[HN Gopher] Intel in talks to buy GlobalFoundries for about $30B
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Intel in talks to buy GlobalFoundries for about $30B
Author : hi5eyes
Score : 573 points
Date : 2021-07-15 23:30 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| neonate wrote:
| WSJ source: https://archive.is/URtJX
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| Semiconductor manufacturing is already scarily consolidated. This
| can't be good.
| Traster wrote:
| I would not be surprised if the strategic thinking here is to buy
| GloFo to get in some outside business and the knowledge about how
| to run a fab as a service in preparation for spinning the foundry
| out as a separate business. That way it allows the foundry to
| scale to the size it needs to be to justify investing in the
| latest nodes, whilst freeing up the rest of Intel to run much
| leaner and not to be tied to an uncompetitive foundry.
| lizknope wrote:
| Intel wants to get into the foundry business. 99% of what Intel
| does is for their own chips. They don't have the support
| infrastructure of being able to deal with external customers.
| Global Foundries has that.
|
| You don't just decide to make a chip. There are hundreds of
| foundry specific libraries, design rules, and more. There are
| always problems with the EDA CAD tools for new processes and you
| need lots of support people to answer questions and help debug
| problems that your customers are having.
|
| Intel has tried being a foundry before multiple times over the
| last 20 years. They always fail and give up after a couple of
| years.
| syshum wrote:
| >>before multiple times over the last 20 years. They always
| fail and give up after a couple of years.
|
| That would be the concern. What happens to the chip market when
| intel rediscovers its inherent anti-competitive nature and
| shuts down any non-intel product?
| pankajdoharey wrote:
| Intel is already in the foundry Business their operating nodes
| are very large 14nm and 10nm (Which is 12nm) and 7nm process
| node is broken due to poor yields.
| kingosticks wrote:
| And the tech/IP they offer is way behind the competition.
| They were not a realistic choice when we last sat down.
|
| But the chance to utilise EMIB would be cool.
| Seanambers wrote:
| If Intel ends up buying AMD's (former) business, then damn the
| tables have turned.
|
| Considering the way things are going I am more than a bit
| intrigued, but not surprised.
| 9front wrote:
| I am waiting for the headline "AMD to buy Intel!"
| grp000 wrote:
| And Nvidia buys ARM, which is then bought by AMD-Intel,
| which then merges with Samsung.
| the8472 wrote:
| And then The Semiconductor Manufacturing Company takes
| shape.
| underscore_ku wrote:
| and then Apple buys Samsung
| intricatedetail wrote:
| and then Amazon buys Apple.
|
| and then Aliexpress buys Amazon.
| pankajdoharey wrote:
| And Softbank already owns Aliexpress. And then CCP
| intervenes!
| allie1 wrote:
| And then the CCP breaks it up into the original pieces.
| codehalo wrote:
| The things I've seen, I would be less than surprised this
| preposterous plot plays out.
| Moto7451 wrote:
| Given Intel wants to sell fab space it wouldn't shock me if
| AMD keeps buying fab space at a soon to be Intel plant to
| make chipsets and other items that don't need to be on the
| bleeding edge or constitute sharing much IP.
| m-p-3 wrote:
| That would be a terrible outcome competition-wise :(
| kken wrote:
| Well, Globalfoundries was exactly in the same situation
| directly after they were spun off from AMD and they bought
| Chartered Semiconductors to get foundry knowledge into their
| company. They also hired a lot of ex-freescale and ex-IBM
| people.
| axaxs wrote:
| Wait I thought GloFo essentially gave up the node race and
| was settling into 'not the latest and greatest' market a la
| TI. Is that not a correct assumption?
| patagurbon wrote:
| Essentially, but now they have Intel nodes to sell as well.
| It's a fairly reasonable plan, and I doubt Intel will stay
| behind TSMC node-wise forever.
| animal_spirits wrote:
| > Intel, one of the last companies in the semiconductor industry
| that both designs and manufactures its own chips
|
| What other companies also do this? Are Nvidia, and AMD on this
| list?
| stu2b50 wrote:
| No, neither manufactures chips. They both have a variety of
| fabs they get supply from, but Nvidia gets much of their supply
| from Samsung (but they do also source from TSMC and others) and
| AMD gets much of their supply from TSMC.
| jagger27 wrote:
| > What other companies also do this? Are Nvidia, and AMD on
| this list?
|
| No and no. IBM (for Power products) and arguably Samsung (for
| their mobile chips) are effectively the only ones left on their
| own leading edge nodes. Everyone else uses TSMC, GloFo, or
| SMIC.
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| IBM doesn't have its own fabs anymore -- they gave them to
| GlobalFoundries in 2015, along with $1.5B.
| BostonEnginerd wrote:
| I would have taken the fabs for half of that! :-)
| GloriousKoji wrote:
| What semiconductors are we talking about? Just big volume
| computer CPUs/GPUs? Then yes, intel is the only one left.
|
| Big boys like Maxim, Marvel, Broadcom, Qualcomm, nVidia, AMD,
| Ti[1] don't have their own fabs.
|
| What about memory? Samsung, Hynix, Micron all do their own
| stuff.
|
| Analog ICs? National, Ti[1], NXP, Skyworks, ONsemi, ST, to name
| a few.
|
| [1] Ti got rid of their fabs years ago to switch to TSMC but
| over the years they acquired a few companies small than them
| that have their own fabs. Those divisions still use them for
| fabbing those products.
| BostonEnginerd wrote:
| TI has a bunch of fabs in Dallas, Maine, Germany, Japan and
| China. Most of the Dallas fabs have been part of TI since the
| beginning - some since the 1970s. They're building a new
| 300mm fab north of Dallas, and just acquired the Intel /
| Micron JV fab in Lodi Utah. They got out of the advanced
| logic game a while ago, and closed down one of their R&D fabs
| in ~2007.
|
| National was acquired by TI ~8yr ago.
| px1999 wrote:
| That's certainly one way to get the expertise that they need in
| house to remain competitive (and to ensure their own supply) -
| certainly if rumors about their current capabilities being less
| than stellar are correct.
|
| It'll be an interesting move if it comes through to fruition. TBH
| this would ironically probably be a good thing for Taiwan and may
| be a good thing for TSMC.
|
| It is somewhat amusing that they're picking up AMD's scraps.
| ac29 wrote:
| But, GloFo isnt competitive as is - their best process is a
| "12nm" process they licensed from Samsung 5 years ago. The only
| way this makes sense to me is if they are getting such a good
| deal on their assets that its cheaper to buy them and modernize
| their plants with Intel's technology than to build new plants
| of their own.
| halotrope wrote:
| As far as I understand the leading edge nodes are a rather
| small percentage of global production. The demand for less
| advanced nodes is still massive e.g for automotive. For intel
| the know how of working for 3rd party clients along with the
| tooling is probably much more valuable.
| totalZero wrote:
| Considering that AMD's flagship chips use GloFo i/o, this is a
| brilliant move. It will be interesting to see how the equity
| market absorbs these developments.
