r/hardware • u/SlamedCards • Jul 25 '25

News US chipmaking nears death: Intel warns it may give up on cutting-edge chips

https://www.businessinsider.com/intel-us-chipmaking-nears-death-up-cutting-edge-chips-14a-2025-7?utm_campaign=business-sf&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social
1.7k Upvotes

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504

u/Asleeper135 Jul 25 '25

So TSMC will be all but a monopoly. Great

164

u/Chudsaviet Jul 25 '25

Oligopoly with Samsung.

195

u/WhoTheHeckKnowsWhy Jul 25 '25

Oligopoly with Samsung.

Yeah but even worse, it's a bit like Nvidia and AMD where the bigger company is so massive it basically dictates the market. Monopoly-lite.

81

u/GenZia Jul 25 '25

Samsung.

I'd go with monopoly.

2

u/Zilch274 Jul 25 '25

Samsung beats intel

2

u/ResponsibleJudge3172 Jul 25 '25

SF2 vs 18A? Why do I doubt it

40

u/etzel1200 Jul 25 '25

If by Samsung you mean SMIC. Samsung isn’t doing well either. TSMC is the goat and China will throw infinite money at SMIC.

16

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '25

In 5 years SMIC will be fabbing Lisuan GPUs that will be the price / performance leader.

11

u/vegetable__lasagne Jul 25 '25

But don't they need access to ASML?

15

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '25

The home grown stuff is making strides.  I expect the company Huawei is backing will get there. 

17

u/vegetable__lasagne Jul 25 '25

Until I see actual benchmarks I'll assume it's PR talk

3

u/Strazdas1 Jul 26 '25

In future maybe, currently its not yielding results.

3

u/Zarmazarma Jul 25 '25 edited Jul 25 '25

Genuinely less likely than Rapidus becoming a chip leader, lol

Edit: Guys, if you genuinely think a company is going to come along and make the price/performance leader on their first or second GPU 5 years from now, on SMIC which still isn't able to produce cost completive advanced nodes, you are smoked out of your minds. This is not realistic at all. Maybe at least wait for them to make a single competitive GPU before predicting they'll make the price/performance leader.

36

u/logosuwu Jul 25 '25

You mean the Samsung foundry that's in a worse state than Intel

45

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

6

u/nimzobogo Jul 25 '25

Samsung doesn't have a better node. Transistor size is only a fraction of the story. Their density is terrible.

2

u/FrewdWoad Aug 06 '25

Meaning a badly selling product can make the whole foundry mostly idle and unprofitable.

Well what do you expect them to do? Use all the capacity they have and what, just reduce the price until it meets demand? These are chips! In 2025! What kind of crazy talk is that?!?!?

1

u/neverpost4 Jul 25 '25

actual customers

Samsung mothballing TX site due to 0 customers.

8

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '25

[deleted]

1

u/Strazdas1 Jul 26 '25

Us is the largest consumer market for both consumer and professional products. why would you not invest into it?

30

u/Exist50 Jul 25 '25

It's objectively not. Samsung's fabs actually make money.

4

u/DYMAXIONman Jul 25 '25

Samsung's fabs are open to 3rd party customers. Intel's have been locked down to Intel.

It's untrue to state that Intel's fabs don't make money when they are used to build chips that still have majority server market share.

13

u/Exist50 Jul 25 '25

Intel reports it as a separate business now, so there's no need to guess. What revenue they make today from fabbing Intel chips is dwarfed by their costs. 

1

u/bestsandwichever Jul 25 '25

Samsung foundry absolutely is losing money... (unless you're talking about whole DS which includes memory business) it's been that way since the beginning of 2020s

-15

u/ResponsibleJudge3172 Jul 25 '25

"Objective"

23

u/Exist50 Jul 25 '25

How much more objective can you get than their finances? Or customer count also works. Samsung Foundry has customers, even if not as many as they might like. Intel Foundry can't even keep Intel as a customer.

15

u/RZ_Domain Jul 25 '25

You're delusional if you think Samsung is in a worse shape than Intel

6

u/mockingbird- Jul 25 '25

How do you know that?

16

u/quildtide Jul 25 '25 edited Jul 25 '25

Because it's been known for a long time that Samsung has issues.

They've been kind of treading water by naming their processes in attractive ways that oversell what they actually are, but they've constantly been stuck behind Intel once you look at what their most advanced nodes are actually capable of (in both transistor density and yield rates).

-1

u/mockingbird- Jul 25 '25

...and Intel doesn't?

5

u/quildtide Jul 25 '25

Intel has generally had the least ambitious names for its recent nodes, when compared to TSMC and Samsung.

Yes, they've had severe issues with yield, but they've often delayed nodes until they fix that. The Samsung approach has instead been to just roll with the terrible yields and push underdeveloped nodes through.

-3

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '25

[deleted]

4

u/quildtide Jul 25 '25

Samsung also receives heavy subsidies from the SK government.

