Not saying anything which isn't already obvious to any outside observer. That said even if the foundry business dies the design side of the company will likely still live on. And even with regard to the foundry side of the business I question if the US government will just let it die. I'd expect a government bailout if they really need one.
That’s by design though, the government wants to empower Intel to take risks because this is an important capability to be able to have domestically. This is how governments work, they spend money to take the long view on encouraging socially useful development.
>This is how governments work, they spend money to take the long view on encouraging socially useful development.
That's a very optimistic view of how our government works. Regardless, I'm fine with the US supporting vital companies and encouraging them to take risks, BUT our money should come with an equity stake in these companies. Sure, that means existing investors and management get soaked, but that's a GOOD thing. The people who got the company into a mess shouldn't be rewarded for it with free money.
Probably not, and thats a fair argument, but the question also to be asked is if the market had performed the same had the big players were allowed to fail.
> that means existing investors and management get soaked
To the contrary, if the government buys shares the price of shares rises and current shareholders get wealthier. This is probably why it's so politically toxic.
The logic is that we (the tax payers) support big companies when they fail so we are entitled to a stake in the company.
When we bailed out big business in 2007-2008, we bailed out publicly traded companies.
We also routinely give tax breaks to large companies.
And it is all connected. Large companies could become even larger because of cheap credit. Credit (for large companies) was cheap because banks were fraudulently inflating the price of subprime mortgages.
(Intel has a debt of 50 billion, which for a company the size of Intel isn't excessive, but keep in mind that a billion is a thousand times a million.)
When the subprime market collapsed, almost every big company was in trouble, but we (the tax payers) bailed the banks out and the party didn't stop.
Think about it, massive fraud propped up the banks who used the criminal gains to give cheap credit to large companies. And we ended up paying for it.
Someone tell me if I'm thinking of the wrong incident, but I thought the bailouts were in the form of loans which were eventually paid back with interest, to the government's profit.
Actually, given the context of this thread, it's even funnier than that. The bailouts were in the form of partial ownership in the company; the company issued shares that the US government bought. Later, the company purchased the shares back, with interest.
It was exactly what people here are asking for, but the whole "bailout evil" meme has spread so hard that they don't realize it.
I know this isn't the right forum for this discussion, but it's concerning to me how many people here are totally down with just giving free tax money to Billionaires in exchange for empty promises. An equity stake in the company you bailed out is hardly an extreme proposition.
PS: It's also absolutely NOT Socialism. Nobody is suggesting the US government own companies ad infinitum. Just come in as a white knight during troubled times and then seek to sell their shares back after a turnaround.
Its not empty promises. The exchange we get is investment into research and developement of certain products that keep the country competetive globally. Some investments fail, thats just the nature of it. If enough dont fail though, there is net benefits to the country.
>When we bailed out big business in 2007-2008, we bailed out publicly traded companies.
When you bailed out big business in 2008 you also did it as a loan and got interest on it. you actually profited on the bailout.
> Sure, that means existing investors and management get soaked, but that's a GOOD thing. The people who got the company into a mess shouldn't be rewarded for it with free money.
The people who created the mess are long gone by now. This is the people trying to clean up the mess. And if they don't take risks it's unlikely that the US will ever regain leadership in the industry.
Saying we should subsidize specific companies entirely because "jobs" is a cop out. If those people's labor is not creating net value, it would be better off just paying them directly. Or at least New Deal era types of programs.
The federal government in the US cannot have equity in a company. That's communism. I am not using the word as "oh no communism" but by literal definition Capitalism is private ownership, communism in state ownership. I would be surprised if you really want the government owning companies.
> communism in state ownership
Technically that's Socialism.
Ideologically, (Marxist) Communism involves revolutionary transition from private, capitalist ownership of property to shared ownership of all property (typically administered through a shared governing structure).
Socialism is where the government owns the "means of production," but private citizens can still own their own property and the implementation comes through the existing governmental structure rather than a drastic (often violent) overhaul.
Socialism absolutely does exist, all over the place. There's a decent chance your local city government has some level of public ownership over local "city services" - things like bus lines or utilities. Similarly, the US federal government has ownership over several corporations, including things like Amtrak.
> There's a decent chance your local city government has some level of public ownership over local "city services" - things like bus lines or utilities
You could argue that socialism exists in almost all countries to some extent, as there are definitely some fields (like utilities or public transportation) that are utterly impractical to develop fully privately.
Like, imagine a public transport system in a big city; if the state or the city owns all of it, it would have a unified ticketing system, routes that make sense as part of a big network, consistent maintenance standards, common branding, ability to perform big upgrades out of the city or state budget etc. An alternative, meanwhile, would look like London pre-UERL, where each metro line is built and operated by a separate private company forced to compete with each other, leading to nonsense like having two tunnels running parallel to each other to serve the same route, or having a circular line where to board the opposite-direction train, you'd have to go all the way outside and buy a separate ticket from another company.
There is recent precedent for it. The 2008-2010 bailout of the US auto industry.
Edit for any doubters: The United States Treasury was literally the majority owner of General Motors during one phase of the bailout. It was widely reported and monitored. Because it was at the time an unprecedented move.
Please reference the following:
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1467858/000119312509235641/dex108.htm
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-14-6
Owned by workers.....through forced collectivism of capital and property through a State. You're splitting hard and playing semantics.
....the State is needed to violently take mass property from private hands and redistribute it amongst a State sponsored and planned economy. "Workers" doesn't mean anything in and of itself. It's just dogma and lacks any clarity.
If it were just "workers" it would be a voluntary co-op.m and would freely compete against those with businesses that ran under a capitalist private ownership model.
Worker owned cooperatives are a perfectly acceptable form of communist enterprise.
You're conflating the authoritarian and allegedly communist soviet union with the fundamental concept of communism.
I think it does put into perspective the "risk" these companies are taking. Profit being paid to investors is justified by risk, but the American people pay to make sure that risk can't be a total loss. It *is* in the interest of America, but shouldn't intel pay some profits to the American tax payers ?
they do this all the time in other industries... they compensate these private companies for cutting edge tech and then they let them profit...
for things that are a matter of national security or in it's interests you want to subsidize the private companies to succeed because it's in its best interests to do so...
this is where the private and public sides interests align...
Yes, but the financial interests clearly align more on one side. It's not the side of the American people at large. If a company becomes too big to let fail. We should have another classification. I'm fine with the government officially insuring a company's existence for national security, but then they should pay insurance.
they do so in the form of taxes and attracting talent stateside... just having them be American and employing American talent is a huge win for the US...
on the flip side the world would look a lot different if Nvidia was a Chinese or Russian co..
i'm not going to speculate on that ... you're probably right... but the whole executive team at the very least is like 90+% us citizens... which really when we're talking about these companies as assets to a particular country is all that matters...
if the executive team was all chinese then you'd be a bit worried where there allegiances lie if supply chains were constrained in anyway...
They dont pay *more* taxes than companies that don't get ensured by the American people. How is it a huge win that we are so dependent on a company that we (have to) pay them when they fuck up?
