[Animats]

The end of the US semiconductor industry is now in sight.

The only US owned state of the art fabs in the US belong to Intel. Intel survives because they have a high margin on x86 CPUs. Today, TMSC announced 5nm, and the top supercomputer is ARM-based.

Apple seems to be going ARM. Chromebooks are ARM. Microsoft now offers Windows on ARM, on the Surface Pro X. Mobile never used x86. x86 is on the way out. What's left for Intel?

(Micron is still a major force in DRAM, amazingly.)

[floatboth]

> The only US owned state of the art fabs in the US belong to Intel

Is the "US owned" clarification to exclude Global Foundries' New York fab? :D

> Chromebooks are ARM

Maybe half of them.

> What's left for Intel?

Fabricating others' designs like TSMC?

But also, Intel isn't going away any time soon, just not being a monopoly anymore.

[Animats]

Global Foundries New York fab (Fab 8), from Wikipedia:

Technology: 28 nm and 14 nm. 7 nm planned. However, in August 2018, GlobalFoundries made the decision to suspend 7 nm development and planned production, citing the unaffordable costs to outfit Fab 8 for 7 nm production. GlobalFoundries held open the possibility of resuming 7 nm operations in the future if additional resources could be secured.

So, not a state of the art fab. Couldn't afford to keep up.

[floatboth]

Yeah, not "state of the art" technically, but that's where the first generation Ryzens (14nm) were made, which still feels like yesterday to me, haha.

"14nm" is still good enough, especially considering Intel's "10nm" vaporware..

[fomine3]

GF 14nm is still behind from Intel 14nm for actual size.

[btian]

I can't disagree more. The US semiconductor industry is more vibrant than ever.

Intel reported record quarter every quarter for the last 2-3 years.

Fabless semiconductors are doing better than ever - nVidia, AMD, Apple, Qualcomm, Google TPU etc.

Most of the high performance ARM SoCs come from Apple and Qualcomm, both American companies.

[IanCutress]

>Intel reported record quarter every quarter for the last 2-3 years.

Due to high demand on people needing 30%+ more processing power after they lost 30% perf due to Spectre/Meltdown. When they get the manufacturing and supply up to a resonable standard, they'll start building inventory and start selling cheaper chips again. Margin and ASP will decrease, and investors will sign out

[rasz]

Commodore reported 7-year record revenue/profit 4 years before going bankrupt. https://dfarq.homeip.net/commodore-financial-history-1978-19...

[tom_mellior]

> What's left for Intel?

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_syste..., about 80% to 90% of the desktop and laptop computer market (counting the share of Windows + Linux devices in these categories). Intel won't starve.

[freeflight]

Which is the result of AMD not having been able to compete for close to a decade.

Expect to see these numbers change drastically over the next years as Zen 2 finally turned the ship around on that by not only making AMD CPUs competitive, but in many cases the straight up better, yet still more affordable, choice.

Which is already reflected in current trends: Barely any consumer-level hardware outlets still recommend Intel builds, which is down to lack of PCIe 4.0 support and only very expensive Intel CPUs being able to outperform AMD CPUs in fringe-use cases like single-core performance in gaming, while still demanding a hefty price-premium.

A premium that many people are simply not willing to pay for anymore.

As a small data point just look at the top 10 CPUs on price comparison websites, like German pcgameshardware [0]: 8 out of the top 10 CPUs are all AMD.

Which will not mean that Intel will starve, but it very much puts them into the position that AMD has been in these past years, that of the underdog fighting an uphill battle to regain relevancy in the consumer sector.

[0] https://preisvergleich.pcgameshardware.de/?o=4

[pankajdoharey]

You see Intel is a 50 yr old company, you think they will sit hand in hand on their bums? If the majority Industry shifts towards ARM ISA Intel will evolve, What stops Intel from Licensing the ARM Core and build a industry leading ARM Chip? I think no-one with the exception of Apple in the semiconductor industry has more resources than Intel to build a world class ARM CPU. Intel is just trying to drag x86 as far as possible because it can monopolise the architecture only AMD and Via are other two vendors who have license to build x86 processors.

[Animats]

What stops Intel from Licensing the ARM Core and build a industry leading ARM Chip?

That others can compete directly on price. Intel can probably do it technically, but will not have the margins they had with x86.

[pankajdoharey]

Yes that is true. if the Industry shifts happens then the only way they can have those margins is if they build a equally competent ARM Chip, hard to justify to the investors to abandon billions invested in the current architecture. Surely the top management and marketing would be fired. But Intel could do it.

[harpratap]

> I think no-one with the exception of Apple in the semiconductor industry has more resources than Intel to build a world class ARM CPU

Are you forgetting Amazon's Graviton? And Nuvia seems to be in a good position to dethrone Apple in best ARM CPU race too.

[pankajdoharey]

Yes I really forgot them. But my point really was that Intel won't sit idle.

[sitharus]

Intel already license the ARM core IP and used to build their own ARM chips under the XScale brand. They sold the line off in 2007 IIRC but retained the ARM architectural license.

The only thing that stops them is their will to do it.

[pankajdoharey]

Ohh yes Scale, they could revive it.

[Lio]

> What's left for Intel?

Well I'd like to see them go all in on Desktop Linux.

But then I'm a dreamer.

[mey]

What would that look like? Shifting to becoming a software developer and leading the charge a Desktop Linux? A vertical integrator like Apple, Microsoft Surface, System 76 (yes those are varying degrees of success)?

I really like the NUC products. They have the knowledge and skills to do everything (cpu, ram, soc, radio/wifi/cell (or used too), storage) in house but industrial design (maybe they do). I have never personally experienced a software experience from Intel I have ever remotely enjoyed.

Edit: Actually there is software I have used from Intel that I have really enjoyed, the BIOS for the NUC. So I stand corrected.

[pengaru]

> Edit: Actually there is software I have used from Intel that I have really enjoyed, the BIOS for the NUC. So I stand corrected.

I am hugely appreciative of Intel's substantial contributions to the Linux kernel, which is obviously software.

Being able to run Linux natively on modern Intel laptops with full 3D hardware acceleration, modesetting, and working suspend/resume using mainline drivers has been a game changer for decades. Without their stepping up and setting an example here, I doubt we'd have amdgpu today, desktop Linux use in general would be far less possible.

[Lio]

Intel already has its own Gnu/Linux distribution called Clear Linux[1].

They have their own silicon (obs) and their own NUC hardware.

I’d love to see that all come together into a really polished platform.

Linux shines when the hardware had good, open source drivers available.

1. https://clearlinux.org/

[birdyrooster]

They would be perfect. Microsoft bungled their Linux desktop moment and I think they will never get it right because of conflict of interest. So Intel would be very welcome in this regard.

[ganzuul]

The EUV machines are made in the US.

[rasz]

Netherlands is 7000km off your guess.

Jimmy Kimmel Can You Name a Country? strikes again https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRh1zXFKC_o

[IanCutress]

ASML's manufacturing plant is in Wilton Conneticut. R&D is done in Netherlands, with some manufacturing.

[ganzuul]

Weird. I clearly remember their guy boasting about this in a video on YT.

Also your troll bait is totally off.