[HN Gopher] Intel's future now depends on making everyone else's...
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Intel's future now depends on making everyone else's chips
Author : feross
Score : 235 points
Date : 2021-10-20 16:16 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| ant6n wrote:
| Intel just reported earnings, and is down 10% in pre-market
| (ouch). It seems the market did not like the soft pc sales
| numbers.
|
| https://www.anandtech.com/show/17027/intel-reports-q3-2021-e...
| kfprt wrote:
| I'd bet PC sales are down because of the lack of GPU's. Mining
| hurts the rest of the industry because they aren't selling as
| many high end MOBO's, CPU's, cases, etc etc. Sounds like they
| need to twist arms to preference PC's over mining.
| katbyte wrote:
| Apple is no longer using their cpus in every MacBook and Mac
| mini.
| kfprt wrote:
| Apples PC market share is pretty minuscule.
| simonh wrote:
| That's weird, the linked page shows them significantly up, and
| Google shows them storming it at $56.
| bwlg wrote:
| At the top right of the graph you can see that it's currently
| around 9% in the minus in the pre-market.
|
| A lot of sites don't update the graph for pre-market
| movements and only show price movements from when the market
| is open. On yahoo finance you can see pre-market movements if
| you open the full-screen graph (simply click the graph or
| click "full-screen" on mobile).
| https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/INTC?p=INTC&.tsrc=fin-srch
| mhh__ wrote:
| They are currently basically one of at most a handful of people
| who can do that. They need to face the music _and_ get their
| elbows out; now is a good time.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Meanwhile the Chinese are trying very hard to come up with their
| own EUV tech to overcome US imposed bans.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| More context: https://techtaiwan.com/20210609/huawei-duv/
| https://inf.news/en/tech/ede38b11c0c375aee90b2451f5c0da3e.ht...
| madspindel wrote:
| It took Europe 20 years to come up with EUV
| HPsquared wrote:
| It won't take 20 years to catch up.
| rvba wrote:
| Spies will steal the designs?
| xadhominemx wrote:
| It probably will, actually
| rowanG077 wrote:
| This is a meaningless statement. It took humanity thousands
| of years to come up with calculus. Now we teach the basics to
| high schoolers.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > It took humanity thousands of years to come up with
| calculus.
|
| Depends on how you see it. During most of humanity's
| existence, we were hunters and gatherers, with simple and
| small societies - there wasn't much need for advanced math
| and there was not really a possibility for a society to
| feed a thinker. Only when complex societies like ancient
| Greece and Rome were possible thanks to early
| industrialized farming, there was a possibility for people
| to do nothing "productive" towards the society itself
| surviving but instead invest resources into advancing
| society.
| adrianN wrote:
| Ancient Greece was thousands of years ago. Some complex
| societies are even a bit older. For example the Assyrian
| empire started around 2600BCE, and I guess there are
| older ones still.
| ido wrote:
| Alexander the Great is roughly as distant from our time
| as the building of the pyramids were from his.
| m0zg wrote:
| And thanks to all that effort the Chinese now likely have all
| the blueprints. The only reason why they still don't have EUV
| is because this stuff is difficult to bring up even if you
| have all the documentation - screw something up even a
| little, and it's not going to work. But it certainly isn't
| going to take them 20 years to replicate it.
| gostsamo wrote:
| At the time I worked for an ASML contractor, the joke was
| that the chinese already have all the ASML code, just they
| couldn't compile it. This sounded so true, because the ASML
| code is the worst pile of c built over almost 40 years that
| the world has ever seen and because the chinese were rather
| blatant in their attempts to steal whatever they can from
| ASML.
| mhh__ wrote:
| > the chinese were rather blatant in their attempts to
| steal whatever they can from ASML.
|
| Any stories you have (and are allowed to) tell?
| gostsamo wrote:
| Not personal, but chinese agents would wait in front of
| the ASML buildings and target ethnic chinese workers
| offering them money and honor if they come back to the
| motherland and work there. Stories about stolen laptops
| and so on.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| The nature of patents is that it is mostly public
| information anyway and free to use after the patents
| expire. That works both ways of course, the Chinese have
| some pretty fancy technology in other fields that
| manufacturers in the EU or US might benefit from.
|
| Of course with chips, patents and know how that e.g. Intel
| or ASML have are two things.
|
| Ultimately this is good as it drives companies to continue
| innovating. Intel's current problems are related to them
| forgetting to do that.
| m0zg wrote:
| Precisely. A billion ways to get things wrong, and if you
| get it wrong it doesn't work. And the info to get it to
| work is unlikely to be in the patents. You have to have
| folks who worked with this stuff before, which is
| difficult, but doable.
|
| And as far as "innovating" in this field, we're almost at
| the end of the run - there are, as far as I'm aware, no
| processes planned beyond 3nm, and even 3nm is
| astonomically complex and expensive.
| 988747 wrote:
| >> patents and know how that e.g. Intel or ASML have are
| two things.
|
| Shouldn't that make the patent invalid? I thought the
| requirement is that the patent should give enough info so
| that "person skilled in the art" can reproduce the
| invention.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| "skilled in the art" is somewhat irrelevant if that skill
| takes a couple of decades and a $120 million machine to
| develop...
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| This reminds me. I have an anecdote from my 90-something
| year old uncle who coordinated and managed construction
| efforts for the power grid in a post-WWII socialist-bloc
| country between 1940-1990. At first they relied on the
| blueprints left behind by Germany, and then they sourced
| their power generators and components from the USSR. But
| within several decades, it became clear that the USSR stuff
| is just bad. Like straight up unreliable and faulty bad. So
| the question became about whether to build their own, which
| the engineers were very confident they could do. Although
| it _seemed_ feasible in principle, after many years of
| failures it just turned out that manufacturing these things
| was way too difficult to do reliably domestically. They had
| underestimated the entire intellectual investment
| necessary. Buying from the West, from manufacturers with
| decades of experience became the only option. And this was
| a long time before the iron curtain even started to
| collapse. And this was a process managed by socialist
| /communist loyalists. They were buying tech from the West
| while still projecting an image of strength and control.
|
| Regimes trying to copy something strongly reminds me of
| that anecdote. They usually manage to waste a lot of
| resources only just barely catching up, copying, and then
| they still end up buying the stuff that works from the
| companies that have the decades and the experience doing
| it.
|
| Making this chip tech sounds orders of magnitude more
| complex.
|
| Reading the article I only think about what a major fumble
| it was geo-strategically that the people with good ideas
| went to Taiwan.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| >It took Europe 20 years to come up with EUV
|
| "The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced an
| agreement with ASM Lithography (Einhoven, Netherlands) that
| would allow the company to participate in the extreme
| ultraviolet (EUV) lithography development effort now underway
| in Livermore, Calif."
|
| https://www.eetimes.com/u-s-gives-ok-to-asml-on-euv-effort/
|
| EUV is a joint research by US Dept of Energy and several US
| companies. ASML got invited to join the research based on
| conditions lay out by US Dept of Energy.
| throaway46546 wrote:
| EUV?
| Semaphor wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_ultraviolet_lithograph.
| ..
| Animats wrote:
| This makes sense, because of the move to application-specific
| ICs. Products used to be generic ICs on custom boards. That's
| shrinking to a single application-specific IC. You can usually
| get all the transistors you need for a product onto one
| application-specific part. But that part will not be a commodity.
|
| Much of this is semi-custom. You plug together a few pre-defined
| CPU cores, a GPU, a video decoder, some software defined radios,
| etc. and you have a phone.
|
| Having more fabs in more locations is a good thing, for
| robustness.