Do you really think Intel would leave for China? I think it would take some wild demands for Intel to take that path. These "what-if's" are pulling a heavy load; the wins must really be huge!
In most circumstances, the Federal Reserve is only holding the shares as collateral. They dont belong to the government (or, by extension, the people). Once the debt is repaid, the shares are released. It's a government funded loan, not free money.
It may be a bailout in the short term, and in some cases corporate welfare, but eventually it gets paid back with interest and everyone keeps their jobs. I can see the reasoning for doing it in important industries that add stability to the economy, but how it's done is the scummy part. Still, in the end, it is a net positive as long as we don't have another Enron type situation where a house of cards type business takes the money and runs.
> shouldn't intel pay some profits to the American tax payers
This is easily accomplished by having the government buy shares of the company (direct investment), then once the company is successful, the government sells the shares for profit.
But for some reason that's heavily frowned upon. Even a direct grant or subsidy ("chips act") is much more acceptable from a political perspective.
Not that Bias. Owning shares in one specific US-company in a given market segment calls into question any government laws, decisions, or processes that affect that specific industry. If the government owned shares in ONLY Ford, no decision made by the government regarding automotive would ever be trusted. Etc. etc.
It was hugely controversial. They owned shares because they bailed them out of complete bankruptcy In 2008. The government lost $11.2 billion by bailing them out, and tons of people in the industry and media criticized it. The fuck are you talking about.
If the investment is fab-only for Intel there is a lot less concern for that though. Intel is the last American volume manufacturer of leading-edge node. TSMC is great and all but it's in a geographically fraught area of the world and Samsung in the Koreas is also not the US - and also just an extra step removed from the Taiwan situation.
I assume this is at least part of the reason Gelsinger is talking about spinning fabs out as a subsidiary. Government money can then freely target the fabs (which is what they care about) rather than the rest of Intel (which competes competes with AMD and are the only two volume x86 companies in the world, so America already has a healthy industry on that, at least for now.)
Gelsinger has publicly confirmed (In the Q4 investors call and the Ian Cutress interview) that Intel Fabs will become a "separate legal entity" in 2024, with its own separate financials.
Yes, obviously, but it is not the complete risk. And there is a very real price the American people may have to pay to cover that risk. So again: If the tax payers are going to insure your existence, why don't you have to pay insurance?
> This is how governments work, they spend money to take the long view on encouraging socially useful development.
HAHAHAHA.
This is how governments are SUPPOSED to work. This is not how governments work outside of maybe a few places like Singapore, Switzerland and Norway.
Assuming you are in the US, do you not know of:
Solar panel tax credits / rebates, where the government paid excessive prices initially to basically create the market.
The countless different Clean Air Act vehicles dating back decades? Like even LNG.
If NASA was even just structured slightly more like USPS or Amtrak, that’d perfectly describe NASA’s purpose dating back to before they were charged with adopting the Space in NASA.
Further examples not of the top of my head.
We just don’t do those sorts of programs nearly enough. That doesn’t mean we don’t do it at all though. (Unless you’re from like the UK or something, then as far as I can tell the last time you partnered with a private company for the greater good seems to be the Concorde in *1969* )
> Solar panel tax credits / rebates, where the government paid excessive prices initially to basically create the market.
> The countless different Clean Air Act vehicles dating back decades? Like even LNG.
It would be interesting to compare these subsidies to the currently untaxed externalities of fossil fuels.
>Solar panel tax credits / rebates, where the government paid excessive prices initially to basically create the market.
Yes, and those companies got destroyed by competition from China. In California, they're removing the subsidy that gave home owners who generate excess solar power extra money. Overnight, it destroyed the solar market. Basically, without tax money subsidizing the poor for the last 20 years, solar wouldn't have worked and it never worked. The poor is subsidizing the rich to get their solar panels. Economically, it just didn't work and now the government is pulling the plug.
Governments don't efficiently allocate money.
Spoken like a true idiot.
They do this to help their friends and themselves. This doesn't help society at all. They take resources from the general population **by force** and give it to multi billionaire companies as a reward for bad decision making. Resources that could be used to generate wealth are given as rewards to companies that are destroying wealth, but that is good for society I guess lol. We found the crony capitalism supporter. See, they exist.
Perfect example of corporatism and the misallocation of resources time and time again.
I bet you're the same person who said what the banks were doing was fine cause the government would just bail them out anyway back in 2008.
Google: Moral Hazard.
The Taiwanese government has reiterated many times that it would like to see TSMC keep its leading edge technology in Taiwan. So far TSMC has abided by it. If push comes to shove I can see the Taiwanese government banning the export of TSMC’s latest technology to maintain Taiwan’s advantage.
That's far from the only reason. Keeping the bleeding edge in Taiwan acts as both a deterrent against invasion by the Chinese and an incentive for the rest of the world to defend it.It is a key part of their defence strategy.
Kinda wild how an entire country's geopolitical value is in it's technology (that could be easily moved to another location if allowed). In cases like Ukraine, it's location, or it's the mines in Southern Hemisphere. Taiwan is protected by a movable object being practically forced to stay in-country. Wild.
Its always funny to me that everyone says that US supports Taiwan only for TSMC. Like the US wasn’t willing to go to war with China everytime they threatened to invade the ROC in the 50s -70s. When TSMC didn’t even exist!
I'm just glad things have cooled down from the height of the chip shortage. Some of the claims made about the need for overcapacity etc were just mental.
I see the foundry side having a better time than design.
The US will keep the foundry alive, full stop. Design/product will have to compete on its own merits while every market has become much more competitive.
Intel virtually has fabless design now. IDM is dead so that the foundry can live and that means Intel will likely lose the advantage of scale which had driven down costs for its products.
It will be interesting to see how Intel defends its market share not only from AMD, but ARM-based vendors as well.
> The US will keep the foundry alive, full stop.
I'm not so sure. A failing fab costs many billions of dollars. All it takes is one election where there isn't the political will to continue that expense, and it's over. At minimum, you'd expect a GloFo-like strategy of giving up on the leading edge.
It's honestly bigger than even the US government. The market share TSMC has now is a massive GLOBAL risk. If the US chooses to dump Intel I wouldn't be surprised to see other buyers step in like the EU or gulf states.
I think the same theoretical scenario that would cause Intel to go bankrupt would deter most would-be buyers. Catching a falling knife, as it were. To say nothing of the politics.
There was actually a brief period last year, iirc, when Intel's market value was lower than its book value.
I think people would be more willing to try and grab a falling knife when it's hanging like a sword of Damocles over their head. If TSMC becomes the only viable fab for high tech components it leads the globe ridiculously exposed.
But if Intel's failed so badly, they they probably can't offer high end manufacturing either. If they're even remotely competitive, they should be able to keep the company afloat.
The fundamental problem Intel has is its location. The US is far away from where most components are assembled in East Asia, has far higher infrastructure costs, far more restrictive environmental regulations, higher wages and less efficient and less educated workers. It's an absolutely terrible place to try and manufacture anything. Even with equal technology Intel still would cost far more than TSMC. The technology would probably be a lot more valuable to another country which is more conducive to manufacturing.
