted] | bryanlarsen wrote: | Hopefully the foundry business works this time. A TSMC monopoly | would suck. | greggyb wrote: | Samsung, Global Foundries, UMC, and SMIC are other large | players in the foundry space. It would be _very_ difficult for | TSMC to eliminate these competitors. | 55873445216111 wrote: | Among these only Samsung and TSMC have 7/5nm in production. | GF and UMC aren't even pursuing it. SMIC is far behind. | krastanov wrote: | Some of these foundries explicitly do not compete on cutting | edge node-sizes. Global Foundries, for instance, have said | they will focus on specialty circuitry, but will not try to | compete on things like <10nm node sizes. I think it is fair | to say they are not really competitors as their business is | sufficiently different. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-03-23 23:00 UTC)