[samdjstephens]

It’s about demand isn’t it? TSMC have red hot demand, it’s not hard to understand their urgency in setting up new fabs, wherever they may be. Intel don’t have the same incentive - their incentive is to take the money (because, why wouldn’t you), build newer fabs and hope for some breakthrough in demand. The urgency is not there: being complete before there is demand could be detrimental

[ksec]

>It’s about demand isn’t it?

Yes. There used to be a saying the most expensive Fab ( or factory ) isn't the most advance Fab, but an empty Fab.

You cant built without first ensuring you can fill it, you cant fill it without first ensuring you can deliver. And Intel has failed to deliver twice with their custom foundry. Both times with Nokia and Ericsson. How the two fall for it twice is completely beyond me, but then Intel are known to have very good sales teams.

Intel will need another Apple moment that has huge demand, little margin, but willing to pay up front. On the assumption that Intel is even price competitive. The Apple modem may be it. But given the current situation with Intel as they want to lower Capital spending I am not even sure if betting on Intel is a risk Apple is willing to make. Comparing to a stable consistent relationship with TSMC.

[causality0]

At this point I'm starting to wonder if Intel's corporate strategy is "pray all of the fabs in Taiwan are destroyed during a Chinese invasion".

[kayewiggin]

Then Intel is going to have to wait for a very long time. At best, China is currently in a scenario similar to Japan's lost decade of 30 years or US's Great Depression. At worst, China's current deflation + massive debt seems eerily similar to Weimar Germany's early internal devaluation. China is pretty fucked.

[philipov]

It's unwise to forget that the thing that pulled both the US and Germany out of the Depression was war.

[kayewiggin]

US fully recovered from Great Depression in 1939, 2 years before entering ww2. Weimar Germany started in 1918 and ended in 1933 at the beginning of nazi Germany, 15 years later.

You can't start a war when you are truly broke, much like China is today. And China is aging super fast, unlike Germany or US during the 30s.

[ijidak]

China is broke? That's news to me.

They're undergoing a difficult time sure, but broke seems like a stretch.

Japan has struggled for 30 years, but during most of that time have they been broke? Most countries in the world would love to "struggle" like Japan.

What does broke mean?

China still has a currency earning export juggernaut and world class companies.

And, they build everything they need for war.

Russia with its energy and China with its manufacturing has sufficient assets to wage a World War 3 whether the U.S. wants it or not.

Wars aren't financed the same as peacetime economies.

Countries impress factories and manpower into service.

In some ways, if your country is sufficiently self sufficient, it's much cheaper than running a peacetime economy.

Of course, if you lose, then you're wrecked.

[mistrial9]

> US fully recovered from Great Depression in 1939

this is disinformation. source: relatives that were alive in California and other states at that time

[causality0]

Peter Zeihan is very witty but he's been saying the Chinese are three years away from cannibalizing each other for food for about ten years now.

[geysersam]

Tiresome take that's been repeated time and time again. China has problems like any other country larger than Luxemburg. But the conclusion that "china is fucked" sounds more like a wish than anything else to my ears. The Chinese economy is growing ~5% per year. It's got one of the worlds most well educated workforces. It's manufacturing everything from basics to high tech and very little indicates that's about to change anytime soon.

The chip technology sanctions might slow development in that area in China, but I wouldn't count on it.

[kayewiggin]

It's pretty tiring responding to folks who just parrot Chinese government's official 5% numbers and never bothered look into the actual details. Like its well educated workforces being laid off at age 35, and 80% of recent graduates are unemployed or driving didi or delivering food. Or China's low end manufacturing shutting down or moving to Southeast Asia, and high end manufacturing being tariffed/sanctioned.

Here are some actual experts take on China: Longtime China bull Ray Dalio fears economy faces problems as severe as Japan in 1990 https://fortune.com/2024/09/18/ray-dalio-china-property-bubb...

or Private equity investors trapped in China as top firms fail to find exit deals https://www.ft.com/content/0575e216-8dae-4df6-bf50-312f78468...

or Starbucks reportedly mulling China business stake sale https://www.worldcoffeeportal.com/Latest/News/2024/November/...

[donavanm]

> On the assumption that Intel is even price competitive. The Apple modem may be it.

Which is super interesting/ironic with the entire reason for an “apple modem” is due to Intels failure there a decade ago. Bonus irony for the subsequent acquisition.

[zitterbewegung]

Intel wasn't able to ship a competitive modem to Qualcomm and the whole point of the acquisition was to get rid of Qualcomm and even apple hasn't gotten a shipping version of a 5g modem for six years since the first intel modem started in 2018. This was really to vertically integrate the modem in all of the relevant Apple Silicon devices and it keeps going on...

[Hikikomori]

IIRC you can add LG to the list of intel failures.

[amelius]

I don't get it. If TSMC has demand, then so could Intel. What am I missing?

[dehugger]

The missing bit is "TSMC makes better chips than Intel" and thus they have higher demand.

[amelius]

Yes, but then there should be a higher level of urgency?

[dehugger]

Urgency with what? You asked why TSMC has higher demand then Intel...

[amelius]

No, you have to read more of the thread to understand why I asked it.

> TSMC have red hot demand, it’s not hard to understand their urgency in setting up new fabs, wherever they may be. Intel don’t have the same incentive (...)

[ijidak]

The issue is even if Intel builds these fabs it's not a guarantee they get the customers.

This is Intel's real problem.

They are also a competitor to many of their potential customers.

So, Intel needs to advance their foundry tech and they still may not get customers.

[dehugger]

They set up a 3nm fab in the US in less than two years. That seems pretty urgent on TSMCs part...

[jazzyjackson]

TSMC makes nvidia GPUs and iPhone chips among other things, intel doesn't

[ninkendo]

There was some discussion awhile back about Intel potentially fabbing ARM chips (or any other custom non-x86 chip) as a viable business in the future. I don’t know how serious they were but it sounded plausible when you think about how important it is to have an American leading edge fab, independent of the market future of the x86 ISA.

Basically what would it take for Intel to still have Apple as a customer even if Apple made their own ARM designs…

[guipsp]

You might be missing that you cannot just "port" across fabs.

[IshKebab]

Why not? You might have to redo lots of phys work but essentially all of the RTL will be the same and that's the vast majority of the work.

Intel doesn't have demand because they only make Intel chips, and they haven't been doing too well lately.

[wbl]

They feed into each other especially for anything that isn't a vanilla gate. Got a deeply ported SRAM with bypasses? That might fail synthesis if it is too choked by wire rules for the size of the cells so now it's banking time.

[IshKebab]

Right, you might get a different PPA...

I think realistically you wouldn't port the exact same design between manufacturers. That would be a waste of money unless one manufacturer is really rinsing you.

More likely you'd switch manufacturers when you planned to switch process nodes anyway, in which case the increase in workload probably wouldn't be too bad.

[amelius]

I honestly don't believe that e.g. Apple couldn't relatively easily base their designs on a different underlying technology.

They do it all the time when they change nodes.

[wbl]

Drop another billion is sort of the name of the game here.

[ksec]

This. And the extra time and Human Resources required for redoing the design along with testing.

It is not that it cant be done. It is not reasonable or cost effective to do it without some clear incentive.