This almost ensures profitability, because with only 2 competing high end foundries, TSMC and Samsung/Intel, it’s easier to silently “agree” on price levels than if they were 3.
Still 2 competitors is way better than a TSMC monopoly. So i hope it works out for them to be competitive with TSMC.
PS:
The Tapeout for the latest Apple Chip was about $1 billion, that price tag is so steep that very few can afford to keep up.
https://wccftech.com/dimensity-9400-premium-causing-flagships-to-be-priced-7-5-percent-higher/the tape-out costs alone for Apple’s M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max were estimated to be $1 billion.
Just for scale, if you make $50k per year, it will take 20,000 years to make a billion!
That’s one way to kill off the remaining American foundry business, since if US can’t compete now and Korean and Chinese workers are as good, then there is no reason to shift production off in the long term.
I don’t see how this would seriously impact for instance Global Foundries? Lots of things aren’t bleeding edge.
AFAIK Global Foundries survive on niche productions and on being a trusted partner. Despite not being nearly as well known as TSMC Intel and Samsung. Global foundries is the #3 biggest foundry in the world by revenue.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GlobalFoundries
As of 2023, GlobalFoundries is the third-largest semiconductor foundry by revenue.
Did Intel ever get its foundry business off the ground? I remember some announcements in the last year or two, and then some rumors of yields not being good enough for the customers to move forward, and now some rumors of Intel thinking of spinning off the business. This partnership might be a watered down version of those plans.
Last I heard Intel claimed that their next process 18Angstrom should be on track and amazing.
But as far as I remember they said the same about the current 20Angstrom process.It looks weird that they call it Angstrom when his name was Ångstrøm. I know that Angstrom is the international name of the unit, but still. If you can’t spell or pronounce a name correctly, maybe you should call it something else.
It’s like they are struggling to be edgy, but instead they look goofy.Maybe we should call mr. Gelsinger for mr. Geringer here, which would mean smaller in German.
Intel canceled their 20A after bad results, and shifted focus to 18A.
It’s even to the point that their own Arrow Lake chips are going to be fabbed by TSMC.
Oh I didn’t know it was completely cancelled, sounds like the infamous 10nm all over again.
But I’m pretty sure Pat Gelsinger claimed 20A would be amazing, right up until there were complaints that the yields were awful.Still I hope Intel succeeds, because we don’t want an Asian monopoly on high end chip production.