| PedroBatista wrote:
| It looks like everyone is opening a fab in the next couple years
| ( for many reasons, one of them is political ) so I would guess
| in the next couple years ordering chips will be "cheap" because
| most fabs are desperate to recoup at least some of the gigantic
| investment and margins will be razor thin.
|
| So my guess would be in the next decade, the real money will be
| on the design and IP not the manufacturing. ( excluding the
| bleeding edge half-a-nm stuff )
| dragontamer wrote:
| Everyone is opening a fab, but it only "counts" if you in fact
| succeed at making the chips. Otherwise, you've only spent $5
| billion on a failure.
|
| Intel has fallen behind because it failed to deliver its 10nm
| (now called 7nm) process in 2015. Intel tried-and-tried, but
| failed, to the point where supercomputers (ie: Aurora) were
| delayed because of the manufacturing mishap.
|
| Just because everyone is __planning__ to open a fab doesn't
| mean that they'll be successful at it. If Intel fails to reach
| 5nm (TSMC-name), then TSMC will win.
|
| In fact, TSMC has already started making 5nm chips called the
| Apple M1 Pro.
|
| ---------
|
| Intel has finally delivered 10nm, but they were 5 years late.
| If it takes another 5 years to deliver their version of 5nm,
| then TSMC will be at 3nm by the time Intel reaches 5nm
|
| -----------
|
| Its all about manufacturing actually. All of these chip designs
| can be ported over to different manufacturers, so long as the
| different manufacturers are __CAPABLE__ of implementing the
| designs.
| davidw wrote:
| > TSMC will win.
|
| Absent any geopolitical difficulties... but that's a whole
| other discussion.
| diroussel wrote:
| And climate issues. Taiwan is suffering from drought in
| places, and TSMC hasn't been able to meet their water
| saving goals.
|
| It takes a lot of water to make the ultra pure water needed
| to wash the wafers. Without access to lots of water they
| will too will have issues.
| davidw wrote:
| There was an interesting thread about this in the past if
| someone wants to dig it up, because offhand, a lot of us
| were a bit perplexed by the notion of Taiwan having water
| difficulties, and Intel building in Arizona, which is not
| known for an abundance of water.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Arizona solves the issue of a hypothetical PRC attack on
| the island of Taiwan.
|
| PRC will have enough military strength to attack Taiwan
| and challenge US Carriers. We don't know if they'd win
| but... enough strength that they're a real threat... at
| least near China (with assistance from land-based
| hypersonic missiles and whatnot). PRC probably doesn't
| have the military strength to attack Arizona.
| davidw wrote:
| Sure, but the question was about water.
| dragontamer wrote:
| The question may have been about water, but the
| geopolitics are about a hypothetical attack from China vs
| Taiwain.
| codedokode wrote:
| I think geopolitics is about US wanting to have control
| over chip production (being able to start or stop it,
| being able to ban certain countries and companies from
| getting access to the latest technology). I doubt
| conflict between China and Taiwan means anything here.
| China is not going to attack Taiwan which has US support.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > China is not going to attack Taiwan which has US
| support.
|
| China will have a Navy that (by tonnage) rivals the US's
| Navy in a few short years. US still will have more
| capital ships but there's big, unanswered questions about
| what the proper tactics will be in the next great naval
| battles.
|
| Would we rather have the US's "Supercarrier" strategy?
| Big ships with lots of money put into each one? Or would
| China's "little ships" strategy be superior?
|
| Really: one question. Will China's hypersonic missiles
| truly be a capital-ship killer? If their weapon can truly
| kill a US Supercarrier, (or more specifically: if China
| __believes__ it can kill the US Supercarriers) then China
| will probably attack Taiwan.
|
| China is building a navy for _some_ reason. Taiwan seems
| like the obvious target.
|
| ------
|
| China's increasingly large Navy is a big enough deal that
| the USA has given away its nuclear submarine secrets to
| Australia to counter-act the threat. That doesn't really
| change the picture too much (US always had nuclear-
| submarines available), but its clearly a degree of saber-
| rattling going on right now between US and China.
| aeturnum wrote:
| I think the idea is that, though I'm sure the AZ site is
| unsatisfying as far as water goes, they can always pipe
| water in and it was picked for other reasons.
| Throwawayaerlei wrote:
| What I've read is that reliable electricity is a much
| bigger problem, Taiwan's leaders are failing hard on
| this.
| diroussel wrote:
| This video from asianometry has the info on the water
| issues for TSMC
|
| https://youtu.be/Dq04GpzRZ0g
| quickthrowman wrote:
| I remember that, I believe the Intel plant in AZ
| recycles/will recycle 95% of the water it uses
| dragontamer wrote:
| > Absent any geopolitical difficulties... but that's a
| whole other discussion.
|
| Geopolitics have been figured out. TSMC's next 5nm plant
| will be in Arizona.
| https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/06/01/tsmc-starts-
| const...
| worrycue wrote:
| Will it be enough for the US government though?
|
| The current shortage is making countries like the US
| realise that semiconductors are a critical commodity for
| the function of their advanced economies.
|
| The US wants fabs back on their soil and will probably be
| willing to burn money to make it so.
|
| Will the US be satisfied with just having foreign
| operated fabs on US soil? Or will the US want home growth
| (and firmly under US control) companies like Intel to
| have similar capabilities.
|
| Frankly, IMHO things in the long term aren't looking that
| great for TSMC. Some of their business is going to get
| eaten by "local" fabs - even if they can't do leading
| edge nodes they will eating into TSMC's business on the
| lower end.
|
| There is also the danger of overcapacity destroying any
| profitability in the fab business altogether - guess who
| will get bailed out by the US government if that happens;
| hint: not TSMC.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| >Frankly, IMHO things in the long term aren't looking
| that great for TSMC. Some of their business is going to
| get eaten by "local" fabs - even if they can't do leading
| edge nodes they will eating into TSMC's business on the
| lower end.
|
| TSMC's Q3 shown bulk of their revenue come from higher
| end node. 7nm along is at 34%. the only other options for
| high end node is Samsung and Intel.
|
| I don't see any long term problem for TSMC if they keep
| going at its current pace.
|
| Not many foundry can do high end. GlobalFoundries vow out
| at 7nm a long time ago.
|
| https://investor.tsmc.com/english/encrypt/files/encrypt_f
| ile...
| worrycue wrote:
| Low end is still money. It also reduces the total they
| earn from the life time of the node / their investment.
| zsmi wrote:
| > There is also the danger of overcapacity destroying any
| profitability in the fab business altogether - guess who
| will get bailed out by the US government if that happens;
| hint: not TSMC.
|
| The boom/bust cycle is nothing new in semiconductors.
| It's a fairly regular thing. Also, keep in mind that
| consolidating and repositioning during downturns is how
| TSMC became TSMC.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7QkIECEkVc
| worrycue wrote:
| I don't mean temporary overcapacity. Overcapacity could
| be near permanent / long lasting as governments step in
| to prevent their local fabs from failing as they want to
| maintain local production capability no matter what.
|
| In general, if semiconductors become a national security
| issue, I think there will be a fundamental change in the
| nature of the business. It will not be business as usual
| for TSMC.
| zsmi wrote:
| > In general, if semiconductors become a national
| security issue, I think there will be a fundamental
| change in the nature of the business.
|
| Maybe, who knows what the future will bring.
|
| But I've heard this before [1] and once recessions hit,
| and budgets get cut, that kind of thing quickly becomes
| less tenable.
|
| And then someone realizes that it takes a constant stream
| of incoming parts to keep the equipment inside any
| factory running for any meaningful amount of time, and
| that supply is not protected, and neither are their
| suppliers...
|
| But I agree, things will not stay as they are. The only
| thing usual about this business is change.
|
| [1] The US semiconductor manufacturing sector was under
| serious assault by the Japanese in the 80s. That was my
| first "trade war" in this industry...
