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by refulgentis
643 days ago
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I felt this was strongly, and felt incredibly sure of that, until I read Stratechery on it last week: https://stratechery.com/2024/intel-honesty/ It slipped by me how much AMD eating a little more every quarter really added up over the last ~5 years. (~9% to ~50% of datacenter revenue) Also, the foundry stuff just isn't working as a financial exercise: they can't split it out as a division and massively subsidize it and seem responsible. And there's ~0 light on the horizon. No one wants to use it, even Intel is falling back to using TSMC's leading nodes now, which is letting it tread water against ARM in laptops. If their confusing plan to do 5 nodes in 2 years or whatever works out, that'd enable them to start reversing the tide: they'd still have to build the same muscles TSMC has from always being a foundry, like having generic designs that are already in the market available, and convince people to switch suppliers, which is always risky, and usually done over years. |
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> The tests conducted by Broadcom involved sending silicon wafers - the foot-wide discs on which chips are printed - through Intel's most advanced manufacturing process known as 18A, the sources said. Broadcom received the wafers back from Intel last month. After its engineers and executives studied the results, the company concluded the manufacturing process is not yet viable to move to high-volume production.
and
> A Broadcom spokesperson said the company is "evaluating the product and service offerings of Intel Foundry and have not concluded that evaluation."
The make or break is not this summer. It's next. Gelsinger himself said he bet the company on 18A. If it doesn't work out then yeah, Intel is in very deep trouble but until then, Intel still has 29B cash on hand which is not chump change.
It's not that I stan for Intel, the heck do I care, I dislike the reporting that goes around this topic.