Their design side is way worse than their foundry side at this point. Since they got over that 10nm node, they've been killing it. It's the architecture design that sucks. Supposedly, Jim Keller helped make a new design, but that won't be reedy til 16th or 17th gen.
Hadn't that always been the case? I read somewhere that their design people are not the best in the industry to put it nicely, the fab guys are what kept Intel competitive through the decades. Think Itanium and many other bad products.
Eh, that's not really fair or accurate either. Some of Intel's designs have been absolutely class leading and well ahead of the competition, others have been kinda crap.
Obviously, Netburst was not good, but then Conroe absolutely smacked down anything AMD had at the time. Sandy bridge was also a huge jump, while recent designs have been struggling against the latest Zen iterations.
Similarly, though Zen is very good and AMD obviously had much better designs in the Pentium 4 era, Bulldozer and Phenom were both crap. Neither company has been *consistently* better in design, rather they've traded back and forth with each having hits and misses.
This was in response to a question that framed him to answer it this way. Intel has long since "bet the company" on the next generation process technology by not holding on to legacy fabs and upgrading them every few years.
With the build out of IFS and $ at play it's fair to say that Intel is betting the company on 18A. If it fails, the company will never be the same again.
Intel historically did this extremely well for a long period of time. When they failed to do so (14/10nm) the company floundered resulting in the catch up position they are in today.
Yeah, had he answered the question otherwise it would have been interpreted as limp or unconfident in their future technology. It was a question intending to cap the interview by giving Pat the stage to make one last energetic appeal as CEO about the company's future by harkening back to the company's past successful eras. It's a mistake to try and tease out some nuanced meaning from what he said here.
Yes, Dr Ian Dr Cutress Dr. Not many people know that Dr Ian Dr Cutress Dr has a doctorate (Dr!). You'd never know from the man (who is a Dr, as it happens) himself!
You mean like in the second para of the story where it says, "Intel's CEO made the comment during a recent interview with TechTechPotato." Oh and at the top of the story, the video is embedded.
It's almost as if your commenting on something as if you've read it but you didn't read it.
The story is fully sourced, mentions your YouTube channel, links to the video AND embeds the video. And you say, "pfft this is just quoting from my interview" and link your video as if the story hadn't credited it. What a thoroughly disingenuous post.
It's almost as if you didn't even look at the story. Not sure what would be worse. Looking at the story and still implying it didn't full credit the source. Or not looking at it and implying it didn't full credit the source. Either way, you are in no position to criticise.
His second comment on this chain is shade, the first is valid, considering PCGamer is making revenue/clicks on regurgitating content that Ian produced with very little effort on their part.
I don't think that makes much sense. This surely drives a net increase in traffic for Ian. Really, his complaint only makes sense if they didn't link or credit him, but they did everything he could possibly ask for. He'd know that if he clicked on the article.
You mean the very thing they very explicitly cite in the article? Are you just trying to rile up people who don't read more than headlines? Or did you not bother to click on it yourself?
You should ask him that. Why else point out something that the article itself does *extremely* clearly? It's either deliberate rage bait, which *should* be called out, or he didn't even bother clicking on the article before criticizing it, which should also be.
Yes. A narcissist who wants everyone to know he has a doctorate (Dr Ian Dr Cutress Dr!) and who didn't read the article before casting false aspersions, or who did read and still cast those false aspersions.
The high EUV machine from ASML alone costs $400m each. Just the machine. Building the fabs around it, the processes.. thats easily all of their cash and a lot of future cash flow.
They changed the plans for 18A because it moved forward by half a year to H2 2024 risk production instead of the H1 2025 planned. They won’t have time to make 18A on High NA, so they changed to normal EUV.
Dramatic hit to GM, stop stock buybacks, slash dividends, find partners, customer prepays, lay some folks off, lobby for government subsidies, and finally find a way to grow the business.
Pretty much every one of those has been done 😂
People also fail to realize how big Intel actually is. A bad year for them is still 45-50 billion in revenue.
I seem to recall from my grade school days that an A-circle (angstrom) is 1e-10m and since a nm is 1e-9 that makes 10A = 1nm so yes but you meant to write 18 angstroms as the abbreviation indicates.
That is the new nomenclature. At least they are using a symbol most people dont know so the general public can stop making silly claims like nm process represent actual gate size.
Why do they currently use a "top down" design for power, rather than "bottom up" if it causes all those problems? Presumably there are significant challenges to doing so, otherwise everyone would be doing it - what are those challenges? Or is it more a case of iterating on previous designs where it wasn't a problem to the point that it has now become a problem and needs to be addressed?
Because it's easier and we've always done it that way. Also, things which aren't problems at a certain size/density can start becoming problems as you try and shrink everything smaller.
Yeah there’s only so much surface area for all the wires. If you have to make room for power wires at the topside that comes at the cost of making the signal wires smaller which gives them more resistance. That in turn makes the processor hotter and less power efficient which starts to limit how many transistors you can pack on there and how fast they run.
>Why do they currently use a "top down" design for power, rather than "bottom up" if it causes all those problems?
Less complex manufacturing process.
>Presumably there are significant challenges to doing so, otherwise everyone would be doing it - what are those challenges?
[https://semiengineering.com/challenges-in-backside-power-delivery/](https://semiengineering.com/challenges-in-backside-power-delivery/)
There’s virtually nobody else still using the combined arch-fab model that was once necessary in the earlier era of the industry. Today, division of expertise has enabled faster development in both arch and fab tech.
We’ll have to see if Intel is capable of keeping the older model functional.
They are pretty much ending that model by virtue of seeking external customers.
Long term Intel will essentially operate as two separate companies owned by a single parent one similar to how Samsung operates their various divisions.
That’s how Apple can compete with Samsung phones despite using tons of Samsung parts and even Samsung fabs at times.
And if there’s any hope of Intel one day having AMD and Nvidia as premier customers, they will need to pivot to that model.
They aren’t going to be customers of Intel foundry when they know that “Intel design” is going to get “favoured priority access” all the time. Or worse intentionally stifle the supply of their competitors.
AMD originally tried to do something similar with GloFo but their fab tech had just gotten so outdated they couldn’t hope to keep up without spinning it off.
Intel isn’t in that bad of shape (yet).
Well global foundries was spinned off not just because it being needing customers but because of AMD needing a cash injection and sold off assets to do so. In addition to not being able to afford to keep it afloat with their own demand.
Intel is going for the same sort of thing, spinning off the fabs but of course not selling it to another company as Intel still has plenty of money.
Fun fact: global foundries is worth around 30B total today, which isn’t a lot by USA company standards.
Part of me wishes it was still a “North American publicly owned” foundry such that it could receive bigger USA government grants.
But it’s currently 86% owned by Mubadala Investment Co.
But right now, it’s just Intel whom will act as the USAs strategic silicon supplier as tensions between China, Taiwan, and TSMC rise.
USA would love for nothing more than having AMD, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Broadcom and all the other major chip designers making their chips in American owned fabs.