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1985/09/2
| 2/s...
| worrycue wrote:
| That was before it was seen as a potential national
| security issue.
|
| Semiconductors could end up like the US defense industry,
| which the US feeds with a continuous amount of money
| (recession or not) and is not outsourced for obvious
| reasons - but its products are sold to others; other
| countries outsource to the US. The US buys military tech
| on occasion but rarely ever directly buy the hardware in
| significant numbers - they will manufacture it in-house.
| It's great if it turns a profit but that's not the point.
|
| Every country has their own defense industry if they can
| afford it.
| zsmi wrote:
| It was the cold war and Reagan was president. Believe me,
| plenty of people were using the national security angle.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| >TSMC will win
|
| What do they win? More maket share, more revenue, more
| profits, better margins, competitors goes out of business?
|
| I know very little about this industry, but is the market big
| enough for all players to 'win'?
| dragontamer wrote:
| > What do they win? More maket share, more revenue, more
| profits, better margins, competitors goes out of business?
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/intel-details-mixed-
| source-...
|
| > Intel said Thursday its "Alchemist" graphics chips will
| be made by TSMC using the latter's newly named "N6"
| chipmaking technology, an upgraded version of its "N7"
| technology.
|
| I mean, I guess they're already "winning". Intel's own
| chip-making group has begun to use TSMC. Hopefully Intel
| can figure something out about what its like to be a
| customer, so maybe they can be a better supplier?
|
| But yes: customers, market share, and knowledge. By having
| more customers, TSMC can perform more experiments on more
| leading edge nodes, like 3nm or smaller.
| orangepurple wrote:
| It is only a matter of time before PRC annexes the island of
| Taiwan and TSMC production is hugely disrupted. The USA did
| not win the last two proxy wars against China (North Vietnam
| and North Korea). This time will be no different.
| zsmi wrote:
| If China annexes Taiwan it will be for reasons that have
| nothing to do with TSMC.
|
| There may be a short term benefit but if they get cut off
| from ASML (Europe), Applied Materials (US), etc. it's going
| to be tough to keep their machines in service and stay
| leading edge. And those companies have very deep
| international supply chains too and may also get
| sanctioned.
| specialist wrote:
| Such confidence. You should cash in.
|
| https://www.predictit.org/
| orangepurple wrote:
| There is no objective measure of "having won" the war.
| There never is because war results in extremely mixed
| outcomes. All that matters is the victors have the power
| to subjugate the people of the land, people's beliefs and
| consequences be damned.
| mcculley wrote:
| There is no market on PredictIt for that, as far as I can
| tell. Where can one buy for this prediction?
| irdc wrote:
| There's an argument to be made that annexing Taiwan would
| actually be detrimental to the PRC: doing so would be
| hugely disruptive to the global supply chains that form a
| major source of income to China.
| orangepurple wrote:
| China is willing to decimate its own economy to achieve
| long term objectives. This includes annexing Hong Kong,
| shutting down celebrity culture, fintechs, and the tech
| industry.
| irdc wrote:
| I don't disagree that the PRC has their own best
| interests in mind. However, I don't see how they can be
| oblivious to the fact that going to war with and
| occupying Taiwan would not only tie up a significant part
| of their military, but would also immediately give their
| current trading partners both reason and rationale to cut
| off trade. Not to mention the brain drain from Taiwan
| that would follow shortly after.
|
| If anything, I'm far more worried about the PRC
| exercising the soft power it's slowly been building in
| eg. part of Africa.
| dragontamer wrote:
| The idea is to get Taiwan during the tail-end of the
| USA's upgrade cycle.
|
| China is building new ships today: roughly 3 aircraft
| carriers, and a huge number of Destroyers that will (on a
| tonnage basis), outnumber the entirety of the US Navy.
| They aren't capital ships, but a mass of lower-quality
| ships would probably still work if those hypersonic
| missiles can really kill our capital ships. (A big
| question in of itself: do China's hypersonic "ship
| killing" missiles work? If so, can the USA's defense
| systems shoot them down? If not, then why wouldn't China
| attack Taiwan?)
|
| Meanwhile, the US Navy is just about to upgrade over the
| next 15 years. This means that a number of our ships will
| be docked, and the ships that are remaining will be older
| designs.
|
| If China times it correctly, it can attack Taiwan and
| force the USA to defend with its obsolete ships, and
| before the new ships come online. In effect: the USA has
| already "spent" our money / resources on the upgrade
| process, but we haven't gotten the benefits of it yet.
|
| ----------
|
| This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to attack.
| Once the USA's fleet is upgraded, the opportunity closes
| (as USA will have newer / better technology ships, while
| China's old Carriers/Destroyers will be at the
| disadvantage. And China won't reclaim the advantage until
| it spends a huge amount of time and money on their own
| upgrade cycle).
|
| Furthermore: this "delay in upgrade cycles" was caused by
| Bill Clinton's budget in 1996. It takes many years for a
| budgetary issue to come up, and the USA has spent huge
| amounts of money on its military from 2001 onwards
| (because of Afghanistan / Iraq). As such, no such
| "upgrade gap" will exist for 20+ years at the minimum
| after this opportunity passes.
|
| Will China be willing to wait another 50 years for
| another opportunity like this? Or will China actually go
| for it? And remember, China has already dedicated
| incredible amounts of money towards building a new fleet.
| China's fleet is a "sunk cost", their only decision now
| is whether or not to use it.
| infamia wrote:
| I don't think the timing is favorable for China. Based on
| the papers I've read, China is about 15 years away from
| having a sufficient amphibious capability needed to
| invade Taiwan. That very likely means a sustained
| blockade, which will be extremely difficult politically,
| militarily, and economically. Surely such an invasion
| would be swiftly followed by harsh sanctions from many of
| China's trading partners. Considering the systemic risk
| China is presently baking into their economy by not
| allowing defaults to occur, what will be the appetite for
| adventurism of this sort with things unsettled at home?
| Is Xi willing to risk completely destabilizing China's
| economy to capture Taiwan? That sounds extremely reckless
| and unlikely, but stranger things have happened.
| irdc wrote:
| Sure, they may very well win the battle. What I'm trying
| to say is that in the course of doing so they would very
| likely lose the war.
| dragontamer wrote:
| The Nazis and Imperial Japanese lost the war the minute
| they made strategic blunders like... pissing off USA +
| Soviets __simultaneously__.
|
| It turns out that the human ability to make strategic
| blunders is very possible. So if your best argument is
| "it'd be a strategic mistake to do X". Well... history is
| filled with horrible strategic blunders.
|
| It'd probably be against American interests and a
| strategic blunder to divert forces from Afghanistan into
| Iraq on an notion of WMDs for example. Everyone makes
| strategic blunders all the time. I don't fault people for
| making them, I just try and study them and understand why
| it happens.
|
| ----------
|
| There's something fascinating about war machines, like
| carriers, hypersonic cruise missiles, and destroyers. You
| have to see them in action to understand the intoxicating
| effects of these machines.
|
| Once you understand how these machines can hypnotize a
| person... how they can make you feel like you can
| accomplish anything... then, and ONLY then, will you
| understand why Wars get started.
|
| China's got Hypersonic cruise missiles. They know it. We
| know it. China knows the USA doesn't have them (!!!).
| That knowledge is intoxicating. China sees that as a
| military advantage. Will they be intoxicated by that
| knowledge to the point where they attack Taiwan?
|
| Well, no one knows for certain. But they've looked at
| those missiles and have __already decided__ to build more
| ships than the entirety of the US Navy. So what does that
| tell you?
| infamia wrote:
| > The Nazis and Imperial Japanese lost the war the minute
| they made strategic blunders like... pissing off USA +
| Soviets __simultaneously__.