| coliveira wrote:
| Another reason why this deal should be blocked by the
| government. It is anticompetitiveness at its core.
| totalZero wrote:
| If I were Intel and a deal were really in the works
| contingent on antitrust, I would argue that:
|
| (a) Intel is a distant third in fabrication and a merger with
| another also-ran would improve competitiveness against state-
| backed TSMC and the Samsung chaebol;
|
| (b) the severity of the demand creation in the market
| justifies an acquisition that streamlines existing players
| and makes them more productive than the sum of the deal's
| parts; and
|
| (c) bringing GloFo under a US-owned corporate umbrella is
| vastly beneficial to the national interest in a way that only
| Intel can fully enable.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I think (c) will be enough for intel to get the government
| off its back here. GF is currently owned by the UAE
| government. The military would love for American foundries
| to be owned by American companies.
| taspeotis wrote:
| It feels like AMD was already stepping away:
| https://www.anandtech.com/show/16677/amd-and-globalfoundries...
|
| > AMD will see out its existing commitment to use
| GlobalFoundries through 2024, with the latest amendment setting
| purchase targets for 2022, 2023, and 2024. Beyond those new
| targets, however, the agreement releases AMD from all further
| exclusivity commitments to GlobalFoundries. AMD is now free to
| use any fab on any process node that it wants.
| totalZero wrote:
| They traded exclusivity for a minimum order size. I'm not
| sure I would read that negotiation as setting a sunset date
| on their overall relationship at the end of 2024, and I
| definitely wouldn't read it as AMD being totally free prior
| to 2025.
|
| 1.6B is half a quarter's revenue for AMD. Milan has been a
| slam dunk; there's obviously some value over at GloFo for
| AMD, and it wouldn't be a no-tears breakup (hypothetically
| speaking).
|
| I don't dispute that GloFo's role in AMD's strategy will
| necessarily change if it becomes part of Intel.
| [deleted]
| tus89 wrote:
| Well I guess AMD is starting to fab at TSMC so this is not a big
| as deal as it sounds (although in $$ terms it certainly is).
| yvdriess wrote:
| Their IO chiplets are still produced by GloFo, who has been
| carving out a niche in IO. It's a good strategy for GloFo, as
| driving a signal for IO can safely stay on older process nodes,
| it doesn't scale as well as compute or memory with transistor
| density.
| a_zaydak wrote:
| Wonder if this will go under Intel Federal since GlobalFoundries
| is the only US foundry able to do some DoD work.
| jarym wrote:
| Ahh classic. If you have tons of cash and fading dominance just
| buy up some other market players and screw 'em up real good (in
| corporate terms).
|
| At least that's typically how these things go. I hope it's
| different 'this' time.
| 9front wrote:
| It's not a done deal! Intel is just exploring a deal to buy
| GlobalFoundries. This is from the WSJ article: "It isn't
| guaranteed one will come together, and GlobalFoundries could
| proceed with a planned initial public offering."
| markzzerella wrote:
| Nice to see that the $52bbn in tax money from the chips act is
| being used for consolidation of industries. Blatant corruption
| and nobody even cares.
| thunkshift1 wrote:
| Airline bailouts? Bank bailouts? Internet provider subsidies?
| Anything goes in pharma?
| coldacid wrote:
| America, the _corporate_ welfare state.
| [deleted]
| totalZero wrote:
| The $52b comes from USICA and it hasn't passed the House yet as
| far as I know. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
|
| What are they supposed to do, not compete during the heyday of
| their industry because they expect a tax credit to be paid out
| over the next several years?
| bigbizisverywyz wrote:
| The expectation of this legislation passing might also make
| it easier for Intel to raise cash to fund the acquisition if
| they need to borrow.
| markzzerella wrote:
| The senator that wrote it thinks it passed.
|
| >Sinema's bipartisan CHIPS For America Act - which is now law
| - restores America's leadership in semiconductor
| manufacturing.
|
| https://www.sinema.senate.gov/fueled-sinemas-chips-act-
| intel...
| totalZero wrote:
| Congress does not.
|
| https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-
| bill/126...
|
| The CHIPS Act is not USICA. That $52B number comes from
| USICA, which has not yet passed the House. I was being
| deferential earlier out of politeness but you didn't take
| the hint and look it up. Here is some light reading on it:
|
| https://www.engadget.com/senate-usica-endless-frontier-
| act-0...
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/8/22457293/semiconductor-
| chi...
| markzzerella wrote:
| >The CHIPS Act is not USICA
|
| And my comment specifically referred to the chips act,
| which has passed [1]. I'm not really sure why you would
| be distracting from the point by bringing up other
| legislation that has not yet passed? Like all good
| corruption, exactly how much money is moving around is
| obfuscated. I've seen both "$10-$50 billion" and "$52
| billion" as numbers for the CHIPS Act. If you have a more
| accurate number I'd be more than happy to update my post.
|
| So the question is did they get billions from the chips
| act like the senator that wrote it thinks they did or
| not? If they did then you're quibbling over exactly how
| many billions they got, which isn't a good look. That
| they potentially have _more_ coming in doesn 't really
| change the substance of my comment in the context of the
| original article at all. So thanks for the heads up on
| the next few billions they will be getting I guess?
|
| [1] https://www.sinema.senate.gov/congress-approves-
| sinemas-bipa...
| coliveira wrote:
| You're correct. They received a ton of money from government
| [0], and that money will be used for consolidation, not to
| improve competitiveness. Intel is buying a bunch of outdated
| fabs to increase its pricing power on older technology.
|
| [0] https://www.semiconductors.org/chips/
| Jonanin wrote:
| This comment is wrong on nearly every front.
|
| 1) No money has been received. USICA ($52b number) has not
| even been passed through congress yet.
|
| 2) 12nm is hardly "outdated", not every use case requires the
| most cutting edge node. There is plenty of value to be had at
| that process size.
|
| 3) There is more to running a foundry than process size, and
| Intel is likely interested as much/more in the customer
| relationship parts, as elaborated extensively in other
| threads
| [deleted]
| phkahler wrote:
| I would hope this is blocked simply due to the reduction in
| competition. Number one player should not be buying anyone.
|
| OTOH my impression was that GloFo stopped short of EUV due to the
| cost, not that they couldn't do it. Intel might be able to fix
| that, but I think they're probably going the way of IBM.
| ike77 wrote:
| But not having any of the players able to stand up to TSMC is
| also not good for competition.
|
| Allowing smaller market participants to consolidate to face the
| behemoth is not necessarily going to be perceived as anti-
| competitive.
| andrewclunn wrote:
| Golablism killed anti-trust. If you don't aid your nation's
| mega corp, then they'll lose to another nation's when they
| receive preferential treatment. It's economic warfare and
| we're all fascists (in the sense of public private
| partnerships with regulations turning large corporations into
| extensions of the state for security means) now.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> Allowing smaller market participants to consolidate to
| face the behemoth is not necessarily going to be perceived as
| anti-competitive.
