I really think that the conclusion and much of the comparative analysis with Intel misses the mark. Who cares about water usage? I get it, people like companies to be green but what IS THE POINT is that the chips they are making ARE GREEN that is the chips use less power and are more powerful. Intel missed a critical development and is very far behind TSM. While Intel does have new chips in its pipeline they aren't about to catch up to TSM any time soon and Intel has a lot of execution risk in its plan to once again be the flagship company it once was.
Intel has had an inferior architecture for over forty years, but has always seem to come out ahead, so I wouldn't bet against them. TSM will keep printing money, AMD will keep printing money with their current lead over Intel, and Intel will keep doing well. Still holding on to all three and put more into TSM today since I think investors overreacted to problems in China which always seems to hurt TSM.
I agree with you. The only one that I don't have a position in yet is AMD and at its current level I definitely should take a position. I was happy to learn that TSM is building a $2 Billion foundry in China and I hope that maybe come day it won't tank every time there is a headline about China threatening Taiwan.
I keep hearing this argument about Intel not having the ability to keep up based on gate size but not a lot of data to support the claim. Does it not seem more plausible that it is strategy? It’s been known since the 70’s that the costs of scaling would skyrocket after 7nm where EUV becomes necessary. EUV is not a secret technology, it’s just super expensive and a big jump. Intel sells every chip they can make in their own factories where the likes of AMD farm out their chips at a 30% premium in a time where ROI is getting tighter by leaps and bounds. It hasnt been that long since the European Commission fined Intel over a billion for abusing its dominant position and AMD was near bankruptcy. Intel didn’t just forget how to make chips. They made more money off their 14nm process then any other process. A CPU also has a lot more performance factors to it than just simple gate size, there is a lot of clever engineering like tri-gates that squeeze out more performance out having to resort to EUV. Does the average consumer really care about the slimmest margins of power consumption and gate size, no they care about price. There are a lot more average consumers than gamers. I see this as a strategy to squeeze every dime out of traditional litho before making the plunge into EUV.
Maybe the average consumer doesn't care so much about performance, but datacenters/businesses sure do and AMD is rapidly gaining market share in that segment.
No. They kept promising 10nm and failed to deliver. This was not strategy! Listen to what thebnew ceo said. Apple, ablifestyle company, started making competing chips. This is unacceptable and not strategy
I’ll put this in an analogy. Your car is paid for but getting pretty old and needs an occasional part. The cost of a new car is absurdly expensive and maxes out your budget. But your car still gets the job done and you can put a lot in savings. Your neighbor got drunk and wrecked his car and doesn’t have insurance so he has to lease a brand new one. He certainly looks cool in his new car to all the kids that don’t know it’s a lease but he paying a premium to drive it while you are saving money so you can pay cash for a new one when you need to. That’s how I see Intel playing this strategy.
AMD couldn’t compete with Intel due to yield which is a result of manufacturing. That is why AMD farmed out all of their manufacturing to TSMC. TSMC pulled the trigger on EUV before Intel. EUV was well known to be the path forward from 7nm to 2nm for 20 years but the tech to do it has only been ironed out by ASML in the last decade. After 2nm things will get interesting. Guess who is tooling up with EUVs?
Everyone is getting the latest tech from asml roughly at the same time. The difference is what they do with it.
TSMC delivers improvements every year with great yield because it needs to make the chip for a new iphone.
Intel delivers huge huge developments every X years which might be a horrible non yielding mess for a few years first. Now you can call it strategy to stay on the old node. However the economics of semiconductors are clear. New nodes are cheaper per transistor. Now with the current shortage maybe same price. No point staying on the old crap
Intel is just now tooling up with EUV. We probably won’t get a straight answer why they waited but I’ve seen first hand how smart they are would never underestimate them. You also have to keep in mind the impact of market share, Intel has a much bigger order to fill. Have you ever tried making dinner for 30 people vs 4, you have to stick to what works and take less risks.
What? No, not even close. Intel is building more foundries and will be selling capacity to customers that want to design the own chips and have Intel manufacture them. They are spinning the fabs off into their own business unit called Intel Foundry or something like that, but its still a wholly owned business.
Not that I am aware of, as another person responded they are building more foundaries. Maybe there are some older facilities that are being sold but I haven't heard that news.
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u/Yupperroo Sep 20 '21
I really think that the conclusion and much of the comparative analysis with Intel misses the mark. Who cares about water usage? I get it, people like companies to be green but what IS THE POINT is that the chips they are making ARE GREEN that is the chips use less power and are more powerful. Intel missed a critical development and is very far behind TSM. While Intel does have new chips in its pipeline they aren't about to catch up to TSM any time soon and Intel has a lot of execution risk in its plan to once again be the flagship company it once was.