|
| This is an important point and why I believe Wolf warrior
| diplomacy runs contrary to China's national interests. It
| has caused countries who previously viewed China as
| merely a competitor to view it as a direct threat and to
| take appropriate action. You know you've gone too far
| when your actions have resulted in Korea and Japan
| aligning with each other about the need for closer ties
| and to align with the U.S. on regional security.
| htrp wrote:
| any sources or mode details on this?
| dragontamer wrote:
| Yes? Anything in particular you want to focus on? I think
| I covered a lot of topics, lol.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-21#DF-21D_(CSS-5_Mod-4)_
| Ant...
|
| The DF-21, available maybe 10 years ago, would have the
| range to hit ships all the way out to Japan or so. That's
| really all you need to know: China is trying to develop
| (or already has developed) "ship-killing" hypersonic
| missiles.
|
| But of course, no one knows if they work vs US ships (can
| US Ships deflect the missile? Do we have flares or
| something that the missile will mistake for a ship? Can
| the US shoot down the missile before it reaches a ship?
| No one knows).
|
| -------
|
| For China's military composition: https://media.defense.g
| ov/2020/Sep/01/2002488689/-1/-1/1/202...
|
| You can see in the Eastern/Southern theaters of China,
| they have roughly 500,000 Army troops vs Taiwan's 80,000
| troops. (China has a military of over 1-million, but most
| are deployed elsewhere). China also has:
|
| "The PRC has the largest navy in the world, with an
| overall battle force of approximately 350 ships and
| submarines including over 130 major surface combatants.
| In comparison, the U.S. Navy's battle force is
| approximately 293 ships as of early 2020. China is the
| top ship-producing nation in the world by tonnage and is
| increasing its shipbuilding capacity and capability for
| all naval classes."
|
| So PRC already outnumbers the USA in terms of ships. In a
| few more years, PRC will outnumber the USA in terms of
| tons. China is definitely going for "build more" and not
| necessarily "build better". There hasn't been a modern
| naval battle since like WW2 between major powers, so no
| one really knows if this is a good or bad strategy. But
| its certainly a strategy.
|
| USA of course has our 10x Nimitz supercarriers + 1x Ford
| supercarrier (going through our carrier-upgrade cycle
| currently, +F35 project I'm sure you're aware of). USA
| has a number of "Amphibious assault ship", which are
| sorta-kinda like carriers (except for the Marines instead
| of Navy), but do contain VTOL aircraft like F35-B
| variant.
|
| I don't think anyone really knows for sure how the battle
| will play out. The US ships (ie: the "Supercarriers") are
| incredible war machines, and even the smaller Amphibious
| assault ships would probably go toe-to-toe with even the
| Chinese carriers. But how does that play out with China's
| missiles and airforce?
| joconde wrote:
| > why wouldn't China attack Taiwan?
|
| The US officially doesn't rule out escalating from
| conventional to nuclear war against other nuclear-armed
| countries. Even if the possibility is remote, I imagine
| that nobody is suicidal enough to want to test the
| possibility.
| dragontamer wrote:
| And what if China performs the calculus: decides that
| Tactical nuclear weaponry is fine and that the USA isn't
| dumb enough to escalate into Strategic nuclear weaponry?
|
| There's a big difference between nuclear powers lobbing
| 100kilo-ton bombs at each other's navies in the Pacific,
| and nuclear powers using 10-Megaton bombs at each other's
| cities.
|
| Given that China has decided to make a large mass of
| cheap Destroyers, what do you think China is thinking
| about this next war? Tactical nuclear weaponry would
| favor the one who has a more dispersed naval force, and
| be a bigger problem for USA's multi-billion $$
| supercarriers, would it not?
|
| -------
|
| Lets say China nukes a military Supercarrier. Will the
| USA respond by nuking Beijing? Of course not. Knowing
| that USA is tactically in the disadvantage from using
| nukes (due to the composition of our fleet vs the Chinese
| fleet), we know that USA won't escalate to using even
| tactical nukes.
| joconde wrote:
| On the one hand, that makes sense; on the other, it would
| still be the first use of nuclear weapons since WW2. The
| last close calls, like Cuba, didn't even involve any
| bombing, just the threat of one power's blockade against
| another's ships, and that one is widely seen as having
| come close to mutual destruction. I don't think that
| actually lobbing nukes at each other would be less
| dangerous.
|
| Also, accidents happen, and it's not clear how secure
| strategic weapons are against everything from a zealous
| airman to a submarine cut off from its command and having
| to make a judgment call. Daniel Ellsberg's book (The
| Doomsday Machine) suggests that this kind of accident
| during a crisis has come close to triggering a full
| nuclear war several times.
|
| To summarise, I'm sure the tactics look good for China,
| but escalating to nukes still seems like a suicidal move,
| considering the risk of accident or miscalculation.
| dragontamer wrote:
| I personally agree with you.
|
| But I can conceive a hypothetical Chinese Admiral who
| disagrees with the both of us. And that's all that it
| will take.
| orangepurple wrote:
| China has a policy of making everything in-house and
| already requires exit visas for its people. Brain drain
| can't happen if you are not allowed to leave.
| irdc wrote:
| Just how many people do you think are needed to sabotage
| a chip fab? I'd say about one.
|
| How many rabid PRC-haters do you think Taiwan harbours?
| Well, it's more than one...
| dragontamer wrote:
| How many "von Braun" types do you think exist in Taiwan?
| People who are willing to work on cool projects no matter
| who is in charge?
|
| von Braun worked for the Nazis to make missiles during
| WW2. Then was picked up by USA / NASA to make missiles /
| ICBMs / Space Program.
|
| It turns out that a surprising number of engineers are
| rather flexible when it comes to ethics. They just want
| to work on cool things.
| irdc wrote:
| Yep, that'll likely eventually happen...
|
| ...after a couple of years of unrest and social
| instability. Which as simonh pointed out
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28959591) is
| exactly what the CCP does not want.
|
| Knowing that the PRC tends to take the long view, I don't
| think they'd take the chance regarding Taiwan.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > ...after a couple of years of unrest and social
| instability.
|
| If China wins Taiwan vs the USA, there wouldn't be any
| unrest or instability. The Chinese people would be proud
| of their accomplishment, and the rise of China as a
| military power.
|
| Like... what "instability" occurred from Russia's
| annexation of Crimea? None what so ever.
| tjalfi wrote:
| Organized stay-behind[0] operations such as Operation
| Gladio[1] were common in western Europe during the Cold
| War.
|
| The Taiwanese military has had decades to prepare for a
| Chinese invasion; it would be surprising if they didn't
| have a similar setup in place.