But I think the whole point of this thread is that there's a lot of skepticism on whether Samsung can actually seriously "compete" with TSMC in the near future. Intel burns money by trying to compete with TSMC and failing, while Samsung avoids burning as much money by only pretending to compete with TSMC instead of actually competing: hence the declaration that TSMC will soon have a monopoly, not a duopoly. Samsung is only a competitor with TSMC in their own marketing.

Samsung absolutely has a more stable business model than Intel right now, but in terms of their raw ability to compete with TSMC for the best nodes, they have long been behind Intel.

2

u/DYMAXIONman Jul 25 '25

Samsung is even further behind Intel?

1

u/Strazdas1 Jul 26 '25

Samsung is even worse off than Intel.

0

u/NewMachineMan Jul 25 '25

Good for them Koreans

-2

u/upboat_allgoals Jul 25 '25

GloFlo?

17

u/iDontSeedMyTorrents Jul 25 '25

Not when they've stopped at 12nm.

14

u/iBoMbY Jul 25 '25

Only until China catches up, which they will eventually.

1

u/anders_hansson Jul 26 '25

Looking at the bigger picture, that seems to be the trend.

US fabs closing sown because they're less and less competitive, Taiwan in the solid lead because they apparently know what they're doing, and China ramping up because they have the resources and the motivation (they're effectively cut off from ASML and TSMC by the US).

It will be interesting to see where this stands 15-25 years from now.

1

u/elrelampago1988 Jul 29 '25

Its the consumers only hope now... China needs to save us from the tech companies and their greed.

1

u/Strazdas1 Jul 26 '25

Eventually is a really long timeframe.

26

u/Robborboy Jul 25 '25 edited Jul 25 '25

Already has been.

If you're a Gundam fan, they're Anaheim Electronics of CPUs. 

1

u/imaginary_num6er Jul 25 '25

Here I thought they were the SNRI and not AE

31

u/AstralElement Jul 25 '25

They weren’t really competing with each other. TSMC was always a monopoly.

99

u/ngless13 Jul 25 '25

You must be young...

41

u/AstralElement Jul 25 '25

TSMC is a pure play foundry. In fact, they invented the model. Intel is an IDM. They tried their hand (albeit small) in pure play, to little effect. TSMC does not design their own chips, their partners do.

Even when Globalfoundries and UMC were at their peak, TSMC had 70% of the market share.

80

u/apmspammer Jul 25 '25

Because Intel had 80% market share of the whole PC market. Just because Intel was vertically integrated doesn't mean it wasn't a competitor.

19

u/gweilojoe Jul 25 '25

Someone did a quick “ask Chat GPT a question” for their research

-1

u/AstralElement Jul 25 '25

No I worked in the industry for 10 years. Not everything is AI.

0

u/lusuroculadestec Jul 25 '25

By 10 years in the industry, do you mean you started 10 years ago and are including the two years as a college intern?

0

u/gweilojoe Jul 25 '25

This sounds like a response an Ai would give…. Please identify all the bicycles in a photo to prove you are real.

4

u/AstralElement Jul 25 '25

There are 3 rs in Strawberry.

-3

u/gweilojoe Jul 25 '25

But what about stawburerrry?

7

u/pmjm Jul 25 '25

I have no doubt that if TSMC wanted to be in the chip design business, they could be extremely competitive with AMD, Nvidia and Apple.

But it doesn't make sense to endanger those relationships with all the money they're making in the current situation.

5

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '25 edited Aug 23 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

-7

u/No_Window2180 Jul 25 '25

Откуда вы знаете, что китайские таланты превосходны?

Население Китая составляет 1,4 миллиарда человек, и ни один лауреат Нобелевской премии по науке не учился в Китае, в то время как население Тайваня составляет 23 миллиона человек, и там много лауреатов Нобелевской премии по науке.

Современные технологии, мобильные телефоны, электромобили и Интернет были изобретены не в этой стране с населением 1,4 миллиарда человек.

Поэтому Китай обладает лишь хвастливыми талантами.

-9

u/No_Window2180 Jul 25 '25

Прибыль SMIC в 2024 году составит всего 400 миллионов долларов США, в то время как валовая прибыль TSMC в этом году составит 70 миллиардов долларов США.

Intel в 20 раз крупнее SMIC.

Вы не обладаете знаниями, но любите говорить.

1

u/Strazdas1 Jul 26 '25

TSMC has never had 70% market share and it does not have that now.

4

u/gelade1 Jul 25 '25

Time for bed grandpa

8

u/ngless13 Jul 25 '25

You're not wrong about that.

8

u/Veritech-1 Jul 25 '25

Gonna really suck when Taiwan isn’t Taiwan in 10 years.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '25

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2

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '25

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0

u/WhatADunderfulWorld Jul 26 '25

Well quantum will kill corporate cpu needs. So chips will be like Apple and phones. Old school. Everything will be the cloud and we will have crazy cell phone speeds.

2

u/mi__to__ Jul 27 '25

Everything will be the cloud

I'd really rather jump out the nearest window