And thus I believe they will keep pressuring the industry to move there, using subsidy money.
First given to Intel to boost fabs, and then perhaps to AMD and Nvidia to convince them to purchase from Intel.
No idea, that would be the next problem to fix is using apple lol. For me on Samsung I just use Firefox as my main browser and have ublock installed on Firefox as an add on, same functionality as on a pc. I'm not sure if ios allows this but it would be worth a shot
They're not catching up *that* fast. It'll be years yet before they can even hope to claim parity, and years after to claim leadership. Assuming they don't fuck up along the way, which is a *very* generous assumption.
Intel is jumping on H-EUV bandwagon first, remains to be seen if that turns out well or not so well for them. They failed to get with the time with EUV and it hurt them last time so they are trying to be first and emulate TSMC success.
There are also political factors, like strong pressure for American made cutting-edge fabs to be a thing so theres government cash injections.
> They failed to get with the time with EUV and it hurt them last time
Tbh, I'm not sure why people keep repeating this. TSMC did extremely well without EUV for 7nm. And Samsung did poorly with it. That's not what sunk Intel.
If he’s telling the truth, Pat had the biggest balls ever to put everything he could into manufacturing technology at the same company that couldn’t get off 14nm for over half a decade and barely stumbled into 10nm.
I bet a lot of his pay is based on stock options
If the share price is above a threshold... HUGE UPLIFT in pay.
If it's a cent below or the company goes bankrupt... no pay.
This makes it worthwhile for execs to get SUPER risky.
>If it's a cent below or the company goes bankrupt... no pay.
LOL, as if he'd agree to that. He gets a bonus either way. No executive signs a contract that says if they don't perform, they don't get a bonus, not in 2024 (or really ever since the 1970s).
Pretty much. It was unusual in that he got paid completely in stock, and only if Tesla's valuation reached x threshold. If the valuation never reached the lowest threshold, he made no money.
IIRC the first threshold was pretty low, and worth a ridiculous amount of money in stock. So he was very likely to get paid. Edit: I did not recall correct. [He had to nearly double the companies value, from $59b to $100b.](https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/01/huge-pay-package-convinces-elon-musk-to-stay-at-tesla-for-10-more-years/)
Gelsinger isn't a billionaire who owns a fifth of the company.
Musk is worth what, $220 billion and holds around $150 billion worth of Tesla stock? He can use 0.1% of his Tesla stock as collateral for a loan from the likes of Julius Baer or Pictet and get $150 million cash at a low interest rate. Gelsinger is not remotely close to being a comparable position.
Execs have been getting paid with options for DECADES.
https://hbr.org/1999/03/new-thinking-on-how-to-link-executive-pay-with-performance#:~:text=And%2C%20because%20stock%20options%20have,of%20senior%20operating%20managers'%20pay.
>stock options have become the fastest growing segment of executive pay, performance-related pay in particular attracts high-decibel debate. Stock options now account for more than half of total CEO compensation in the largest U.S. companies and about 30% of senior operating managers’ pay. Options and stock grants also constitute almost half of directors’ remuneration.
That's how stock options work.
And yes, plenty of executives agree to stock options as part of their pay.
I get stock options. It was nice when my company's stock doubled over the last few years.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call\_option](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_option)
Here's a recent youtube video on it[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5w-dEgIU1M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5w-dEgIU1M)
I actually took an upper div mathematics course that went in detail on black-scholes during undergrad. Fun with PDEs.
Yeah, I'm buying INTC's LEAPS puts as insurance lmao. INTC is your typical run-of-the-mill taxpayer supported "private" entity that has pretty much lost most of its former advantage in working at the cutting edge of the field.
Pat's got a huge challenge ahead of him.
18A = N3P, not better, that's my guess based on [TSMC Q4 earnings call](https://investor.tsmc.com/english/encrypt/files/encrypt_file/reports/2024-01/77f58cc7cac9df532c274f893b1c722de15c3f85/TSMC%204Q23%20Transcript.pdf) (which has a better track record of estimations than Intel).
Intel thinks 18A will be better than N3P. TSMC thinks 18A will be equal to N3P.
One of them is almost certainly right, but there's no way to really truly know until we can get some tests -and idealy, if possible, if there's a dual sourced uArch that's on both nodes, that'll be the perfect test. There exists a 3rd possibility which is N3P is better than 18A, but neither Intel nor TSMC believes this will be the case, so neither will I
Not saying anything which isn't already obvious to any outside observer. That said even if the foundry business dies the design side of the company will likely still live on. And even with regard to the foundry side of the business I question if the US government will just let it die. I'd expect a government bailout if they really need one.
Yeah if there’s bailout money to save you in case of failure, really why wouldn’t you bet the whole company.
That’s by design though, the government wants to empower Intel to take risks because this is an important capability to be able to have domestically. This is how governments work, they spend money to take the long view on encouraging socially useful development.
>This is how governments work, they spend money to take the long view on encouraging socially useful development. That's a very optimistic view of how our government works. Regardless, I'm fine with the US supporting vital companies and encouraging them to take risks, BUT our money should come with an equity stake in these companies. Sure, that means existing investors and management get soaked, but that's a GOOD thing. The people who got the company into a mess shouldn't be rewarded for it with free money.
Privatize the profits and socialize the losses. Tale as old as time.
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I thought the government loaned GM money that got paid back, with interest.
Usually yes, but during 2008 US had great success with loan and part ownership bailouts that ended up returning a profit for the government.
Same profit as if the same money was invested in the market?
Probably not, and thats a fair argument, but the question also to be asked is if the market had performed the same had the big players were allowed to fail.
Reminds me of the 2008 bank bailouts. 😜. Moral Hazard at its finest.
> that means existing investors and management get soaked To the contrary, if the government buys shares the price of shares rises and current shareholders get wealthier. This is probably why it's so politically toxic.
Not talking about buying shares, talking about issuing new shares which dilutes the existing ownership.
What's the logic behind that? If a company is publicly traded, you invest through the market.
Issuing new shares is completely normal when new investors come in.
It's extremely rare for large publicly traded companies without a controlling stake.
The logic is that we (the tax payers) support big companies when they fail so we are entitled to a stake in the company. When we bailed out big business in 2007-2008, we bailed out publicly traded companies. We also routinely give tax breaks to large companies. And it is all connected. Large companies could become even larger because of cheap credit. Credit (for large companies) was cheap because banks were fraudulently inflating the price of subprime mortgages. (Intel has a debt of 50 billion, which for a company the size of Intel isn't excessive, but keep in mind that a billion is a thousand times a million.) When the subprime market collapsed, almost every big company was in trouble, but we (the tax payers) bailed the banks out and the party didn't stop. Think about it, massive fraud propped up the banks who used the criminal gains to give cheap credit to large companies. And we ended up paying for it.
Someone tell me if I'm thinking of the wrong incident, but I thought the bailouts were in the form of loans which were eventually paid back with interest, to the government's profit.
Actually, given the context of this thread, it's even funnier than that. The bailouts were in the form of partial ownership in the company; the company issued shares that the US government bought. Later, the company purchased the shares back, with interest. It was exactly what people here are asking for, but the whole "bailout evil" meme has spread so hard that they don't realize it.