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stay-behind
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio
| simonh wrote:
| It depends what you mean by long term objectives. The
| supreme objective of the CCP is to stay in power in
| China. All and every other objective is subsidiary to
| this.
|
| The CCP decided many decades ago that economic growth was
| absolutely necessary for them to stay in power because it
| is required in order to maintain social stability. An
| economy with hundreds of millions of unemployed peasants
| in the countryside, and feeble industries was not
| sustainable. This is why they purged a bunch of
| ideological marxists and embraced communism with Chinese
| characteristics, AKA Capitalism.
|
| For a long time the CCP maintained that 7%+ economic
| growth was necessary in order to absorb the unused labour
| pool and maintain social stability.
|
| Needless to say a war with Taiwan and the US, plus
| blockades by the rest of the world would be a somewhat
| risky situation from a social stability point of view. It
| would be a complete throw of the dice, and for all
| Chinese people love gambling with money, that's not the
| CCP way with politics.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Would the world respond extremely negatively to a Taiwan
| scenario? Or much more negatively than a Hong Kong
| scenario? (Which literally just happened, and not much
| seems to have changed as far as I can tell)
|
| We know the USA would respond militarily. But how many
| other countries would be pulled into the conflict?
| Germany still trades with Russia despite the Crimea
| annexation, right? Clearly USA / UK / Australia are
| making plans but is there anyone else who'd join in the
| fight?
|
| Like, realistically, what would happen under a Taiwan
| scenario? Do you think McDonalds and Apple will just
| leave China? Will Tencent games be banned in the USA?
| Will USA really make League of Legends and Genshin Impact
| illegal during the war?
|
| Or, would the world continue as usual? Would US Video
| Gamers continue playing their games, McDonalds continue
| China operations / Apple continue making their iPhones
| while the whole military stuff happens? Frankly, I see
| this as the more realistic scenario.
|
| We can already see how video gamers reacted to Hong Kong:
| with a bunch of companies capitulating to Chinese
| demands.
| simonh wrote:
| Hing Kong is a completely different situation, it's
| always been mainland Chinese territory as Britain only
| leased it. Full mainland control was always the plan, it
| was just a matter of time. Also the political
| administration, elected under a system implemented under
| British rule, supported the recent changes.
|
| I'm in no way justifying what the CCP did to Hong Kong,
| but frankly it was inevitable. That is not the case with
| Taiwan, which has a population and democratically
| legitimate government completely committed to
| independence.
|
| An invasion of Taiwan would be much more similar
| historically speaking to the German invasion of Poland,
| or the Korean war. It's utterly and completely
| unacceptable, and would be legitimate grounds for total
| war. Should China succeed in conquering the island it
| would not be possible to counter-invade, but an
| indefinite blockade of transport into and out of China
| and total interdiction of it's air and sea traffic both
| civilian and military would be entirely proportionate and
| the minimum I would expect. See the blockade of North
| Korea for an example. We'd buy our phones and video games
| elsewhere.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > but an indefinite blockade of transport into and out of
| China and total interdiction of it's air and sea traffic
| both civilian and military would be entirely
| proportionate and the minimum I would expect
|
| And China outnumbers the US warships ship-for-ship
| currently, and China is outbuilding more warships ton-
| for-ton than even the USA.
|
| China also has a larger (though inferior) air force, as
| well as a huge number of (untested) missiles. But the USA
| won't have many bases to stage our Air Force from (Taiwan
| is so close to China, and so far away from Japan / South
| Korea). So really, its China's Airforce + China's
| Missile-force + China's Navy vs the US Navy + US Marines
| + maaaayyyyybe a very stretched thin US Air Force.
|
| If the USA wants to enforce a naval blockade, they'd have
| to win a war against China. That's a lot of advantages to
| China frankly.
|
| I'm certain the US could beat China in a "fair fight" for
| Antarctica. But the issue with the Taiwan scenario is
| that the Chinese military is growing ever stronger, and
| its conceivable that China could beat the USA in that
| region. If China does happen to win militarily, then a
| US-sponsored blockade would be impossible.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| i believed people is overplaying China invasion. TSMC is a
| business. a saying goes "business man have no border".
|
| TSMC have a lot of fabs in Taiwan. that doesn't mean TSMC
| as a business can't build fab elsewhere.
|
| TSMC is already building a fab in AZ USA and reach an
| agreement with Sony to build a fab in Japan. TSMC also have
| fabs in China and India govrt is looking to Taiwan for a
| fab in India.
| Zababa wrote:
| > the island of Taiwan
|
| You sound like you have a dog in this fight.
| orangepurple wrote:
| I couldn't care less. Supply chains are already massively
| disrupted, I can't get the electronics I care about at
| affordable prices and lead times, and everyday costs are
| out of control in my country (USA).
| irrational wrote:
| Why has TSMC succeeded where Intel has failed?
| dragontamer wrote:
| > Why has TSMC succeeded where Intel has failed?
|
| Everyone is buying the same machines from ASML. Machines
| aren't the issue, its process. Its nitty gritty
| manufacturing details that no one will talk about (because
| those details are the "moat", the secret sauce that makes
| TSMC do something that Intel can't).
|
| It looks like Intel has figured out 7nm, just much later
| than expected.
| Jensson wrote:
| USA paid its best engineers to do advertisements and
| finance speculations. It means USA will be best in the
| world at advertisements but naturally will lag behind in
| other fields.
| thedougd wrote:
| Or in other words, Intel fell into the same management
| trap as other legacy tech providers. They focused on
| paying industry wide 'median' salaries and bled talent.
| filereaper wrote:
| Leadership.
|
| TSMC has competent leaders like Morris Chang and Mark Liu.
|
| Intel had lost it's way after Andy Grove gave up the helm.
| Pat Gelsinger grew up under Gordon and Grove and the old
| guard is back.
| bsder wrote:
| Actually, it's more than just the executive slots.
|
| Intel is institutionally paranoid, and Grove is part of
| that fault. The old guard, even in engineering, is
| retiring/dying and have not groomed successors because
| that could have threatened their political position.
|
| Can Gelsinger really fix this? I suspect probably not.
| AlphaSite wrote:
| Intel takes huge leaps, it's how they kept 5e it lead for
| so long, but TSMC makes incremental progress and it's paid
| off now that things are getting extremely difficult.
| DCKing wrote:
| > In fact, TSMC has already started making 5nm chips called
| the Apple M1 Pro.
|
| This is not a recent development. TSMC has been mass
| producing 5nm chips for slightly over a year now. The first
| 5nm chip on the market was the Apple A14 (iPhone 12 line)
| released almost exactly one year ago, and soon thereafter
| (November 10th, 2020) the first M1 Macs.
|
| Samsung has had their ""5nm"" chips out since early 2021 with
| the Exynos 2100 and Snapdragon 888. It's in the ballpark of
| TSMC's process but not as dense.
|
| Intel hasn't even announced their first mass market 7nm (or
| ""Intel 4"", sigh) products yet. ""Intel 4"" is inferior to
| Samsung's and TSMC's 5nm processes on paper, and it'll likely
| not even be next year that we're going to see products with
| them.
|
| I don't think Intel's foundries will be competing on the
| leading edge of the market. They'll have be trying to have
| value focused production with their 14nm and 10nm processes,
| I would guess. There should be plenty of demand there still,
| but it'll be a good while - if ever - before Intel is leading
| again.
| eulers_secret wrote:
| >""Intel 4"" is inferior to Samsung's and TSMC's 5nm
| processes on paper {...}
|
| According to transistor density information this is false
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_nm_process)
|
| TSMC 5nm density: 173 MTr/mm^2
|
| Samsung 5nm density: 127 MTr/mm^2
|
| Intel 4 (estimated): ~200 MTr/mm^2
|
| Got a source? I'm willing to change my mind, but the data
| doesn't agree with your assertion from my point of view.
|
| Samsung's process has always lagged TSMC and INTC. It's
| part of why the 3080 is so hot/power hungry.
| chelical wrote:
| Intel's numbers are theoretical. They're still relying
| heavily on multi patterning for their current chips. They
| have yet to demonstrate competency with EUV. Intel 4 is
| also projected for 2023. Tsmc are producing 5nm chips
| right now.
| DCKing wrote:
| Think I may be mistaken here. Would be good if ""Intel
| 4"" can compete!
| [deleted]
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Up until the kaboom, microprocessors have become a commodity.
| Granted one with _huge_ startup costs, but a commodity
| nonetheless. (There 's a reason why Intel used to be top forbes
| company, and why today it is still stuck in the $100-200B
| market cap range compared to $2T amazons & apples.)
| nly wrote:
| Given that Samsung's process was powering the iPhone up until
| 2015, how are Samsung doing in 2021 on this front?