|
| Intel is not small by any measure. Now TI and GloFlo, or some
| other pairing I might agree with.
| BuckRogers wrote:
| I don't invest in Intel, but I am bullish on their prospects in
| general. I love that they are an American company that has large
| production facilities in the US. I would have no qualms with
| increasing government aid and subsidies to them. I'm rooting for
| them to succeed. But I do follow the Warren Buffett methodology.
| I personally have had very good experiences with most Intel
| products. So that positive experience may color my views a little
| bit. It's like all of my friends that have owned Toyota products,
| it's almost universally a good experience from what I can tell. I
| wish Toyota was also an American company.
| ffffwe3rq352y3 wrote:
| From what I've seen Intel has _not_ been nice to consumers or
| smart with their chips so far. For many years they just pumped
| the prices with mediocre processors because of their dominance.
| However, now the tables have turned and AMD is crushing them
| almost everywhere! I feel like they get what they deserve for
| being lazy and not innovating and we shouldn 't reward that.
| paulmd wrote:
| > From what I've seen Intel has not been nice to consumers or
| smart with their chips so far. For many years they just
| pumped the prices with mediocre processors because of their
| dominance.
|
| Intel was pretty aggressively driving down price-per-core up
| until the 6000 series/ 14nm chips. For example here's the
| price series for a 6-core chip from each of their series:
|
| i7 970 (Nehalem-E, July 2010): $885
|
| i7 3930K (Sandy Bridge-E, Nov 2011): $583
|
| i7 5820K (Haswell-E, Aug 2014): $389
|
| i7 6800K (Broadwell-E, May 2016): $434
|
| So in basically 4 years (+1 month) they reduced the price of
| their entry-level 6-core processors by more than half (56%
| reduction), comparing 970 vs 5820K. It specifically is
| Broadwell (the first 14nm chip) where intel lost the plot and
| prices started _increasing_.
|
| People also dump on Intel for not increasing core count in
| the consumer platform chips, which I think is a deeper
| subject than people treat it as. Certainly by the 6000 series
| they should have pushed the consumer platform up to 6 cores,
| but fundamentally the consumer socket is driven by the
| economics of office machines and walmart PCs. Up through
| Haswell, 4 cores was the right amount for an average desktop
| for the average office worker (not talking about powerful
| workstations for developers here, those users always had the
| option of the HEDT platform with more cores/memory) or the
| average home user (again, not talking about power gamers, and
| if you wanted more HEDT was always a fairly reasonably-priced
| option too, especially during the Haswell generation). There
| was, at the time, no 6-core die, the next step upwards was
| the 8-core HEDT die with quad-channel RAM and all that other
| stuff, and I doubt that would have fit into a consumer socket
| even if you wanted it to, and having 6-core chips with dual-
| channel RAM probably would have impacted performance until
| DDR4 came along with the 6000 series.
|
| On the whole Intel didn't actually do too bad _up until the
| 6000 series_ , when the combination of a complete shitshow of
| a 14nm node (in these latter years of 14++++ people forget
| what a mess early 14nm was), the lack of competition, and the
| beancounters gaining firm control of the company all
| combined. But that's really a specific, narrow range of time
| - 2016 and 2017 mostly. Then in 2017 Intel shit their pants
| after seeing Ryzen and released the 8700K, which was a wildly
| aggressive product for Intel at the time - same i7 pricing
| but 50% more cores, and such a solid product that it
| basically forced AMD into similar price reductions
| (abandoning the $500+ segment for a generation, and big price
| cuts on their existing products).
|
| I really see the "intel got greedy" thing as being
| _specifically_ 2016-2017. 5820K was extremely good value for
| a 6-core (even if it did need a "more expensive
| motherboard", those are cheaper than a high-end X570 now and
| far far cheaper than sTRX40), the problem was the 6000 series
| and failing to push core count up on the consumer socket at
| that time, and I think that is largely attributable to early
| 14nm woes. Certainly by the 7000 series yields would have
| improved and Intel could have pushed core counts up, 7000
| series is arguably one of the worst releases Intel has done
| in terms of how rapidly it aged out of the market.
|
| (although to be fair - up until like 2018/2019 you could
| easily sell a 7700K and get almost all your money back and do
| a straight upgrade to a 8700K, so it wasn't the end of the
| world from a user perspective.)
| ffffwe3rq352y3 wrote:
| Yeah that's just the feelings I had. I literally am basing
| my opinion off zero data and just how I felt! It's actually
| funny because the years I was really into building my own
| computer was 2016-2017! I'm still looking but not as
| invested now.
| BuckRogers wrote:
| That hasn't been my experience as a consumer. I've had 4
| Ryzen systems over the last 4 years (owned nearly every
| generation), and also my Intel systems. My experience has
| been less "crushing Intel" and more "crushing me" and my
| time. From what I've experienced, the price increases in
| Intel platforms are just from added quality assurance in
| their engineering. Obviously I wanted my Zen, Zen+, and Zen3
| systems to work well but they all had something ranging from
| weird idiosyncrasy to major flaw. I just sold off my last
| Zen3, as I greatly prefer my 11th gen board and chip. That's
| just my experience and my perspective at this point. Other
| people seem to love them so there's a market for everything.
| ffffwe3rq352y3 wrote:
| Yeah I'm really only talking about processing power! I
| don't own as many computer as you do so you might have a
| more accurate experiences with that.
| CyberRage wrote:
| Intel is facing some difficult times ahead. they were the kings
| of the industry for a while but now there is a lot of pressure
| and competition coming.
|
| AMD is re-surging with great technology, they already chipped
| away some market share in key sectors and I see that continuing
| for a while.
|
| TSMC has closed the gap and exceeded Intel in manufacturing,
| Samsung is not too far behind. Intel is no longer the market
| leader in chip fabrication.
|
| Nvidia is buying ARM and aiming to start competing in the CPU
| space, with their GPU leadership that could be huge.
|
| x86 is starting to lose it's complete dominance & new players
| coming in(Apple M1, RISC-V, Nuvia, Ampere)
|
| Cloud vendors are starting to build their own chips and tech
| instead of buying them(Graviton, TPU)
|
| I see Intel still being profitable and stable but losing their
| truly unprecedented grasp on the industry.
| BuckRogers wrote:
| That's been the general theme for years now. For their own
| products, as long as they maintain their quality levels, I
| think they'll be fine on design. My understanding is they've
| been pivoting to become an alternative to TSMC and Samsung as
| a foundry source, and will be assisting with 3rd party
| designs similar to ARM for interested parties such as cloud
| vendors. But potentially with x86 compatibility for some,
| which would only strengthen it. Intel has needed to do all of
| this for a while now but if they execute properly (which is
| the hard part), I think the future is bright.
|
| I do agree they won't have "truly unprecedented grasp on the
| industry", because I think they lost that a long time ago
| with globalization. The existence of TSMC/Samsung etc. I do
| think that means simply a larger market with more players and
| customers, rather than a shrinking Intel.
