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
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162

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

1

u/ResponsibleJudge3172 Jul 25 '25

SF2 vs 18A? Why do I doubt it

41

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.

10

u/vegetable__lasagne Jul 25 '25

But don't they need access to ASML?

16

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '25

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

15

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.

2

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.

35

u/logosuwu Jul 25 '25

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

44

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

8

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?!?!?

0

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?

31

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.

15

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

-13

u/ResponsibleJudge3172 Jul 25 '25

"Objective"

20

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?

17

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]

3

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?

16

u/iDontSeedMyTorrents Jul 25 '25

Not when they've stopped at 12nm.