| simonh wrote:
| Samsung's big cash cow is it's memory business, it's
| responsible for only 20% of revenue but 50% of profits. They're
| doubling down on the logic chip business with massive
| investment in their 3nm gate-all-around architecture.
|
| One issue is there's a significant conflict of interest between
| their device and CPU businesses. Apple left them precisely
| because Samsung is a competitor in handsets, and other handset
| manufacturers are also wary of buying from them for the same
| reason.
|
| As a side note it is true TSMC deserves a lot of credit for the
| advantages of the Apple M-series CPUs. Without the 5nm TSMC
| process they wouldn't be anywhere near as impressive. However
| Apple has been working very closely with TSMC on it, and their
| long term financial commitments been a big factor in TSMC being
| able to move forward so decisively on developing the process
| and investing in future nodes and capacity. Apple ditching
| Samsung as a supplier has had a big influence on the shape of
| the CPU industry. The (currently) top comment by WithinReason
| highlights part of this dynamic.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > As a side note it is true TSMC deserves a lot of credit for
| the advantages of the Apple M-series CPUs. Without the 5nm
| TSMC process they wouldn't be anywhere near as impressive.
|
| We're going to look back on this story as one of the craziest
| product launches of all time. I genuinely have no idea how
| Apple secured 5nm so early ( _and_ blocked other customers
| from getting a piece until 2022), I have to imagine that it
| was a last-minute decision they pushed out to TSCM, judging
| from their response. So many different parts of the M1 are
| pushing boundaries we 've never hit before (for better and
| worse), so it will be deeply interesting to see how Apple
| scales a CPU that barely exists in it's current form. Some of
| my friends in the manufacturing biz were absolutely
| dumbfounded by the fact that Apple fit 64 gigs of memory on
| the M1 Max (the thing is surrounded by memory chips), which
| makes me extremely curious about their next pro hardware.
|
| Fun thought experiment, too: Would the M1 have still been
| such a knockout hit on TSCM 7nm? It certainly wouldn't be as
| good as it's current incarnation, but I'd bet dollars-to-
| donuts that a big.LITTLE ARM chip would have worked pretty
| well on last-gen silicon.
| hylaride wrote:
| Ruthlessness. Apple did the same thing when the iPhone
| first came out with the higher end capacitive touch
| screens. When it was released, all the competitors raced to
| catch up but found that the supply was gobbled up by apple
| for years. If you compared any android touchscreens with
| apple ones for the first 3ish years the apple ones were
| night and day better.
|
| Apple is also willing to invest in technology in return for
| exclusivity for awhile.
| simonh wrote:
| >I genuinely have no idea how Apple secured 5nm so early
| (and blocked other customers from getting a piece until
| 2022), I have to imagine that it was a last-minute decision
| they pushed out to TSCM, judging from their response.
|
| I would not be at all surprised if they laid the groundwork
| for this partnership back in 2015 or even earlier. The only
| reason Apple dual-sourced the A9 was because TSMC didn't
| have the capacity to deliver the full requirement, but
| Apple had already been trying to get off Samsung for years.
|
| Apple has a long track record of early, heavy capital
| investment in core technology manufacturing capacity and
| long term contracts with suppliers. This serves the dual
| strategic purposes of securing exclusive access to new
| tech, and driving down the long term costs of that tech.
| They did this with retina displays, in that case Apple
| literally owned the manufacturing equipment operated by
| Sharp.
|
| In order to build out fab capacity TSMC needed long term
| high volume guaranteed orders. Apple delivered that. There
| was nothing last minute about any of this, I think it's
| always been the plan.
| hocuspocus wrote:
| > One issue is there's a significant conflict of interest
| between their device and CPU businesses. Apple left them
| precisely because Samsung is a competitor in handsets, and
| other handset manufacturers are also wary of buying from them
| for the same reason.
|
| I don't think what bothered Apple is relevant to other phone
| makers. Case in point, Qualcomm doesn't mind having Samsung
| fab their SoCs, and even their modems, a domain where Samsung
| has repeatedly tried to catch up!
|
| Anyway in the current Android smartphone landscape, everyone
| is using ARM reference CPU designs.
| simonh wrote:
| It's depressing, it seems like the high end Android handset
| market has disappeared. What we have now are midrange and
| low end, and what passes for high end are really mid range
| phones dressed up with a few premium features or gimmicks.
| RNCTX wrote:
| > What we have now are midrange and low end, and what
| passes for high end are really mid range phones dressed
| up with a few premium features or gimmicks.
|
| Ultimately no one can shake their culture, it follows you
| like your shadow.
|
| Google's is cheap and low-end. They have become the
| Walmart of tech companies.
| dv_dt wrote:
| There was also a point in Samsung's past when they had been
| selling Nand chips to the market, then decided to hold all
| the capacity for themselves (or maybe Apple and
| themselves), then somewhat recently opened it back up again
| - but nand (and CPU) chips aren't easily interchangeable -
| so a reliable partner is more important. Dram chips on the
| other hand are much more interchangeable.
| Throwawayaerlei wrote:
| A lot of what I read about TSMC's current lead is that
| it's based on trust, including creating a complete
| ecosystem based on that. As you note Samsung is not so
| trustworthy a company for outside competitors, and I'd
| add reports it's not always honest about what it's
| accomplishing for its foundry customers, or would be
| ones.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >One issue is there's a significant conflict of interest
| between their device and CPU businesses. Apple left them
| precisely because Samsung is a competitor in handsets, and
| other handset manufacturers are also wary of buying from them
| for the same reason.
|
| Commodore manufactured the 6502 with its MOS subsidiary, but
| I don't believe that Apple or Atari hesitated from using the
| 6502 in their computers.
| doctorshady wrote:
| But other companies, like Rockwell Semiconductor,
| manufactured perfectly good 6502 clones. If MOS tightened
| the screws, Atari or Apple could've simply headed to any
| other number of suppliers. The same can't necessarily be
| said for a competitive processor today.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| It seems like the industry, players and technology involved
| have evolved and matured significantly since 6502 CPUs were
| relevant. Is Commodore or Atari even still around?
|
| If Samsung came out with a contemporary CPU with 2x the
| compute per watt of the M1, Apple would probably be
| interested in it.
|
| Notably, it seems like Intel had the capability and head
| start to have been able to develop such a CPU by now, but
| instead they held back progress to maximize their profits.
| It was apparently a bad long term strategy, as they've now
| lost their lead. The market moved on around them.
| WithinReason wrote:
| I wasn't aware of the connection between volume and technological
| progress in semiconductor manufacturing:
|
| "When you have volume orders, then you can do yield experiments,
| you can improve your yield, and yield is everything because
| that's how you cover your costs,"
|
| "Foundries that can juggle multiple clients and technologies can
| swiftly advance on their competitors. For example, TSMC's scale
| allowed it to master extreme ultraviolet lithography faster than
| anyone else, which reduced the number of steps it took to make
| advanced chips and boosted the throughput of its fabs."
| Nokinside wrote:
| Semiconductor manufacturing R&D and pathfining includes many
| expensive dead ends. Massive volume is required to justify the
| gigantic upfront cost to develop a new process every 2-4 years
| (overlapping with previous and next process node).
|
| Economist would say that volume gives you:
|
| 1) Increasing marginal returns after massive fixed capital
| investments.
|
| 2) increasing returns to scale from variable investments when
| volumes increase.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Every CPU project I worked on at Intel from 1997-2010 was
| cancelled. That's 13 years of one senior engineering salary
| that never turned a profit, let alone the thousand other
| people on the related teams. One could argue the failed
| learnings helped guardrail successful products, but my
| internal perspective says, Nah. Intel throws/threw a
| staggering amount of money at failed projects. Wondering if
| Gelsinger will shake out the numerous boondoggles that litter
| that company.
| balls187 wrote:
| Several air-frames met similar fates at various defense
| contractors.
| happycube wrote:
| If they had spent just a bit of that money to keep the DEC
| Semi team together w/o interference, intel would probably
| own the ARM SOC market right now.
| bhouston wrote:
| This is fascinating.
|
| Where were they cancelled? I know about Larrabee and
| Itanium of course. But the others? Would they have
| succeeded in the market if pushed?
|
| Or was Intel just going in all directions a bit randomly
| without strong purpose?
