[HN Gopher] Broadcom, TSMC eye possible Intel deals to split sto...
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Broadcom, TSMC eye possible Intel deals to split storied chipmaker
Author : 0xbs0d
Score : 78 points
Date : 2025-02-18 16:06 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Gift link: https://www.wsj.com/tech/broadcom-tsmc-eye-possible-
| intel-de...
| nickdothutton wrote:
| Barbarians at the Logic Gate.
| m4r1k wrote:
| Tsmc might be good for the fab business. Broadcom very very bad
| for everything else. Broadcom historically doesn't acquire, it
| kills.
| reginald78 wrote:
| Yes, there won't be an Intel when they're done. Previous
| customers will be using AMD x86 or ARM after suffering being
| screwed by Broadcom for a few years.
| nsteel wrote:
| Fab-wise, presumably they'll just gobble up the sites and
| equipment. Maybe some of the next-gen tech is interesting. But
| then we'll be left with less competition in the fab industry.
| This is very unlikely to be good news for anyone other than
| TSMC shareholders.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Historically, Broadcom has done even better than TSMC for its
| shareholders.
|
| 5 year annual return is 56% for Broadcom and 33% for TSMC
|
| 10 year annual return is 40% to 27%
|
| 15 year annual return is 41% to 26%
|
| https://dqydj.com/stock-return-calculator/
| nsteel wrote:
| That might be true, no idea, but I was actually making a
| point about the rapidly diminishingly fab competion and
| what that's going to mean for customers (and consumers).
| bornfreddy wrote:
| God please no, we need competition. Whoever fired Pat Gelsinger
| should be fried.
| crest wrote:
| Whoever _hired_ Pat Gelsinger should be fired ... from a
| cannon.
| amarcheschi wrote:
| Intel started having issues before pat. Now, I sold my amd
| shares a few years ago and stopped following the semi sector,
| but as long as I have memory Intel was starting to show
| cracks after a few ryzen iteration(s). I mean, they were
| still faring well, but it was clear - at least to me - they
| were stuck with less competitive products
| AJ007 wrote:
| They missed two epochal changes in the semiconductor
| industry - mobile and AI/GPU. They don't have a contract
| foundry business that could compete with TSMC. They appear
| to be failing with the thing the originally should have
| been capable of, their next gen chips.
|
| When they missed out on mobile it appeared to be a big
| blunder, especially when one considers the long term impact
| of electricity usage in datacenters. When Apple released
| the M1 chips that could run x86 faster than native, it was
| clear what was going to happen to Intel. Intel is now done
| -- dead, finished. This is a legacy business where the
| owners can try to get more money than they paid for it, but
| if they have to put up new capital (that isn't free
| government money), they will not be getting their money
| back.
| baq wrote:
| AMD was at a very similar spot a decade ago. It took
| time, pain and faith, but they turned it around. Intel
| could very well do the same, but its Lisa Su has just got
| fired a few months before the plan started sprouting.
| BeetleB wrote:
| This is the guy who fired Pat Gelsinger:
|
| > Yeary has been telling individuals close to him that he is
| most focused on maximizing value for Intel shareholders, the
| report added.
|
| RIP Intel.
| baq wrote:
| holy shit. it really is the end, isn't it? cut the company
| into pieces and sell to the highest bidder. three letter
| agencies would be interested... a couple months ago.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Broadcom getting involved with VMware did wonders for all VMware
| customers - I'm sure all current users of Intel products and
| services are also delighted in a similar manner! ;-)
| FeistySkink wrote:
| I'm sure Intel's open source contributions will quadruple,
| seeing how BCM is such an avant-garde.
| hassleblad23 wrote:
| Curious. What are some examples of BCM being avant-garde?
| zeusk wrote:
| He's being sarcastic
| Blackthorn wrote:
| Unfortunately, it could only be an improvement after the 13th
| generation problems. I strongly believe that Intel owes me $150
| after releasing a firmware update that turned my processor into
| one that cost $150 less.
| kbenson wrote:
| You lack imagination. Broadcom brings a whole slew of
| problems you may not have thought possible. We couldn't bet
| them to actually give us a quote to purchase VMware licenses
| for a new cluster (to replace the current one, as we're a
| current customer) for the first five months of 2024. Multiple
| month long freezes in sales while they restructured pricing,
| multiple times.
|
| Their goal isn't necessarily to run a business that's
| profitable long term, it may be to segment it out and squeeze
| various segments to wring the last bits of juice out of them
| until leaving a dried husk while providing middling quality
| to the most lucrative segments to string them along.
|
| You don't want to be in the segment destined to be juiced.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Intel has "software defined, license activated" features
| baked in the silicon now. It's a wet dream for Broadcom.
|
| > You need AVX only? It's only bundled with all AVX flavors
| and vector operations add-on pack, just for $500/socket/year*
| (*:for processors up to 10 cores. For higher core counts and
| SMT enabled options please reach out to your nearest Broadcom
| sales representative).
|
| ref: Intel on Demand (https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en
| /products/docs/ondema...)
| The_Colonel wrote:
| I think Intel is a different kind of acquisition for Broadcom
| than VMWare.
|
| VMWare had/has a strong moat which can be exploited by jacking
| up prices. Intel doesn't have that.