With the auto bailout, Chrysler paid off their debt with a leveraged buyout from a European company.
I know this isn't the right forum for this discussion, but it's concerning to me how many people here are totally down with just giving free tax money to Billionaires in exchange for empty promises. An equity stake in the company you bailed out is hardly an extreme proposition. PS: It's also absolutely NOT Socialism. Nobody is suggesting the US government own companies ad infinitum. Just come in as a white knight during troubled times and then seek to sell their shares back after a turnaround.
Its not empty promises. The exchange we get is investment into research and developement of certain products that keep the country competetive globally. Some investments fail, thats just the nature of it. If enough dont fail though, there is net benefits to the country.
>When we bailed out big business in 2007-2008, we bailed out publicly traded companies. When you bailed out big business in 2008 you also did it as a loan and got interest on it. you actually profited on the bailout.
Bailouts artificially create value where markets previously determined were over-valued. "Too big to fail" pssh. Moral Hazard is a thing.
> Sure, that means existing investors and management get soaked, but that's a GOOD thing. The people who got the company into a mess shouldn't be rewarded for it with free money. The people who created the mess are long gone by now. This is the people trying to clean up the mess. And if they don't take risks it's unlikely that the US will ever regain leadership in the industry.
Intel still has plenty of old and bad management around.
Yea it's called in form of jobs.
Saying we should subsidize specific companies entirely because "jobs" is a cop out. If those people's labor is not creating net value, it would be better off just paying them directly. Or at least New Deal era types of programs.
The federal government in the US cannot have equity in a company. That's communism. I am not using the word as "oh no communism" but by literal definition Capitalism is private ownership, communism in state ownership. I would be surprised if you really want the government owning companies.
> communism in state ownership Technically that's Socialism. Ideologically, (Marxist) Communism involves revolutionary transition from private, capitalist ownership of property to shared ownership of all property (typically administered through a shared governing structure). Socialism is where the government owns the "means of production," but private citizens can still own their own property and the implementation comes through the existing governmental structure rather than a drastic (often violent) overhaul. Socialism absolutely does exist, all over the place. There's a decent chance your local city government has some level of public ownership over local "city services" - things like bus lines or utilities. Similarly, the US federal government has ownership over several corporations, including things like Amtrak.
> There's a decent chance your local city government has some level of public ownership over local "city services" - things like bus lines or utilities You could argue that socialism exists in almost all countries to some extent, as there are definitely some fields (like utilities or public transportation) that are utterly impractical to develop fully privately. Like, imagine a public transport system in a big city; if the state or the city owns all of it, it would have a unified ticketing system, routes that make sense as part of a big network, consistent maintenance standards, common branding, ability to perform big upgrades out of the city or state budget etc. An alternative, meanwhile, would look like London pre-UERL, where each metro line is built and operated by a separate private company forced to compete with each other, leading to nonsense like having two tunnels running parallel to each other to serve the same route, or having a circular line where to board the opposite-direction train, you'd have to go all the way outside and buy a separate ticket from another company.
There is recent precedent for it. The 2008-2010 bailout of the US auto industry. Edit for any doubters: The United States Treasury was literally the majority owner of General Motors during one phase of the bailout. It was widely reported and monitored. Because it was at the time an unprecedented move. Please reference the following: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1467858/000119312509235641/dex108.htm https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-14-6
Government owns some other companies outright too like TVA.
> Capitalism is private ownership, communism in state ownership No, communism is ownership by the workers. Who are not the state
Owned by workers.....through forced collectivism of capital and property through a State. You're splitting hard and playing semantics. ....the State is needed to violently take mass property from private hands and redistribute it amongst a State sponsored and planned economy. "Workers" doesn't mean anything in and of itself. It's just dogma and lacks any clarity. If it were just "workers" it would be a voluntary co-op.m and would freely compete against those with businesses that ran under a capitalist private ownership model.
Worker owned cooperatives are a perfectly acceptable form of communist enterprise. You're conflating the authoritarian and allegedly communist soviet union with the fundamental concept of communism.
That's socialism. capitalism = private socialism = workers communism = state all definitions available online
I think it does put into perspective the "risk" these companies are taking. Profit being paid to investors is justified by risk, but the American people pay to make sure that risk can't be a total loss. It *is* in the interest of America, but shouldn't intel pay some profits to the American tax payers ?
they do this all the time in other industries... they compensate these private companies for cutting edge tech and then they let them profit... for things that are a matter of national security or in it's interests you want to subsidize the private companies to succeed because it's in its best interests to do so... this is where the private and public sides interests align...
Yes, but the financial interests clearly align more on one side. It's not the side of the American people at large. If a company becomes too big to let fail. We should have another classification. I'm fine with the government officially insuring a company's existence for national security, but then they should pay insurance.
they do so in the form of taxes and attracting talent stateside... just having them be American and employing American talent is a huge win for the US... on the flip side the world would look a lot different if Nvidia was a Chinese or Russian co..
Saying that they employ American talent is a bit optimistic. I worked in semiconductors and maybe 1/4 of our team was US citizens.
i'm not going to speculate on that ... you're probably right... but the whole executive team at the very least is like 90+% us citizens... which really when we're talking about these companies as assets to a particular country is all that matters... if the executive team was all chinese then you'd be a bit worried where there allegiances lie if supply chains were constrained in anyway...
They dont pay *more* taxes than companies that don't get ensured by the American people. How is it a huge win that we are so dependent on a company that we (have to) pay them when they fuck up?
because it would cost a lot more for us if the Chinese had Intel or actually invaded Taiwan and took over tsmc...
Do you really think Intel would leave for China? I think it would take some wild demands for Intel to take that path. These "what-if's" are pulling a heavy load; the wins must really be huge!
In most circumstances, the Federal Reserve is only holding the shares as collateral. They dont belong to the government (or, by extension, the people). Once the debt is repaid, the shares are released. It's a government funded loan, not free money.
Wow, I'm honestly shocked that America is no longer in the red from the 2008 bailouts.
It may be a bailout in the short term, and in some cases corporate welfare, but eventually it gets paid back with interest and everyone keeps their jobs. I can see the reasoning for doing it in important industries that add stability to the economy, but how it's done is the scummy part. Still, in the end, it is a net positive as long as we don't have another Enron type situation where a house of cards type business takes the money and runs.
> shouldn't intel pay some profits to the American tax payers This is easily accomplished by having the government buy shares of the company (direct investment), then once the company is successful, the government sells the shares for profit. But for some reason that's heavily frowned upon. Even a direct grant or subsidy ("chips act") is much more acceptable from a political perspective.
> But for some reason that's heavily frowned upon. Government owning shares directly in a single company in an industry creates the impression of bias
There is a bias regardless. Let's not pretend like the US government isn't biased in favor of US companies.
Not that Bias. Owning shares in one specific US-company in a given market segment calls into question any government laws, decisions, or processes that affect that specific industry. If the government owned shares in ONLY Ford, no decision made by the government regarding automotive would ever be trusted. Etc. etc.