|
| Microsoft evolved their business with the times and came out
| stronger, I think Intel will as well. I know they've been in
| talks with Nvidia to manufacture some of their stuff due to
| offshore supply being uncertain at best. If the world
| continues to be as uncertain as it has been, I think they're
| in a very different position than the widely held popular
| notions that you described.
|
| It was all good, even preferable, to outsource that dirty
| manufacturing in the good times. I believe all the commonly
| held analysis that Intel is set for decline no longer has
| legs to stand on. I don't view fabless design firms like
| NV/AMD/Apple/ARM as competition. In these dark days, if you
| can't make things, you basically have nothing. Just a piece
| of paper.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| AMD's revenue is half of Intel's profit. Nvidia's market cap
| is double intel's even though intel's profit is 4 times as
| high.
|
| Intel still has a long way to fall. Unless ARM becomes
| dominant to the level x86 is I think they'll recover.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Exciting. Gloflo could use a boost and intel could use a foundry
| business.
| mirchiseth wrote:
| Wow,GF came out of AMD and now going to Intel.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| if Intel want to get into the foundry business with IDM 2.0.
| Intel should buy number 3 (UMC) instead. at least UMC is
| profitable unlike GF.
|
| https://static.designandreuse.com/img20/20201207c_1.jpg
| dublin wrote:
| Well, that's going to make AMD reconsider the wisdom of spinning
| off its fab biz as GF, now isn't it?
| cm2187 wrote:
| How many distinct foundries will be left in the world after this
| happens?
| stefan_ wrote:
| There is already only Intel, Samsung and TSMC working on next-
| gen foundries. GlobalFoundries dropped out a while ago.
| abledon wrote:
| this seems insane the ENTIRE WORLD depending on TSMC to
| manufacture computer chips lmao jesus
| paulmd wrote:
| At least TSMC has finally agreed to build a cutting-edge
| 5nm fab in the US. And more recently this has been
| increased to 100k wafers per month, so the capacity is much
| larger than originally planned - TSMC has 120k wafer/month
| at their plant in Taiwan (Fab 18) so this will almost
| double the current capacity (although TSMC is building more
| capacity in Taiwan as well so this probably will work out
| closer to a 1/3 split of capacity once it's operational).
|
| https://electronics360.globalspec.com/article/16465/report-
| t...
|
| This has always been national-security leverage for Taiwan
| - if China ever attacked, Taiwan would make sure TSMC was
| destroyed and utterly cripple worldwide chipmaking. Like if
| you think the current shortages are bad imagine the only
| cutting-edge fab in the world disappearing overnight. That
| leverage only works if all of TSMC's facilities are in
| Taiwan so the idea that they would ever agree to build one
| anywhere else was absolutely unthinkable even a year ago.
|
| The US must be playing some serious hardball given the
| shortages that have sprung up this year and it looks like
| they're getting results. First it was a little fab for
| national-security stuff and it's morphed into the US
| getting a gigafab.
|
| On top of that Japan is getting a TSMC specialty fab - not
| power stuff, but it'll do CMOS sensors for cameras and
| automotive/embedded type stuff, and the EU is negotiating
| for a cutting-edge fab of their own. It's a huge sea change
| in the last year.
| abledon wrote:
| yeah it boggles my mind US spends Trillions on
| Military... yet large % of the chips powering every
| digital device we use (incl military) is made right next
| to China. Can you build a chip factory with a fraction of
| their budget... cmon
|
| Long $TSMC i guess
| paulmd wrote:
| The US military actually goes out of its way to source
| domestic chips where at all possible. Currently this
| means a lot of Intel (or the older AMD/IBM chips made at
| GlobalFoundries I suppose), and there is a pretty
| significant amount of trailing-edge fab capacity in the
| US still, but you're right that it's not everything and
| there's some stuff they have to source from other
| countries.
|
| That is actually the consensus reason (not sure it was
| ever stated outright) for the original plan for the 20k
| wf/m fab TSMC was building in Arizona (that has since
| been upgraded to 100k). Even if it wasn't necessarily a
| huge plant in terms of global supply, it gave the US
| defense/intelligence community a guaranteed supply of
| chips with domestic manufacturing and chain of custody.
|
| It is nuts just how much of cutting-edge production is
| concentrated in the pacific rim region there, and the
| current shortages have really driven that point home even
| harder. Even leaving aside Chinese invasion of Taiwan,
| there could be a tsunami or some other natural disaster
| that takes out TSMC and that would just absolutely gut
| the worldwide economy. Imagine the current shortages
| where everything is still running at capacity, and then
| imagine that TSMC or some other major fab would go
| offline (Samsung getting hit in Korea, etc), be destroyed
| and take years to come back online - there are the same
| limitations as bringing new capacity online, you have to
| wait years to source new machines from ASML and so on.
|
| It potentially could happen anytime. It could happen
| tomorrow. Just another big earthquake that sends a
| tsunami at just the wrong place and compounds all the
| current shortages even worse. Even apart from the
| national defense aspect, it is a dangerous concentration
| of irreplaceable supply chain elements and I think the
| US, EU, etc are really pushing to mitigate that danger a
| bit.
| FL33TW00D wrote:
| https://semianalysis.com/globalfoundries-is-a-leading-
| edge-f...
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| on the high end, Intel, Samsung and TSMC
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| 532.
|
| (No, really. See
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat...
| )
| Roritharr wrote:
| Why would they buy them if they've stopped developing 7nm 3 years
| ago?
|
| How far behind is Intel really?
| eropple wrote:
| Multiple American fabs--older nodes, but there's still _plenty_
| of stuff to be made on 14nm, let alone 90nm. Patents. A sales-
| pipeline team used to working with external partners instead of
| doing everything in-house.
| detaro wrote:
| Not everything is made in the newest processes. Upgrading
| existing fabs to newer processes has benefits over building new
| ones. GF might have useful experience, e.g. with being a
| contract fab for others, if Intel wants to go that route.
| Roritharr wrote:
| So would this purchase point towards Intel believing they
| either can make up the process advantage of TSMC, or that
| they don't need to?
|
| Genuinely curious what you think.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I don't think this has anything to do with next gen
| process. It points toward Intel needing help starting their
| foundry service in sales and external tooling.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| agree. Intel buy GlobalFoundries gain nothing for high
| end chip. its probably have to do with Intel IDM 2.0
| detaro wrote:
| I don't think it's related to making up the difference or
| not.
|
| GF won't have much if anything that helps them in that
| regard, so I think it mostly means that Intel thinks they
| can use more capacity of their own, even for not top-end
| process.
| cwizou wrote:
| That's a bit surprising (if not ironic) but I think it may make
| sense in a way. It's been pretty clear that Mudabala (an Abu
| Dhabi fund that bought AMD fabs in 2008 which then became
| GlobalFoundries) wanted to unload that investment after they
| stopped shoving money into failed process developments (GloFo
| licensed their 14nm from Samsung as a reminder after their own 14
| failed, and their 7nm failed too), so no surprise on their end.
