| Intel has a competitor to chiplets, called EMIB, based off its Altera purchase. EMIB is pretty cool, but has only been deployed in a small number of situations so far (There was a Xeon + FPGA chip Intel made. There was the hybrid Intel+AMD chip, and finally the new big.LITTLE clone chip that Intel merged an Icelake + Atom core together). I don't know why Intel hasn't invested more heavily into EMIB, Foveros, and other advanced-packaging technologies... but Intel is clearly working on it. Intel can do it, they just haven't decided to do so yet. They have the tech for sure. Its simply a matter of priorities. Its not so much that Intel "isn't" investing into it, its arguable that Intel just hasn't invested "enough" into it. AMD went all in: they literally bet their entire company on advanced-packaging, with AMD GPUs using an active interposer with HBM2, and now Zen-chips taking a chiplet strategy. And to be fair: AMD had to do something drastic to turn the tide. We're just at a point where AMD is finally reaping the benefits of a decision they made years ago. -------- If I were to take a guess: Intel was too confident that they could solve 10nm / 7nm (or more specifically: EUV and/or quad patterning), which would have negated the need for advanced packaging. AMD on the other hand, is fabless. They based their designs off of what TSMC was already delivering to Apple. Since TSMC leapfrogged Intel in technology, AMD can now benefit from TSMC (indirectly benefiting from from Apple's investments). Intel's failure bubbled up from the fab level: Without 10nm chips, Intel was unable to keep up with TSMC's performance, and now AMD is advancing. ---- AMD's strategy just works really well for AMD. AMD is forced to keep buying chips from GloFo (which are limited to 14nm or 12nm designs). All of AMD's decisions just lined up marvelously: they fixed a lot of issues with their company by just properly making the right decisions in a lot of little, detailed ways. A happy marriage of tech + business decisions. I dunno if they can keep doing that, it almost feels lucky to me. But they're benefiting for sure. AMD took something that seemed like a downside (the forced purchase of 12nm or 14nm chips, even when 7nm was available), and turned it into a benefit. |
Did Apple actually buy a significant stake in TSMC or are you just referring to the fact that Apple is one of their large customers along with Qualcomm, Nvidia, Huawei (until recently) etc.?