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Itanium shipped, and I have a soft spot in my heart for
| it, VLIW was brilliant. The hate is administered by
| knownothings, it was a CPU for engineers.
|
| Larrabee is Xeon Phi. Aren't they shipping today?
|
| These never saw the light of day, only one taped out. I
| don't know why, I was too busy engineering to care:
|
| - a Pentium3 + on-die, integrated graphics
|
| - a 7.2 GHz pentium 4 (yes, 7.2 GHz. in 2002)
|
| - the successor to the i740 graphics which was
| cannibalized for the i815 chipset
|
| - another Pentium 4 variant which I can't recall what it
| was, but we spun up an entire arch team to work on it
|
| - variants of Itanium (McKinley, Madhall)
|
| > Or was Intel just going in all directions a bit
| randomly without strong purpose?
|
| DING DING DING.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Isn't part of it also due to the cost of new fabs ($1B+)... you
| need the scale to generate enough profit to plough back in to
| keep up.
| amelius wrote:
| It's called Wright's law.
|
| Contrary to Moore's law, it's not slowing down.
| Nokinside wrote:
| I tought Wright law (experience curve effect ) is related to
| repetitive manual labor.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| I thought it was a more general principle and applies
| almost any task. For example, the software written today is
| done at a larger volume and more cheaply than at any other
| point in history and can do more things than ever before
| (heck printing "hello world" or adding 2 numbers was a feat
| on the original machines).
|
| My understanding is that it's a general phenomenon. The
| more we do something, the faster we get at it (either as a
| species or individuals), the more tools we accumulate to
| help us smoothie out any bumps, tackle larger projects more
| efficiently, etc.
| Nokinside wrote:
| That's general principle called increasing returns to
| scale and decreasing marginal cost.
| bsedlm wrote:
| isn't chip making is extremeley repetitive? (though not
| manual, or maybe we could say manual but through extermely
| complex tools?)
| Nokinside wrote:
| Machines don't learn from experience and repetition.
| krastanov wrote:
| The operators that calibrate them and pick parameters,
| do. And some machines have internal long-term calibration
| and feedback (no need to call it Machine Learning), so in
| a way they learn on their own too.
| zsmi wrote:
| Obviously you're correct about that, but those
| productivity gains from those sources are unlikely to be
| accurately predicted by Wright's Law, which is what this
| thread is about.
| simonh wrote:
| If you scale up production by just building more of the
| same machines that's right, but over time with new
| process nodes and increasing fab sizes there are plenty
| of opportunities to apply new skills to improve
| automation and scale effects.
| gtirloni wrote:
| I know the focus of the article is Intel and TSMC but I kept
| wondering about Samsung. If it's following the same foundry model
| that TSMC is, why does it only have a small fraction of the
| market (compared to TSMC)? Shouldn't it be doing as well as TSMC?
| Tenoke wrote:
| WithinReason's comment seems to explain that. The benefits of
| being bigger compound over time.
| evancox100 wrote:
| I don't think that explains it. Measured by wafer starts/mo,
| Samsung is the largest semiconductor manufacturer in the
| world, bigger than TSMC.
|
| https://anysilicon.com/five-semiconductor-companies-
| hold-53-...
|
| Edit: it is maybe a little more complex than that, because
| much of that is memory, and memory and logic processes may
| not be able to share the same learnings and developments.
| tooltalk wrote:
| "... That represented 15.0% of the world's total capacity
| and about two-thirds of it was used for the fabrication of
| DRAM and NAND flash memory devices. ..."
| TheTon wrote:
| As others pointed out, they both do a lot of volume. But TSMC
| are ahead at the leading edge.
|
| Complete speculation, but I would guess this is mostly due to
| Apple. Apple wants the best process and they're able to pay for
| it. Further, Apple is mistrustful of Samsung so they were happy
| to drop them and switch to TSMC.
|
| I think this highlights the difficulty Intel will face.
| Samsung's foundry is independent from Samsung's phone business,
| and I don't think anyone has alleged otherwise. But even if
| Intel does manage to keep its two sides at arms length, will
| that be enough to attract business from competitors like Apple
| and AMD? I'd guess no.
| klelatti wrote:
| Agree 100%. Three issues:
|
| - Do other firms trust Intel with their IP? Apple has a new
| feature for their next generation - Intel quickly becomes
| aware of this and this information leaks into Intel's product
| plans.
|
| - Is Intel a reliable foundry partner? TSMC have a 30+ year
| track record, Intel have none as a third party foundry. Will
| they change their strategy again?
|
| - Will other firms get a fair prioritisation of resources in
| the fabs? Or will Intel's own products be favoured?
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| Intel need to split into two.
|
| 1. Intel fabless: open up x86 like ARM. work on Xscale (ARM) and
| RISC-V (SiFive).
|
| 2. Intel foundry: a pure play foundry with no tie to its fabless
| side to win customers trust.
|
| the foundry ecosystem is going to hurt Intel. the current trend
| is everyone design its own chip and outsource to foundry for
| production.
|
| edit: look like the deal to buy SiFive fall apart but the idea is
| Intel fabless can focus on chip design regardless the platform.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| What you're suggesting is what AMD did when they spun off
| Global Foundries, correct?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GlobalFoundries
|
| What would make Intel more successful at operating a foundry
| than anyone else? Or is it just a way to make the best of
| assets they already own?
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| >What would make Intel more successful at operating a foundry
| than anyone else?
|
| Intel is very successful with their 14nm, with a engineer CEO
| like Pat. I think Intel can catch up on node process.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| This kills the foundry.
| ngomez wrote:
| Could you elaborate? AMD spun their fabrication arm off into
| GlobalFoundries a while back, and they seem to be doing okay.
| I thought that would be a good precedent for Intel divesting
| its fabs too, but I'd love to hear any counterpoints to that.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| GlobalFoundries completely gave up on leading edge and went
| downmarket. It would be a shame to see Intel's fabs follow.
| worrycue wrote:
| Guess Intel is moving with the times. Won't be the first time
| they overhauled their business, I heard they used to be DRAM
| makers before jumping into CPUs.
| agumonkey wrote:
| lots of car makers were bike plants before, and before that
| metalsmith
|
| skills have to pivot I guess
| amelius wrote:
| This is a good thing.
|
| Who wants one company to completely integrate its entire supply
| chain, producing everything from start to finish?
|
| Imagine the cost if all companies did this. Imagine how it would
| suck for startup companies to get a foothold in this world.
| [deleted]
| slowjerk wrote:
| Given the tension around Taiwan, they are in an exceptional
| position.
|
| China's dithering might be centred partly around considerations
| of how they can overtake a country while keeping its silicon fabs
| in tact.
| klelatti wrote:
| > Gelsinger will have to change Intel's culture and, to some
| extent, its technology, both of which are deep-seated. "He has to
| turn a huge ship around," said Robert Maire, president of
| Semiconductor Advisors.
|
| Yes and even harder they will have to convince potential
| customers that their culture has changed too.
|
| Edit: This also adds the complexity of constantly managing trade-
| offs between (lower margin) external customers and the (higher-
| margin) in-house CPU business - it would be so easy to get that
| balance wrong.