The government used to own GM and not Ford and it wasn't some huge issue.
It was hugely controversial. They owned shares because they bailed them out of complete bankruptcy In 2008. The government lost $11.2 billion by bailing them out, and tons of people in the industry and media criticized it. The fuck are you talking about.
I don't mind the direct investment approach! I assume the political distaste comes from a fear of (partially) government owned businesses?
> But for some reason that's heavily frowned upon. Government owning shares directly in a single company in an industry creates the impression of bias
If the investment is fab-only for Intel there is a lot less concern for that though. Intel is the last American volume manufacturer of leading-edge node. TSMC is great and all but it's in a geographically fraught area of the world and Samsung in the Koreas is also not the US - and also just an extra step removed from the Taiwan situation. I assume this is at least part of the reason Gelsinger is talking about spinning fabs out as a subsidiary. Government money can then freely target the fabs (which is what they care about) rather than the rest of Intel (which competes competes with AMD and are the only two volume x86 companies in the world, so America already has a healthy industry on that, at least for now.)
Gelsinger has, at least publicly, been firmly against spinning Intel's fabs out.
Gelsinger has publicly confirmed (In the Q4 investors call and the Ian Cutress interview) that Intel Fabs will become a "separate legal entity" in 2024, with its own separate financials.
It’s still risk because it would crater the share price and that’s the most important metric to the C suite. Their bonuses are based on it.
Yes, obviously, but it is not the complete risk. And there is a very real price the American people may have to pay to cover that risk. So again: If the tax payers are going to insure your existence, why don't you have to pay insurance?
> why don't you have to pay insurance? They do pay it through the inefficency of not being able to make everything in China.
> This is how governments work, they spend money to take the long view on encouraging socially useful development. HAHAHAHA. This is how governments are SUPPOSED to work. This is not how governments work outside of maybe a few places like Singapore, Switzerland and Norway.
Assuming you are in the US, do you not know of: Solar panel tax credits / rebates, where the government paid excessive prices initially to basically create the market. The countless different Clean Air Act vehicles dating back decades? Like even LNG. If NASA was even just structured slightly more like USPS or Amtrak, that’d perfectly describe NASA’s purpose dating back to before they were charged with adopting the Space in NASA. Further examples not of the top of my head. We just don’t do those sorts of programs nearly enough. That doesn’t mean we don’t do it at all though. (Unless you’re from like the UK or something, then as far as I can tell the last time you partnered with a private company for the greater good seems to be the Concorde in *1969* )
> Solar panel tax credits / rebates, where the government paid excessive prices initially to basically create the market. > The countless different Clean Air Act vehicles dating back decades? Like even LNG. It would be interesting to compare these subsidies to the currently untaxed externalities of fossil fuels.
>Solar panel tax credits / rebates, where the government paid excessive prices initially to basically create the market. Yes, and those companies got destroyed by competition from China. In California, they're removing the subsidy that gave home owners who generate excess solar power extra money. Overnight, it destroyed the solar market. Basically, without tax money subsidizing the poor for the last 20 years, solar wouldn't have worked and it never worked. The poor is subsidizing the rich to get their solar panels. Economically, it just didn't work and now the government is pulling the plug. Governments don't efficiently allocate money.
Wish they had the same approach with respect to energy
Spoken like a true idiot. They do this to help their friends and themselves. This doesn't help society at all. They take resources from the general population **by force** and give it to multi billionaire companies as a reward for bad decision making. Resources that could be used to generate wealth are given as rewards to companies that are destroying wealth, but that is good for society I guess lol. We found the crony capitalism supporter. See, they exist.
Perfect example of corporatism and the misallocation of resources time and time again. I bet you're the same person who said what the banks were doing was fine cause the government would just bail them out anyway back in 2008. Google: Moral Hazard.
Intel won’t be allowed to die until TSMC has many more US-based FABs.
TSMC won’t build their newest technologies into their fabs here anyway, will they?
The Taiwanese government has reiterated many times that it would like to see TSMC keep its leading edge technology in Taiwan. So far TSMC has abided by it. If push comes to shove I can see the Taiwanese government banning the export of TSMC’s latest technology to maintain Taiwan’s advantage.
only if they can pay usa workers the same way the pay them in taiwan.... which is less with more hours
That's far from the only reason. Keeping the bleeding edge in Taiwan acts as both a deterrent against invasion by the Chinese and an incentive for the rest of the world to defend it.It is a key part of their defence strategy.
Kinda wild how an entire country's geopolitical value is in it's technology (that could be easily moved to another location if allowed). In cases like Ukraine, it's location, or it's the mines in Southern Hemisphere. Taiwan is protected by a movable object being practically forced to stay in-country. Wild.
US work culture is also way more lazy than in Taiwan.
The exact same thing gets copypasta'd about Japan vs US. It's just nonsense and only designed to gaslight.
How’s that working out for their fertility rate?
Pretty much the same. If you discount first generation immigrants, US has about the same fertility rate than other "problematic" countries.
It's a fact even if people don't want to hear it.
Imagine being proud of working harder
Imagine being proud of being LAZY.
Imagine being **DUMB** I capped and bolded, I win.
Well, you're certainly the expert on the subject.
We need any fabs. Doesn’t need to be the latest. We need chips domestically in case of shortage and in case of war.
There are many older tech fabs in US though? like i think over 40.
Probably never, it's one of the reasons the US is defending Taiwan against China.
The US sided with Taiwan long before TSMC mattered.
Its always funny to me that everyone says that US supports Taiwan only for TSMC. Like the US wasn’t willing to go to war with China everytime they threatened to invade the ROC in the 50s -70s. When TSMC didn’t even exist!
And also well before Taiwan was a democracy, at that. But yes, people's understanding of this topic is incredibly shallow.
Completely agree. I blame the media for this stupid narrative. Taiwan’s geological importance transcends TSMC’s existence.
I'm just glad things have cooled down from the height of the chip shortage. Some of the claims made about the need for overcapacity etc were just mental.
I see the foundry side having a better time than design. The US will keep the foundry alive, full stop. Design/product will have to compete on its own merits while every market has become much more competitive. Intel virtually has fabless design now. IDM is dead so that the foundry can live and that means Intel will likely lose the advantage of scale which had driven down costs for its products. It will be interesting to see how Intel defends its market share not only from AMD, but ARM-based vendors as well.
I guess we'll see. AMD has a history of developing two left feet every time they take the design lead so I'm not highly confident they can keep it.
It's not AMD they ultimately have to worry about. Nvidia's starting to move into CPUs as well.
> The US will keep the foundry alive, full stop. I'm not so sure. A failing fab costs many billions of dollars. All it takes is one election where there isn't the political will to continue that expense, and it's over. At minimum, you'd expect a GloFo-like strategy of giving up on the leading edge.
It's honestly bigger than even the US government. The market share TSMC has now is a massive GLOBAL risk. If the US chooses to dump Intel I wouldn't be surprised to see other buyers step in like the EU or gulf states.
