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by sliken 1632 days ago
No argument on the fab side, but that's easy to outsource. Samsung, TSMC, and Global Foundries will happily make Intel chips.

Alder lake is a good example, from what I can tell it's a market leading core, generally faster than the AMD competition, and a good basis to make future products. Future Intel GPUs seem likely to compete on price/perf, at least when any GPU from the last 3 generations seems to sell out instantly.
1 comments
anamax 1632 days ago
> Samsung, TSMC, and Global Foundries will happily make Intel chips.

And how long will it take to "port" those designs to another fab?

It's not a matter of "make install."

Yes, everything comes together with tools, but every one of those tools and its inputs is verging on full-custom and those designs were tweaked with the characteristics of those tools in mind.

The folks who know how to do that work are currently working on new products (either for Intel or someone else), so are you willing to slip those products?

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sliken 1632 days ago
Quite a bit faster than building a fab for a leading process and making a new product on that fab.

Alder lake seems plenty competitive (even market leading) for today, AMD has nothing big (like zen4) due anytime soon. Moving the next gen to some other fab in time to replace alder lake looks quite feasible.

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anamax 1632 days ago
Yes, Intel can do new designs for other fabs.

The question is when it makes sense to port old designs to other fabs.

FWIW, I'm not convinced that it takes less time to bring up a new design on a new fab than it takes to bring up an old design on a new fab. (The exception being a new fab that is identical to the old fab.)

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