| after_care wrote:
| All Intel needs to convince customers of us that they have a
| attract supply of chips.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| I think you've been downvoted because of English grammatical
| errors, but if I understand your point correctly, I whole-
| heartedly agree:
|
| All intel needs to do is make competitive chips at a good
| price. In past years, they resorted to more anti-competitive
| efforts, but at the end of the day, if you make good stuff
| and sell it at the right price, people will buy the crap out
| of it.
| klelatti wrote:
| Lets look at who "people" are here - TSMC's biggest
| customers over the last three years:
|
| AMD, Nvidia - direct Intel competitors
|
| Hi-Silicon - no due to being based in PRC
|
| Mediatek - based in Taiwan
|
| Which leaves Apple, Broadcom and Qualcomm.
|
| I suspect they will get some business from the last two but
| Apple clearly have a deep long term relationship with TSMC
| and have invested a lot into that relationship. Can't see
| it being easy to get them to move.
|
| Maybe Intel is counting on political pressure to get the
| big US firms to use them?
| zeusk wrote:
| There's a lot of interest from the big clouds on custom
| sillicon, I'm sure part of any govt cloud contract could
| include stipulations for use of sillicon manufactured or
| atleast verified on the western hemisphere.
| klelatti wrote:
| That's a good point but isn't that just switching from a
| high margin x86 product to a lower margin Arm based CPU -
| seems like a defensive measure at best.
| slowjerk wrote:
| I find this article incomplete without mention of the China-
| Taiwan situation adding to the mix in an enormous way.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| So we will buy AMD CPUs fabbed by Intel? Sneaky Intel, they still
| found a way to have Intel inside. :)
| revolvingocelot wrote:
| I really really hope not. Considering what Intel is willing to
| do in software to sabotage AMD performance, [0][1] I shudder to
| think what they'll do in hardware.
|
| [0]
| https://ol.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/ik9lw1/updated_int...
|
| [1] https://www.agner.org/optimize/blog/read.php?i=49
|
| ^ For those interested in the storied history of Intel hurting
| AMD
| alecco wrote:
| Anything like that would be killing this new Foundry business
| they are betting their future on. No way.
| swalsh wrote:
| Regulation of anti-competitive behavior seems to have been
| extremely relaxed lately. Amazon's marketplace and Amazon
| Retail seem at odds with each other, yet they're allowed to
| coexest, and everyone is fully aware of the anti-competitive
| behavior. Intel's chip business needs to be seperated from
| their foundry business, and the 2 can't be allowed to
| comingle with each other.
| smoldesu wrote:
| What incentive does the US government have to split up
| highly lucrative, domestic businesses?
| toast0 wrote:
| If we're just thinking incentives, why have one highly
| lucrative, domestic business, when you could have
| several?
|
| A lot of the anti-trust breakups result in several good
| businesses and maybe some competition/consumer benefits
| too.
| kaashif wrote:
| The incentive should be that a competitive free market is
| better for prosperity in the long term. If anti-
| competitive practices are allowed, the losers are the
| consumers, whose interests the government are supposed to
| represent.
|
| Obviously it doesn't work that way in practice.
| buu700 wrote:
| From another point of view, looking at the government as
| an institution rather than through its role as an
| advocate of the people, you could also make the case that
| the government should oppose any massive consolidation of
| wealth/power as a threat to its own power.
|
| FAANG companies each individually have higher annual
| revenue than most countries' GDPs. In the absence of
| government intervention, there wouldn't be much to stop
| them from turning into British East India Companies and
| establishing banana republics, raising private armies,
| etc.
|
| In an extreme scenario, some kind of corporate Genghis
| Khan could hypothetically consolidate the S&P 500 into a
| single megacorp if the DOJ allowed it to happen, and that
| company's revenue would be about half the US GDP (making
| it the third largest "economy" in the world). It would
| effectively be a hostile state right in our own backyard.
| Would we even have the ability to enforce taxation if
| they said no? What would stop them from wielding that
| incredible wealth to effectively buy a majority stake in
| government?
| [deleted]
| WithinReason wrote:
| Although GP was joking, if AMD was a customer of Intel
| there's no way Intel would sabotage that relationship and
| make other customers lose trust in them.
| EGreg wrote:
| Sure that's NEVER happened before ! Also, large
| organizations always coordinate their strategy perfectly
| consistently.
| _jal wrote:
| Sure, it can happen, and something like it probably has.
|
| The point is that doing it and being caught out would be
| something approaching corporate suicide, and sane
| leadership would not risk it.
|
| This places it in the bucket of 'unlikely, high impact'
| risks for potential clients. They'd want to design
| process and contractual language to try to make such
| perfidy apparent and not bet the farm, but I doubt it
| would be a deal breaker.
|
| I would think IP concerns would dominate in such an
| arrangement.
| nosianu wrote:
| > _would be something approaching corporate suicide_
|
| No it would not. Just like in any other case where a
| corporation had to pay a huge fine - they do it, or it
| even gets lowered significantly, and then move on. The
| executives who were responsible retired long ago and the
| motto of shareholders and management always is "look to
| the future and don't bother me with old problems".
|
| You make quite an assertion based on what - the opposite
| has already happened many times. Risk that has to be paid
| for much later often is worth it, especially when it's
| going to happen to a new team. Not that the risk for a
| CEO is worth worrying about (for them) even if they were
| to get caught, the term "golden parachute" exists for
| reasons.
| post_break wrote:
| Intel lost Apple, Intel is losing the server market, next will be
| laptops I assume when AMD can keep up with demand. That's going
| to hurt.
| ksec wrote:
| The latest roadmap from TSMC now points to 2023 for 3nm. This
| actually put Intel in the same time frame as TSMC. So
| incidentally both Intel and TSMC will be on 4nm in 2022, and 3nm
| in 2023.
|
| Note: Intel 4nm is a Full, new Node while TSMC 4nm is an
| optimisation of their 5nm.
|
| Of course the roadmap and time table from Intel is often not a
| reliable indicator and also doesn't tell you whether it is
| product shipment or if they are only ramping. My guess is that
| Intel is running as fast as they can to reach those target. That
| is also not including capacity difference with node from both
| companies.
|
| I think Intel under Pat Gelsinger is making the same transition
| as Andy Grove did to during his era.
| tester34 wrote:
| I'm getting kinda lost, it's almost 2022 already
|
| did Intel skip 7 and 5nm?
| cjblomqvist wrote:
| They renamed their other nodes to cover those (and to better
| align with the rest of the industry).
| terafo wrote:
| They changed their branding. Their 10nm node was renamed to
| Intel 7, their 7nm is now Intel 4. Since amount of nanometers
| doesn't really mean anything anymore that's good PR strategy
| that nicely represents state of their nodes because density
| on Intel 7 and TSMC 7nm is pretty similar anyway.
| toast0 wrote:
| I believe Intel didn't strictly rename Intel 10nm to Intel
| 7, it's a refinement of Intel 10nm that is Intel 7 (they
| were previously calling it 10nm+ if I recall correctly).
| rconti wrote:
| Shouldn't it be 10nm-? :)
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| There are very interesting ways that we could compare
| architectures, but it would never get past the marketing
| department and it might reveal capabilities that they would
| rather have a secret, so we are stuck with a single
| meaningless number.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Intel rebranded their x nm to be TSMC's y nm. This may seem a
| bit subversive but it's not ridiculously unreasonable as the
| nanometre figures are complete bullshit, and the density
| measures are also sufficiently synthetic as to be mostly
| useless when comparing a similar node anyway (i.e. there's
| more to it than just shoving transistors on a chip)
| mtgx wrote:
| Intel has had trouble with deadlines over the past few years.
| So I'd expect that delayed by 6-12 months.
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