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| Why would TSMC want to buy factories from Intel?
|
| Intels plants are far from start of the art. Given their
| inability to compete and catch up with TSMC
| jabart wrote:
| I'm assuming TSMC has new and old lines. A 555 chip isn't done
| on the same line as an AMD Zen 5 chip. Permits, buildout,
| infrastructure, suppliers, you already get a big warehouse that
| makes chips and you can bring in your own people to optimize it
| on day one not year 4.
| kyrra wrote:
| Lots of people still use older processor nodes. For example
| Groq[1] uses 14nm chips for their inference chips. Older fab
| tech is cheaper to use (less demand and higher yields). Most
| chips made are on older processes, it's only the bleeding-edge
| CPU/GPU chips that use bleeding-edge fab tech.
|
| [1] https://groq.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2024/08/GroqChip%E2%84%A...
| hujun wrote:
| because Trump said TSMC is stealing US chip biz, and threaten
| 100% tariff [1]. I think this is TSMC's attempt to avoid tariff
|
| [1]https://www.pcmag.com/news/trump-intel-was-great-until-
| taiwa...
| edward28 wrote:
| Intel has a couple of euv machines that tsmc could use and they
| could take Intel's current nodes and sell them as US made chips
| without threatening their own top nodes.
| rwmj wrote:
| Broadcom getting involved with Intel will be excellent business
| ... for all of Intel's competitors.
| supertrope wrote:
| They'd hike prices 10x for the whales: hyperscalers and PC
| manufacturers and ignore the needs of anyone who does not buy
| CPUs by the tray.
| baq wrote:
| The problem is... the whales have easily obtainable
| alternatives, which are better to boot. VMWare game plan
| won't work.
| thedougd wrote:
| What a nightmare. Imagine Broadcom merging with IBM. They'd have
| the legacy IT market cornered whether virtualized x86 or
| mainframe, customers be damned. Perhaps they already do.
| Mainframe users often rely on CA Tech's software, which Broadcom
| bought years ago.
| baq wrote:
| Sir there are children frequenting this site.
| newsclues wrote:
| Since reading a Gibson novel that mentioned the dystopian mega
| tech conglomerate (DatAmerica maybe?), I've always enjoyed the
| mental exercise of M&A to create a monster corporation.
|
| Intel + Broadcom + IBM + HP + Oracle + Apple + Google
|
| They'd from Chips to Cloud.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Right now, I'm imagining AMD as Danny DeVito's character, Frank
| Reynolds, in that episode of Always Sunny where the gang wrestles
| for the troops. He's the Trashman, which is an awful wrestling
| persona, but at the end of the match, everyone else is seriously
| injured on the floor of the ring. With a bewildered look on his
| face, he slowly raised his arms, and the crowd went wild.
|
| Sometimes you just gotta stick to the core competencies and stick
| to them well.
| throwcatowayne wrote:
| https://youtu.be/L1EFKZs3Bvk?si=dundU4QVL_U0F0z7 (NSFW
| probably)
| protimewaster wrote:
| > Sometimes you just gotta stick to the core competencies and
| stick to them well.
|
| Part of me thinks this is what Radio Shack could've made work.
| They almost made it to the point in time where hobbyist
| electronics / maker culture was popular again, but by that time
| they were just the place people used to buy cell phones from.
| bsimpson wrote:
| Radio Shack got bad. Even when they still had components,
| it's hard to justify driving to the store to spend $30 for an
| aux cord when Amazon will have it here tomorrow for $10.
|
| Notably, the whole sector seems to have collapsed in favor of
| online shops like Sparkfun and Adafruit. Most small cities
| used to have a shop where you could go pick through trays of
| random electronic components. Now, I don't even know where
| you'd go to do that in major cosmopolitan centers that
| certainly have the populations to support it. It's just too
| easy to make a shopping list of components at your desk and
| hit buy.
|
| Unfortunately, I suspect there are also lots of projects that
| are on hold while that one component you just realized you
| needed makes its way through the mail.