|
| From Intel's perspective, there are also some US assets from IBM,
| which GloFo "acquired" in 2014 (for -1.5 billion at the time),
| which includes some oldish US fabs, but also a patent portfolio.
| It certainly goes into the current US political narrative that
| Gelsinger has been pushing.
|
| But perhaps more importantly, I think that what Intel is buying
| is what was sorely lacking them : people and a methodology of
| working with external customers. From all I've heard over the
| years, Intel's process and design teams are so insular and out of
| touch with the rest of the industry's practices that they had a
| terrible time just working with customers. It wasn't pretty when
| they tried the two previous time to open up their process. Loads
| of announcements, few products if any coming out, and when it
| worked, they ended up buying their customers anyway, see Altera.
|
| If Intel truly wants to go in the foundry direction, they'll get
| some interesting outside experience, and while it may not make
| sense from a pure process point of view, considering how much of
| a sore point their inability to make it work has been on their
| previous attempts, the idea may have a lot of merit.
|
| Perhaps a very smart move from Gelsinger, time will tell, in the
| meantime I'll have a laugh at Intel buying AMD's old fabs :)
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Not just buying their old fabs, I believe GlobalFoundries is
| still AMD's main foundry, so most of AMD's products would be
| built by Intel. The 'Intel Inside' stickers are going to get
| very confusing!
| ksec wrote:
| > I believe GlobalFoundries is still AMD's main foundry,
|
| Only the IOD are still on GF 14 / 12 nm, along with some APU.
| Everything else are TSMC.
| lizknope wrote:
| > assets from IBM, which GloFo "acquired" in 2014 (for -1.5
| billion at the time)
|
| You used the term "acquired" along with a minus sign in front
| of 1.5 billion but just in case other people don't get the
| joke, IBM gave their fabs to Global Foundries and PAID them
| $1.5 billion to take them.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| :-)
|
| Yep. I'm glad others are aware of this. There were certain
| manufacturing processes that needed to be sustained for
| "national security" reasons. GF was an imperfect solution but
| it was better than the alternatives at the time.
| _delirium wrote:
| For what it's worth, IBM is suing to try to get its $1.5
| billion back, claiming that GlobalFoundries didn't uphold
| terms of the deal: https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/
| news/2021/06/11/ib...
| kken wrote:
| Intel could fix that. Could be an added incentive for the
| deal.
| chasil wrote:
| Intel PowerPC. Who would have thought it would happen?
| evilos wrote:
| That is incredible. Why did GloFo think they could just
| take the 1.5B and not deliver? I guess if they don't have
| to pay too much damages it's a huge free loan...
| detaro wrote:
| Their interpretation is probably that they, as promised,
| spent the 1.5B trying to deliver and it didn't work out,
| too bad.
| nikanj wrote:
| Because example has shown time and again that you can
| take the $1500 million, spend $100 million on legal fees,
| settle for $400 million and keep a nice $billion
| akiselev wrote:
| This is America and they're a corporation. It's the price
| of doing business.
| duxup wrote:
| Sounds like they need some Tom Smykowski's ...
|
| Anyway I wonder if GlobalFoundries will be it's own business
| unit or otherwise get enough independence to do things the
| right way / differently than in the past? I often find large
| companies who are 'not good with customers' aren't really great
| at acquiring competency at being good with customers if they
| just buy and assimilate it.
|
| Heck I've been a part of companies who had a big customer focus
| and they acquired smaller companies who weren't good with
| customers, and somehow the smaller company infected the
| organization and suddenly they became bad with customers :(
| megablast wrote:
| Why would intel need patents??
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Theoretically, no two patents overlap, otherwise they'd
| infringe on each other. So any newly acquired patent covers
| something every existing patent does not, including your own
| portfolio's coverage.
| kurthr wrote:
| Well, actually it's perfectly possible for an older patent
| to be broader than a newer and necessarily narrower patent.
| That is in fact the goal of writing a valuable patent. Even
| if only a narrow thing has already been claimed, but the
| spec enables something broader then only something narrower
| still can be patented after that publishes... otherwise it
| is not novel.
|
| Of course not all prior art is in patents so any journal
| publication could also force narrowing of claims. Older
| patents are almost always broader... if they cover the
| thing you want at all.
| CodesInChaos wrote:
| AFAIK overlapping patents are fine and common. It just
| means that when implementing the technology you need to
| license/own both patents.
| SahAssar wrote:
| Isn't that only the case when the patents cover two
| different parts of your own implementation? How could
| someone patent something that has already been patented?
| Someone wrote:
| Let's say you invent the cart, and in the patent, you
| describe a platform with two wheels and two handles to
| push it.
|
| Then, I can patent a cart with "a number of wheels" and
| "at least one handle".
|
| That's why patents tend to be so vague.
|
| You don't want to keep the tiniest door open for such
| cases, so you don't use a mirror, you use a light-
| reflecting device. If you're smart, you don't even use
| the term 'light'. Your invention likely works with radar
| and rontgen, too. Maybe avoid electromagnetic fields,
| too. Who knows whether something similar, in the
| abstract, is possible with sound?
|
| You also don't say a device needs to do A, then B if
| there's a tiny chance it might be possible to accomplish
| the same doing B first, then A.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| This sounds horrible. Isn't the patent is meant to be
| practically usefull by a proffesional to build the
| device?
| meragrin_ wrote:
| From my experience reading US patents/applications, they
| aren't just vague like that. They start out specific and
| then add additional claims which expand it. So they will
| have some claim about a cart with a specific number of
| wheels, but in later claims they'll add language to
| generalize so any number of wheels are covered. There are
| also figures and detailed descriptions which are separate
| from the claims which aim to make clearer. Pretty much
| any one I have read seems to make it clear enough create
| the device.
| rhino369 wrote:
| That's not really a good example since a cart with two
| wheels and a two handles anticipates under 35 U.S.C Sec.
| 102 a cart with a number of wheels and at least one
| handle.
|
| But yea generally you want to describe things with a
| billion examples, but no statements limiting the scope of
| your invention.
|
| The most devious strategy is that you disclose vague and
| probably impossible embodiment. Wait 10 years and then
| write claims that that narrowly target big products that
| you really couldn't have invented ten years. But the
| burden is more or less on the accused infringer to
| provide you didn't describe the new invention in the old
| patent.