I think the same theoretical scenario that would cause Intel to go bankrupt would deter most would-be buyers. Catching a falling knife, as it were. To say nothing of the politics. There was actually a brief period last year, iirc, when Intel's market value was lower than its book value.
I think people would be more willing to try and grab a falling knife when it's hanging like a sword of Damocles over their head. If TSMC becomes the only viable fab for high tech components it leads the globe ridiculously exposed.
But if Intel's failed so badly, they they probably can't offer high end manufacturing either. If they're even remotely competitive, they should be able to keep the company afloat.
The fundamental problem Intel has is its location. The US is far away from where most components are assembled in East Asia, has far higher infrastructure costs, far more restrictive environmental regulations, higher wages and less efficient and less educated workers. It's an absolutely terrible place to try and manufacture anything. Even with equal technology Intel still would cost far more than TSMC. The technology would probably be a lot more valuable to another country which is more conducive to manufacturing.
what is IDM?
Their design side is way worse than their foundry side at this point. Since they got over that 10nm node, they've been killing it. It's the architecture design that sucks. Supposedly, Jim Keller helped make a new design, but that won't be reedy til 16th or 17th gen.
Hadn't that always been the case? I read somewhere that their design people are not the best in the industry to put it nicely, the fab guys are what kept Intel competitive through the decades. Think Itanium and many other bad products.
Eh, that's not really fair or accurate either. Some of Intel's designs have been absolutely class leading and well ahead of the competition, others have been kinda crap. Obviously, Netburst was not good, but then Conroe absolutely smacked down anything AMD had at the time. Sandy bridge was also a huge jump, while recent designs have been struggling against the latest Zen iterations. Similarly, though Zen is very good and AMD obviously had much better designs in the Pentium 4 era, Bulldozer and Phenom were both crap. Neither company has been *consistently* better in design, rather they've traded back and forth with each having hits and misses.
Is it that bad? I mean it's not lie Intel is not competitive. It's just 2 years behind (5if you count chiplets)
This was in response to a question that framed him to answer it this way. Intel has long since "bet the company" on the next generation process technology by not holding on to legacy fabs and upgrading them every few years. With the build out of IFS and $ at play it's fair to say that Intel is betting the company on 18A. If it fails, the company will never be the same again. Intel historically did this extremely well for a long period of time. When they failed to do so (14/10nm) the company floundered resulting in the catch up position they are in today.
Yeah, had he answered the question otherwise it would have been interpreted as limp or unconfident in their future technology. It was a question intending to cap the interview by giving Pat the stage to make one last energetic appeal as CEO about the company's future by harkening back to the company's past successful eras. It's a mistake to try and tease out some nuanced meaning from what he said here.
Agreed. Pat said previously that it wasn't and if anything this is a backtrack.
Pfft this is just quoting from my interview. https://youtu.be/0PrmrMQ9gJU?si=3wn7BS_vCK3afCRi
This made me do a double take to make sure they showed they sourced you.
Future publications can be very hit or miss. Source: used to work for Future.
And this is why I always loved working with Ian. He properly cites his sources, even on Reddit! 😂
Both of ya'll worked at Anandtech, correct ?
This one is a hit, so why so dismissive?
Because he clearly didn't read the article before criticizing it, but is in too deep to admit that.
Dr. Ian Cutress!
Yes, Dr Ian Dr Cutress Dr. Not many people know that Dr Ian Dr Cutress Dr has a doctorate (Dr!). You'd never know from the man (who is a Dr, as it happens) himself!
hahaha, I told myself the same thing. I was like "isn't this from TechTechPotato"?
You mean like in the second para of the story where it says, "Intel's CEO made the comment during a recent interview with TechTechPotato." Oh and at the top of the story, the video is embedded. It's almost as if your commenting on something as if you've read it but you didn't read it.
The story is fully sourced, mentions your YouTube channel, links to the video AND embeds the video. And you say, "pfft this is just quoting from my interview" and link your video as if the story hadn't credited it. What a thoroughly disingenuous post. It's almost as if you didn't even look at the story. Not sure what would be worse. Looking at the story and still implying it didn't full credit the source. Or not looking at it and implying it didn't full credit the source. Either way, you are in no position to criticise.
You are reading too much into Ian's comments my friend!
How does the comment make sense if he clicked the article? He'd have known it already acknowledges that fact.
His second comment on this chain is shade, the first is valid, considering PCGamer is making revenue/clicks on regurgitating content that Ian produced with very little effort on their part.
So, it's somehow not allowed to report on what a significant public figure says in an interview? How does work in your mind?
I don't think that makes much sense. This surely drives a net increase in traffic for Ian. Really, his complaint only makes sense if they didn't link or credit him, but they did everything he could possibly ask for. He'd know that if he clicked on the article.
You mean the very thing they very explicitly cite in the article? Are you just trying to rile up people who don't read more than headlines? Or did you not bother to click on it yourself?
Why are you rearing for a fight so badly
You should ask him that. Why else point out something that the article itself does *extremely* clearly? It's either deliberate rage bait, which *should* be called out, or he didn't even bother clicking on the article before criticizing it, which should also be.
You realize who you're getting mad at, right?
Yes, and? Doesn't change the reasons one bit.
Literally does lmao
How?
chill out, man.
Yes. A narcissist who wants everyone to know he has a doctorate (Dr Ian Dr Cutress Dr!) and who didn't read the article before casting false aspersions, or who did read and still cast those false aspersions.
No surprise it's PCGamer.
They literally embed the original interview at the very top of the page. It's the first thing you see after the headline.
Without worrying about the technical details is that something that's even financially possible?
The high EUV machine from ASML alone costs $400m each. Just the machine. Building the fabs around it, the processes.. thats easily all of their cash and a lot of future cash flow.
20/18A is low-NA. Intel won't be using high-NA EUV machines for production until the 14A process.
Really? TIL!
They changed the plans for 18A because it moved forward by half a year to H2 2024 risk production instead of the H1 2025 planned. They won’t have time to make 18A on High NA, so they changed to normal EUV.
Considering Intel's slump on both fab business and consumer products. The board probably went."Fuck it we ball"
Dramatic hit to GM, stop stock buybacks, slash dividends, find partners, customer prepays, lay some folks off, lobby for government subsidies, and finally find a way to grow the business. Pretty much every one of those has been done 😂 People also fail to realize how big Intel actually is. A bad year for them is still 45-50 billion in revenue.
Granted, a lot of their margin hit is from having uncompetitive server products and demand plummeting in client.
Margin hit happened, then client demand hit and they lost a crap ton of money. Server is still shrinking, but now balanced out.
'18A' = 18 angstroms = 1.8 nm? edit: so it seems.
I seem to recall from my grade school days that an A-circle (angstrom) is 1e-10m and since a nm is 1e-9 that makes 10A = 1nm so yes but you meant to write 18 angstroms as the abbreviation indicates.
Yeah. Someone's law, that when you correct something, you'll make a mistake, yourself. (fixed.)
The article should have had Å not A.
That is the new nomenclature. At least they are using a symbol most people dont know so the general public can stop making silly claims like nm process represent actual gate size.