| tpmoney wrote:
| If I had millions to buy the Radio Shack IP, my hail mary
| play would have been to convert Radio Shacks to mini maker
| spaces. Stock "jellybean" components and entry level tools,
| and then put in work benches with various tools available
| for learning and "one off" needs. Take a page out of
| Walmart's playbook and hire a bunch of retired EE's and
| developers that just want something to do, and take a page
| out of Apple's playbook and sell a "once a week come chat
| with an expert one on one" membership. Pair one-on-one
| members with your retired EEs and market the hell out of it
| to highschool kids and hobbyists.
|
| The goal is to get people in the store and building
| together. Of course no one is going to drive to the store
| and spend $30 on an aux cable when Amazon will ship it to
| you tomorrow. But they might just spend $20 on a pack of
| resistors and a USB breakout board while they're already at
| the shop using the oscilloscope to probe out a signal on
| their in flight project and ordering from amazon means
| stopping progress for the day.
|
| I'd probably also aim to have on-prem competitions, think
| ant-weight battle bots stuff, micro-mouse or even pinewood
| derby stuff.
|
| Heck you could probably even lure in some additional markup
| sales on components by having a "grab-bag" bench, in which
| you can't bring your own stuff, but you only pay for what
| you take out. Want to build a battle bot but don't know in
| advance what pieces you will or won't need? Build it on the
| grab-bag bench and we'll total up your costs after the
| fact. Sure you probably could get everything cheaper if you
| ordered it all online, but how convenient to just have a
| massive wall of parts already and only get the things you
| need and not need to store the rest of the 500 resistor
| pack you had to order to get the 20 you needed.
|
| It might not have worked, the whole thing still might have
| ended in liquidation, but it feels like it would have had a
| better chance than batteries and cell phones.
| xbmcuser wrote:
| My hope for China reaching parity on node size or at least get
| close to it grows each day.
| nwh5jg56df wrote:
| Why are you hopeful of that?
| xbmcuser wrote:
| price crash and the whole world getting access to the latest
| tech
| dboreham wrote:
| Revenge of the MBAs.
| andrehacker wrote:
| Hm, bad news for Oregon. From this article:
| https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2024/12/intel-sput...
|
| Oregon exports more than $30 billion worth of electronics
| annually, most of which are semiconductors manufactured in
| Intel's Hillsboro factories.
|
| ----------
|
| The company employs more people than any other business in the
| state. ----------
|
| The state's chip industry pays an average yearly wage of more
| than $150,000, according to government data, well over double the
| state average. Hefty pay from Intel is an especially big deal in
| Oregon, which relies on personal income taxes for the bulk of
| state revenue.
|
| ---------- ...Intel might consider selling its business off in
| pieces.
|
| That could be calamitous in Oregon, turning Intel's huge local
| campuses into satellite operations of other companies that don't
| need the full range of corporate and technological functions that
| have been the foundation of Intel's Hillsboro sites for decades.
|
| "The people who work at Intel have to be really panicked,"
| Hutcheson said.
|
| Intel's research factories in Hillsboro support high-volume
| production sites in Arizona, Ireland, Israel and -- soon -- in
| Ohio. If that manufacturing network were someday to break up,
| it's not clear what role would be left for the company's top
| engineers and scientists in Oregon.
| dang wrote:
| Since the WSJ article seems hardwalled, we changed the URL from
| https://www.wsj.com/tech/broadcom-tsmc-eye-possible-intel-de...
| to a story that reports on it.
| 01100011 wrote:
| I'm not seeing what Broadcom brings to the table here. They don't
| have chip mfg experience. Sure, they're a customer, but so what?
|
| TSMC is not going to be motivated to build up a competitor who
| weakens the economic wall around Taiwan.
|
| What I could see happening based on recent events is that Trump
| tells Taiwan they have a couple years of US security left. TSMC
| is then forced to consider putting more effort into mfg in the
| US(and other countries). What that would mean for the rest of the
| elec mfg supply chain is unknown. Taiwan is quite critical beyond
| just chip mfg.
| drewg123 wrote:
| I wonder how much this is costing Intel in terms of enterprise
| sales? I'm guessing that headlines like this will accelerate the
| switch to AMD and ARM. Who wants to design servers around chips
| from a company that is not likely to exist in its present form?
| That opens up all kinds of supply chain and support concerns.
| Socialmans wrote:
| It's not really surprising that Intel has reached this point.
| Years of poor strategic decisions and misreading market dynamics
| have gradually eroded their competitive advantage. With Broadcom
| stepping in, we might see more aggressive pricing and
| segmentation strategies, but whether that leads to a user-
| friendly outcome in the long run is debatable. How TSMC positions
| itself in this scenario is another interesting question.
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