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| Team A creates a patent covering X. Team B licenses Team
| As patent and creates a patent covering X+A.
|
| Turns out everyone who does X also needs to do A, to the
| extent X is X+A, so everyone needs to license both
| patents.
| SahAssar wrote:
| Makes sense but Team B's patent would be for their work,
| not for Team A's work, right? I get that you'd need to
| license both in this scenario, but the actual tech
| claimed by the patents wouldn't overlap.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| LOTS of companies are either suing or thinking of suing GF for
| failure to uphold technology development/adoption agreements.
| IBM is one of those.
|
| This Intel situation is certainly part of "keeping it in the
| USA" though it would have been far easier and cheaper to
| prevent outsourcing back in the mid-1990s when Silicon Valley's
| silicon ebbed out of the country. It was a night-and-day change
| and lots of knowledgeable people were scattered to the wind
| back then. Now much of that knowledge is having to be
| reinvented and rediscovered from scratch (because it was tacit
| knowledge that never could be recorded into books or other
| writing).
|
| This probably is the best way for Intel to become a foundry.
| They tried 10 years ago and the entire process was 100% Epic
| Fail. Not surprising given the pain seen when AMD split off its
| fabs to form GF, when it abandoned being an IDM vertical fab.
| When you are an IDM, many process-design interfaces break or
| have to be formalized in ways that were never imagined or
| learned by the organization. That's how Intel failed its
| foundry attempt before so simply avoid Intel culture by buying
| an already working culture makes a lot of sense.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > But perhaps more importantly, I think that what Intel is
| buying is what was sorely lacking them : people and a
| methodology of working with external customers. From all I've
| heard over the years, Intel's process and design teams are so
| insular and out of touch with the rest of the industry's
| practices that they had a terrible time just working with
| customers.
|
| This is not a problem at all. If they wanted to go this
| direction it's as simple as dumbing down, cheapening their
| process a bit, and giving free reign to make decisions on what
| they will be fabbing to technically competent salespeople.
|
| With Intel's resources they could've even developed such
| commodity process separately to their own process, and ran them
| in parallel.
|
| They had almost a whole decade to do that. It's just they
| simply didn't.
| VortexDream wrote:
| Simple? When you have culture issues as Intel does, there's
| nothing simple about any of this.
| kingosticks wrote:
| > It's just they simply didn't.
|
| They've wanted to go in this direction for many years and so
| far failed. We've had meetings with them over the years and
| both times their offering was uncompetitive. I'm not sure
| what the sales people are supposed to do if the core
| technologies fabless customers want are not available.
|
| I lot of people don't realise Intel are already in the
| foundary business. I'm not surprised their customers are not
| shouting about it - why would you want to tell everyone you
| are using an arguably failed process.
| dna_polymerase wrote:
| > (GloFo licensed their 14nm from Samsung as a reminder after
| their own 14 failed, and their 7nm failed too)
|
| Can someone with insight explain how this can happen? GloFo is
| a company worth billions, how can they just fail at this while
| Samsung succeeds. What's so hard about this in particular? I
| don't think I recall companies at this scale just failing at
| something that is supposed to be their area of expertise.
| WanderPanda wrote:
| I'm looking forward to historians writing a big post mortem
| about this in a few decades. For an outsider it is really
| hard to get to the bottom of what makes a company succeed or
| fail in this space. It seems like ,,throwing money at it" is
| reaching its limits in this case
| cwizou wrote:
| I think the charitable answer is that bleeding edge process
| development is getting very hard and many exited/stumbled.
| IBM failed at 14nm too, and Intel which famously called
| itself 2 years in front of the rest of the industry for
| decades has been stumbling hard since 2015 and still hasn't
| really replaced their 14nm on the most visible parts of their
| lineup.
|
| As to what failing means, it can be many things, sometimes
| you just have way too many defects to have the process be
| commercially viable (if your cost is 10x your competition and
| you can't fix it, you don't have a process), some bad
| technical choices because there's been less and less cross
| industry cooperation (things like the ITRS that gave a rough
| roadmap hasn't been a thing for a while, last I checked), and
| introducing new technologies (EUV or new metals) may compound
| those. Sometimes chips in your new process are more dense
| (which is good), but perform poorly because of one of the
| previously mentioned stuff to the point it's hard selling new
| chips that perform worse than previous gen. In Intel's 10nm
| case there was a bit of everything and it will be very
| interesting to know exactly what factored in more (Cobalt is
| often rumoured, a very overconfident choice for MPP was my
| initial understanding, I haven't really followed on this).
|
| In the case of GloFo, it's perhaps simpler than that : GloFo
| was part since 2007 of an alliance between them (initially as
| AMD), IBM and Samsung called the Common Platform [1] that had
| more or less standardised a process, with a lot of the heavy
| research done by IBM (I would say, out of spite for Intel)
| and then used by GloFo and Samsung.
|
| 14nm was the first that everyone was on their own, because
| IBM failed their research. In the end, Samsung managed to get
| it done, and GloFo either failed or... didn't try really hard
| ? This is where I'm gonna speculate a tiny bit and be less
| charitable, I don't think that GloFo was sufficiently funded
| in terms of process development, despite their parent owner
| being able to.
|
| And it definitely looked like from the outside, at least from
| my point of view, they were always in dire need of money
| except for acquisitions, and late with everything (including
| the process inherited from the alliance). Most of the
| business decisions done (including buying Chartered and
| reverse buying IBM's 22nm fabs) seemed to be about pure
| business and missed the technical understanding of the
| business and what it required to keep it going.
|
| At the end of the day, for them, licensing 14 from Samsung
| was a great out of that mess. But that didn't happen for 10,
| and we (at least I) don't really know why. My guess is that
| GloFo would probably have been happy to keep going on with
| that arrangement, but I may be completely wrong on that one.
|
| At the time I seem to recall that both had some issues
| filling up their order book (which seems a bit insane today,
| considering the current shortage) and that may have played
| into it from Samsung's point of view.
|
| [1](https://www.chiphistory.org/546-ibm-microelectronics-
| common-...)
| csharptwdec19 wrote:
| > 14nm was the first that everyone was on their own,
| because IBM failed their research. In the end, Samsung
| managed to get it done, and GloFo either failed or...
| didn't try really hard ? This is where I'm gonna speculate
| a tiny bit and be less charitable, I don't think that GloFo
| was sufficiently funded in terms of process development,
| despite their parent owner being able to.
|
| For whatever it's worth, it feels like GloFo has had
| various process issues for a -long- time. While there were
| issues with the Bulldozer design itself from a deep
| pipeline perspective etc, the other factor in it's lukewarm
| lifetime (especially the first couple gens) was issues with
| GloFo's processes even back then. I know some of that was
| that they were trying to gear more towards bulk silicon vs
| CPUs but I think there were other issues too.
| cwizou wrote:
| > While there were issues with the Bulldozer design
| itself from a deep pipeline perspective etc, the other
| factor in it's lukewarm lifetime (especially the first
| couple gens) was issues with GloFo's processes even back
| then.
|
| I think no process could have saved Bulldozer for AMD, it
| truly was a deeply flawed design IMO, but yep GloFo
| certainly didn't help. I think my "uncharitable" take was
| a bit too kind considering.
|
| Specifically in the case of AMD, GloFo relied early on on
| guaranteed income from AMD through the Wafer Supply
| Agreement which was stupidly tight (my understanding is
| that it was part of the deal of selling to Mudabala,
| though exact details are not public), included a massive
| volume of must buy from AMD, and didn't include any
| penalties for GloFo missing deadlines or having their
| processes underperforming. They definitely coasted on
| this and I should probably have mentioned this above,
| since it led to many of their issues going forward till
| 14nm.
