The Intel Execution Thread [2020]

https://newsroom.intel.com/news-releases/intel-changes-technology-organization/#gs.bbpejx

Murthy's out, duh.

 

Yet Murphy's (law) is still in.

 

Pretty good news about Murthy.

 

What a mess, after spending billions in R&D. Poor management and culture can do a lot of damage to even well established market leaders, look at Boeing, is a mess right now.

 

Yeah it's really weird... I mean, f*** up one process, ok, stuff happens. But two in a row, this badly, how the hell is it possible ? I'm sur the tech guys are the same, they know what they're doing. Management forcing bad decision / goal on them ?

 

Intel is uh, a weird place to work at.
Politics.

TMG is an even weirder place to work at.
Even more politics.

7nm was anything but that, conservative scaling targets, EUV usage, sane design rules yadda yadda yadda.

 

Well, EUV is very hard to do, no ? TSMC did it, but it seems problematic for Samsung, and, well, Intel.

 

Not anymore, we've ironed most of the nasty kinks.
Uptime still kinda meh, but overall not the hellhole it was say, 3 years ago.

Samsung yield issues aren't directly related to EUV.

Intel isn't even using EUV rn despite all the massive investments into ASML they did which was and still is a major wtf for me.

 

I've touched a bit on that on a previous post (a while ago) here. ( funilly enoungh, back then a few ppl here were so optimistic abount Intel returning to the "tick tock" cadence soon )
A significant factor seems to have been (management level) arrogance. Rumor was that tool vendors were giving Intel feedback that ammounted to something similar to : "your competitors have already overcome problem x, y, z you are reporting only now to us. 12 months ago ". And they reacted very little to that for a good while.

So now them being willing to manufacture critical IP at TSMC is a good step in the right direction. I think them actually proceeding to do it will be a net win long term for Intel. Also because of the corporate culture shift, but maybe they can feed their new experience into their own processes in a fashion or another

 

Actually this is bad news for the whole industry, TSMC could barely hold orders from Apple, AMD and NVIDIA together, not to mention the other mobile companies, adding Intel to them will spill trouble to all involved, scarcity and shortages will rule supreme for the foreseeable future, prices will rise, product cycles will be prolonged, and the market will shrink. Underwhelming products will be the norm after that.

 

Intel will never get the TSMC capacity they even theoretically need because TSMC upper mgmt has a nose well-tuned for sensing bullshit.

 

https://hexus.net/business/news/components/144379-amd-intel-battle-tsmc-capacity-says-report/

 

This report is bullshit.
Mostly.
(Intel has one CPU on TSMC prepped, and it's a hilarious one at that)

 

Never say never my man, Intel can brute force their way in there with big money.

 

No. Mr. Wei won't allow that to happen.

No.
It's a no-go.

 

Your personal wish or actual info?
TSMC doesn't care about AMD vs Intel. As long as Intel is willing to pay for the capacity, TSMC will happily accept.

 

More of the latter.

Yes they do, they vastly prefer semi-permament commitments for t1 customers.
Which Intel will do anything but; they'll jettison their TSMC portfolio the moment their IDC thingy works again.

There is none, someone's gotta lose.

 

Except AMD isn't t1, AMD is follower, not the early adopter of leading edge node. It doesn't matter if Intel is just a short term customer, their highest density nodes are in extremely high demand anyways.

 

They are now.

They are now.
Early adopter for new InFOs and SoIC too.

Yeah it does, TSMC fancies vendor lockdown over ping pong.

Which is why Intel gets dick; ergo 2 low volume products for the next 2-3 years or so.
PVC and that thing.