this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2024
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This is a pretty dumb take, honestly. Intel for basically forever operated using their own fab exclusively. After failures to maintain good yield rates at their 10nm node, they had the option of continuing to delay new product lines and be eaten by the competition in AMD, or give in to TSMC temporarily while they worked on fixing their fab in parallel. In fact, they were criticized greatly for not switching to TSMC much earlier.
The key word is temporarily. How long ago was this?
Calling people dumb then throwing a weak argument doesn't make it stronger.
They're on wafer thin margins with vendor lock in. The strategy was not successful.
I think it's been about a year? IIRC Intel only started using TSMC for their processors with Meteor Lake, which was released in late 2023.
I believe their discrete GPUs have been manufactured at TSMC for longer than that, though.
It was a bad take. Intel has not been using TSMC long.
That said, it's pretty broadly agreed that Intel needs to toss its manufacturing arm into a subsidiary, and then possibly make that subsidiary completely independent. That's what AMD did with Global Foundries, and it worked very well for them. This process seems to have already started at Intel.
How long do you think fabs take to build and upgrade? Intel was working on fixing 10nm for years, this isn't a software situation where turnaround times are measured in days or weeks. Going from tapeout to silicon for a single line is a 6 month process after the technology process is solidified, forget if you're doing it while trying to figure out yield problems.
Three years in and at least one more to go where I work for our fab upgrade...could probably pull off new build in 4 or less not having to deal with production/cleanroom and depending on bldg/campus size.
Ha wafer thin margins funny!!! Side note you ever watched them pull/crystallize silicone ingots it's pretty frickin cool to see.