|
| It took them years to manage to loosen the WSA up, the
| last step was (if I recall correctly ?) loosening the CPU
| core exclusive that I believe was part of it (they had a
| carve out for GPUs which were built at TSMC at the time
| of the sale, though that was supposed to be phased out if
| my memory is correct, before it was renegociated and AMD
| moved the low end GPUs there instead, except maybe one
| gen?).
|
| To their credit, AMD pretty much never bad mouthed GloFo
| in public. Managing to do the original Ryzen at GloFo and
| getting as much out of the 14 process that they did is, I
| think, one of the most underrated engineering tour de
| force from those who worked on that. While supposedly
| "copied exact" from Samsung, it wasn't exactly fully
| there at the time.
|
| I did read that the last renegotiated WSA between AMD and
| GloFo is supposed to be going on till 2024 (?) currently,
| so if this goes through, I hope there's a "in case of
| sale" carve out, if just so anyone can save face a bit ;)
|
| (and that would be a pretty large unburden from AMD in
| any case, which makes the whole thing even more ironic)
| SEJeff wrote:
| I do wonder if this wouldn't be an antitrust situation.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Yes, I was surprised as well. That Global Foundries doesn't
| seem to know about this suggests to me some shenanigans on the
| street.
|
| However, if they _did_ buy GloFo it would give them a straight
| forward path to having a "Fab for hire" service ala TSMC and
| their own fabs as well. Kind of a have your cake and eat it too
| thing if you can bring GloFo's ability to bake chips up to the
| requisite standard.
| pankajdoharey wrote:
| No, Global foundries doesnt have a viable 5nm or 3nm node
| yet, yeah they have suspended all 7nm operations and
| researching on creating the 5nm node, but it will take time.
| It makes more sense to buy TSMC than GloFo.
| djmips wrote:
| Maybe TSMC isn't for sale.
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| TSMC's market cap is more than 2x Intel's
| throwaway4good wrote:
| So then have tsmc buy intel???
| moron4hire wrote:
| I sincerely doubt the US Government would allow such an
| acquisition. The only way I could see it happening would
| be a monumental failure of communication between DoD and
| the FTC. DoD absolutely requires a source of chips
| designed and fabbed on US soil. As long as they are aware
| of anything going on, they'll fight tooth-and-nail to
| keep Intel independent.
|
| This is such a big deal that it presents problems for
| vendors working on even completely open, non-sensitive
| systems. Like my company. We are a foreign language
| instruction company that serves primarily DoD. Some of
| our customers are being super reluctant to approve a
| specific project of ours because it is nearly impossible
| to buy appropriate hardware that is not manufactured in
| China. We have to settle for a hardware vendor that is
| not our favorite choice because at least the design
| company is US owned.
|
| It's not technically correct. It should be fine to use
| these systems for non-sensitive purposes, but you try
| negotiating a contract with a CO who won't explain
| themselves/refuses to clarify with his own command that
| this is OK.
| dwater wrote:
| The DoD probably wouldn't even have to get the FTC
| involved (directly), they have enough leverage in CFIUS
| to stop it there due to fabs being Critical Technology.
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| You hack from the weakest point but unimportant part. You
| start from area not directly related ...
| moron4hire wrote:
| Well yeah, that's what we're doing. We have enough other
| business to build the product on our own. But it's
| slower. Access to capital and all.
| eloff wrote:
| The US would block that acquisition. No way they'd let
| Intel go to a foreign country.
| simonh wrote:
| Not all chip foundry customers want or need the latest
| greatest nodes. We can see this in the current chip
| shortages, all those dozens of embedded CPUs needed in
| cars, and in other consumer devices aren't sub-10nm
| designs. The vast majority of chip manufacturing is
| actually at fairly pedestrian nodes for cost reasons.
| rathel wrote:
| Intel _did_ offer foundry services, at least 3 years ago or so,
| albeit designing stuff for that node required putting
| everything in separated environment, and simulating in separate
| compute farms. Even TSMC which was and is far ahead does not
| demand this level of paranoia, only documentation is put in
| secure isolated environment, other stuff being managed in the
| more reasonable way of unix groups, which are, well, good
| enough.
| fouric wrote:
| Isn't the difference that Intel is actually protecting its
| chip IP, whereas TSMC just fabs other peoples' chips and
| isn't in the business themselves?
| rathel wrote:
| Just designing on their node as a foundry customer.
| [deleted]
| rektide wrote:
| Wow. This is the chipmaking side of AMD that got spun off in
| 2009.
|
| I didn't realize they still had a sizable US presence. Malta NY
| (14nm fab) & outside of Burlington VT (90nm fab). The largest
| employer in VT! Also Singapore & Dresden (12nm).
|
| Supposedly they were going to try to go public. To be honest I
| have a hard time understanding what's in this purchase for Intel,
| hard to see this as anything but anti-competitive, but Intel is
| trying to become a silicon foundry to others & GF knows how to do
| that. They also have a decent patent warchest.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GlobalFoundries
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The former IBM fabs are producing military parts. The US
| government needs them to stay in operation and they don't need
| to be on cutting edge processes since that presents problems in
| extreme conditions.
| xxpor wrote:
| Aren't a lot of the rad-hard chips in satellites old PPC
| designs from the mid-90s?
| creshal wrote:
| Civilian ones for deep space probes, yes. There's probably
| more contracts around for various bits of military hardware
| that are less well documented.
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| GlobalFoundries is the largest _private_ employer in Vermont,
| but the University of Vermont and the University of Vermont
| Medical Center each has more employees.
| grp000 wrote:
| Kind of makes you realize how small Vermont is. I just
| checked and the city of San Francisco alone has about 300k
| more residents than the entire state of Vermont; 900k to
| 600k.
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| And SF isn't even the biggest city in the Bay Area!
| [deleted]
| blihp wrote:
| The purchase would both increase Intel's manufacturing capacity
| and pricing power. There used to be half a dozen x86
| manufacturers and I'm sure they've enjoyed having it down to
| two (especially when one of them was weak) much more. What's
| not to love, from their perspective?
| Someone1234 wrote:
| That they'd be increasing capacity in non-cutting edge
| fabrication, which doesn't really move the needle for Intel's
| current position.
|
| If the argument is facilities and staff, that's fine. But
| buying an outdated fab that won't compete with TSM isn't that
| big of a game changer, Intel already has tons of that.
| digikata wrote:
| For non power sensitive embedded parts it makes a lot of
| sense - at least to the point that the pricing could be
| worked out with customers that want long term high volume
| commitments.
| barbacoa wrote:
| Because there is still big money in old nodes. Half of
| TSMC's revenue last quarter was from nodes >14nm.
|
| https://www.anandtech.com/show/16621/tsmc-q1-2021-process-
| no...
|
| Even Nvidia's RTX 3080TI is on an optimized version of
| Samsung's 10 nm node.
| blihp wrote:
| tl;dr version: think like a monopolist. Intel has been
| successfully doing that for decades.
|
| While semiconductor fabs don't have the useful life of say
| a railroad, they are valuable for far longer than the 2-3
| years they are in the spotlight. I'm no expert in this
| area, but as the recent semi shortage demonstrates, it
| appears today's 'ancient' fab can be viable for at least 20
| years if not longer.
|
| Given the astronomical costs of both the fab and chip
| design for current nodes, we're likely to be seeing <=28nm
| sticking around for far longer to get their payback on the
| process nodes. So if you're Intel and you gobble up as much
| of the production capacity as possible, that would seem to
| be a prudent move as long as you don't overpay relative to
| how much you'll be able to increase prices with the greater
| share of the market. Think like Intel probably is: they're
| not thinking of being one of many semi players, they're
| thinking of being one of the last 2-3.
| lambdasquirrel wrote:
| Now we'll see if the Biden Administration's anti-trust stance has
| any bite in it.
| wumpus wrote:
| Intel doesn't have much of a foundry business -- they build for
| themselves -- so if anything this increases competition in the
| foundry business, if Intel follows up by letting GloFo
| customers use Intel's best fabs.
| MikeUt wrote:
| Fewer independent companies _increase_ competition? Sounds
| like something out of a corporate press release.
| wumpus wrote:
| Intel's market share in the foundry business currently
| rounds to zero. So no, it's not fewer independent companies
| in the foundry business, it's the same number, and now the
| underdog will have access to better fabs.
|
| http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=
| 6...
| MikeUt wrote:
| Like ISPs saying their mergers won't reduce competition
| because they stay out of each-other's territories.
|
| And if we look at the entire chip-making business,
| instead of the narrow foundry-for-hire category? Or
| consider the possibility of Intel expanding (not just
| buying) into the foundry business?
| coliveira wrote:
| And we can ALWAYS create some artificial distinction
| between business to justify obvious consolidation.
| Following parent's idea we would never have too few
| companies if at least two are left remaining.
| wumpus wrote:
| Are you referring to me? No, I don't agree with that at
| all.
|
| Mind you, I've been at 2 organizations that have
| purchased chips from foundries, and we turned down both
| Intel and IBM's offers. I'd love to see more competition
| in that industry, and Intel buying GloFo will add to
| competition on the high end.
| wumpus wrote:
| The only high-end non-memory foundry-not-for-hire left is
| Intel. It doesn't seem that your comments reflect the
| actual market.
|
| Also, note that anti-trust law isn't about the
| possibility of future expansion. Intel already tried to
| enter the non-memory foundry-for-hire business and
| failed.
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| Semiconductor manufacturing is a strategic asset. Antitrust
| will not apply.
| exikyut wrote:
| I wonder if browser engines are a strategic asset?
|
| _[Gestures at IE vs Netscape]_
|
| _[Gestures at Chromebooks which 99% of population never run
| Edge or Firefox on]_
|
| (Yes, "the fight" is between Google and Apple now, but
| still...)
| detaro wrote:
| I wonder what the state and terms of long-running contracts are
| there, and if this could end up with Intel fulfilling old fab
| contracts for AMD...
|
| (As far as I know, AMD always held long contracts, partially with
| exclusivity, with GF for fabrication, although this has weakened
| due GF falling behind and not meeting its promised process
| targets)
| cwizou wrote:
| Apparently AMD still had a Wafer Supply Agreement, last
| renegotiated in may, that may be a bit weird indeed... See here
| : https://www.hpcwire.com/2021/05/13/amd-and-
| globalfoundries-c...
|
| My understading is that AMD only used said contract for the I/O
| part of their chips or some entry level GPUs, as they moved the
| CPU cores to TMSC. I'm unclear on their current APU lineup.
| paulmd wrote:
| AMD is also rumored to be backporting Zen3 and RDNA2 to GloFo
| 12+ for some low-end APU products, presumably due to cost -
| TSMC 7nm is quite expensive which makes it less appropriate
| for a certain segment of price-sensitive products.
|
| https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-monet-12nm-zen3-apu-and-
| berg...
| jeffbee wrote:
| The only thing that comes to mind is that IBM is suing GloFo
| for their utter failure to advance the process and fulfill
| their orders.
| sitkack wrote:
| I don't think this should be allowed. Intel is entered the public
| fab market with an insane amount of production capacity, they
| shouldn't _also_ be allowed to gobble up the 3rd place industry
| supplier.
| markzzerella wrote:
| Of course it will happen, it was funded (directly or
| indirectly) with public money[1]. The only thing that surprises
| me is that I expected the ink to dry before they used my money
| to buy their competition.
|
| 1: https://www.sinema.senate.gov/fueled-sinemas-chips-act-
| intel...
| Buraksr wrote:
| I think that this is a really interesting move by Intel. The
| conspiracy theorist in me thinks this is an interesting way for
| Intel to get at TSMC. A few years back there was a cross
| licensing agreement between TSMC and GlobalFoundries. The
| agreement is broad, and covers all patents made by TSMC for the
| next 9 years [1]. It is easy to see how many problems this could
| create for TSMC. Either the deal is void, in which case TSMC is
| and has been likely infringing on Global Foundries' (with an
| acquisition Intel's) patents... Or Intel has a broad cross
| licensing agreement with TSMC... The deal was good for TSMC at
| the time, as Global Foundries had given up on more advanced nodes
| as the investment was just too much for their shareholders, but
| with new ownership I see it as an interesting weakness.
|
| Intel has historically been willing to play dirty, like messing
| with compilers to benefit Intel over Amd[2]. Or like when they
| gave kickbacks to OEMS [2]. Or when they paid vendors to not
| support AMD fully in software[2]. Or just plain old false
| advertising [2]. Actions like these is what led to a 1.25 Billion
| dollar settlement with AMD [3].
|
| Outside of playing dirty, it is a good strategic move for their
| new foundry business. You get the tools, know how, processes, and
| most importantly customers that can make the venture a success.
| Intel has had a foundry business before [4], but they closed it.
| "ecosystem is everything with the foundry business and that takes
| time, money, and technical intimacy," [4]. Intel has money, and
| they are buying the years in the foundry business they missed
| along with technical intimacy to more standard tools. So, I think
| it makes sense from a business perspective, as it gives Intel a
| recurring revenue for its older processes and in turn greater
| advantage from its vertical integration.
|
| [1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/15038/globalfoundries-and-
| tsm... [2]https://www.anandtech.com/show/3839/intel-settles-with-
| the-f... [3] https://www.cnet.com/news/intel-to-pay-
| amd-1-25-billion-in-a... [4] https://semiwiki.com/semiconductor-
| manufacturers/intel/7912-...
| csdreamer7 wrote:
| Now this is some good insight on why Intel would buy GF. That
| cross-licensing deal alone I can see being very useful for
| Intel as they push in to EUV.
| als0 wrote:
| I would expect a cross licensing deal to include clauses to
| cover the situation where one of the parties gets acquired.
| For example, AMD would break their cross licensing deal with
| Intel if they were bought.
| Cyph0n wrote:
| Interesting how GF isn't even aware of the talks. I guess
| Mubadala wants to offload GF quickly?
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| probably GF have been bleeding for years.
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