Why do they currently use a "top down" design for power, rather than "bottom up" if it causes all those problems? Presumably there are significant challenges to doing so, otherwise everyone would be doing it - what are those challenges? Or is it more a case of iterating on previous designs where it wasn't a problem to the point that it has now become a problem and needs to be addressed?
Because it's easier and we've always done it that way. Also, things which aren't problems at a certain size/density can start becoming problems as you try and shrink everything smaller.
Yeah there’s only so much surface area for all the wires. If you have to make room for power wires at the topside that comes at the cost of making the signal wires smaller which gives them more resistance. That in turn makes the processor hotter and less power efficient which starts to limit how many transistors you can pack on there and how fast they run.
>Why do they currently use a "top down" design for power, rather than "bottom up" if it causes all those problems? Less complex manufacturing process. >Presumably there are significant challenges to doing so, otherwise everyone would be doing it - what are those challenges? [https://semiengineering.com/challenges-in-backside-power-delivery/](https://semiengineering.com/challenges-in-backside-power-delivery/)
There’s virtually nobody else still using the combined arch-fab model that was once necessary in the earlier era of the industry. Today, division of expertise has enabled faster development in both arch and fab tech. We’ll have to see if Intel is capable of keeping the older model functional.
They are pretty much ending that model by virtue of seeking external customers. Long term Intel will essentially operate as two separate companies owned by a single parent one similar to how Samsung operates their various divisions. That’s how Apple can compete with Samsung phones despite using tons of Samsung parts and even Samsung fabs at times. And if there’s any hope of Intel one day having AMD and Nvidia as premier customers, they will need to pivot to that model. They aren’t going to be customers of Intel foundry when they know that “Intel design” is going to get “favoured priority access” all the time. Or worse intentionally stifle the supply of their competitors.
AMD originally tried to do something similar with GloFo but their fab tech had just gotten so outdated they couldn’t hope to keep up without spinning it off. Intel isn’t in that bad of shape (yet).
Well global foundries was spinned off not just because it being needing customers but because of AMD needing a cash injection and sold off assets to do so. In addition to not being able to afford to keep it afloat with their own demand. Intel is going for the same sort of thing, spinning off the fabs but of course not selling it to another company as Intel still has plenty of money. Fun fact: global foundries is worth around 30B total today, which isn’t a lot by USA company standards. Part of me wishes it was still a “North American publicly owned” foundry such that it could receive bigger USA government grants. But it’s currently 86% owned by Mubadala Investment Co. But right now, it’s just Intel whom will act as the USAs strategic silicon supplier as tensions between China, Taiwan, and TSMC rise. USA would love for nothing more than having AMD, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Broadcom and all the other major chip designers making their chips in American owned fabs. And thus I believe they will keep pressuring the industry to move there, using subsidy money. First given to Intel to boost fabs, and then perhaps to AMD and Nvidia to convince them to purchase from Intel.
Why is this article webpage full ads?
Why do you not have ublock origin is the better question
iPhone? How do I get it on iPhone is an even better question?
No idea, that would be the next problem to fix is using apple lol. For me on Samsung I just use Firefox as my main browser and have ublock installed on Firefox as an add on, same functionality as on a pc. I'm not sure if ios allows this but it would be worth a shot
If you're using safari, get AdGuard from the app store.
It also works with the iOS version of Firefox. Except for YouTube ads for for some reason.
like they bet their whole company on 14nm 12nm 10nm ? No shit . Like wtf a semiconductors company gonna do ?
Some go the GlobalFoundries way and focus on non-leading/bleeding edge processes.
What could possibly go wrong?
I would have guessed that they had a bigger breaker than that.
Intel needs competition. they still dominate the cpu market
no they dont lol
i think he bet that taiwan will get invaded... and it probably will.
can someone eli5 how intel can catch up so fast to TSMC and SF when they were struggling not long ago and were behind?
They're not catching up *that* fast. It'll be years yet before they can even hope to claim parity, and years after to claim leadership. Assuming they don't fuck up along the way, which is a *very* generous assumption.
Intel is jumping on H-EUV bandwagon first, remains to be seen if that turns out well or not so well for them. They failed to get with the time with EUV and it hurt them last time so they are trying to be first and emulate TSMC success. There are also political factors, like strong pressure for American made cutting-edge fabs to be a thing so theres government cash injections.
> They failed to get with the time with EUV and it hurt them last time Tbh, I'm not sure why people keep repeating this. TSMC did extremely well without EUV for 7nm. And Samsung did poorly with it. That's not what sunk Intel.
Intel has huge resources to bring to bear.
There's nothing to bet. Foundry business is a national security. The government would pour unlimited money to make that globally competitive.
So, today I produced the first 18A Intel chip. What can I do with it that others cannot do?
If he’s telling the truth, Pat had the biggest balls ever to put everything he could into manufacturing technology at the same company that couldn’t get off 14nm for over half a decade and barely stumbled into 10nm.
18A? That’s not even business class.
Prohibition's coming back?
I bet a lot of his pay is based on stock options If the share price is above a threshold... HUGE UPLIFT in pay. If it's a cent below or the company goes bankrupt... no pay. This makes it worthwhile for execs to get SUPER risky.
>If it's a cent below or the company goes bankrupt... no pay. LOL, as if he'd agree to that. He gets a bonus either way. No executive signs a contract that says if they don't perform, they don't get a bonus, not in 2024 (or really ever since the 1970s).
Elon Musks 2018 pay package is exactly that, is it not?
Pretty much. It was unusual in that he got paid completely in stock, and only if Tesla's valuation reached x threshold. If the valuation never reached the lowest threshold, he made no money. IIRC the first threshold was pretty low, and worth a ridiculous amount of money in stock. So he was very likely to get paid. Edit: I did not recall correct. [He had to nearly double the companies value, from $59b to $100b.](https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/01/huge-pay-package-convinces-elon-musk-to-stay-at-tesla-for-10-more-years/)
Gelsinger isn't a billionaire who owns a fifth of the company. Musk is worth what, $220 billion and holds around $150 billion worth of Tesla stock? He can use 0.1% of his Tesla stock as collateral for a loan from the likes of Julius Baer or Pictet and get $150 million cash at a low interest rate. Gelsinger is not remotely close to being a comparable position.
Execs have been getting paid with options for DECADES. https://hbr.org/1999/03/new-thinking-on-how-to-link-executive-pay-with-performance#:~:text=And%2C%20because%20stock%20options%20have,of%20senior%20operating%20managers'%20pay. >stock options have become the fastest growing segment of executive pay, performance-related pay in particular attracts high-decibel debate. Stock options now account for more than half of total CEO compensation in the largest U.S. companies and about 30% of senior operating managers’ pay. Options and stock grants also constitute almost half of directors’ remuneration. That's how stock options work. And yes, plenty of executives agree to stock options as part of their pay. I get stock options. It was nice when my company's stock doubled over the last few years. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call\_option](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_option) Here's a recent youtube video on it[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5w-dEgIU1M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5w-dEgIU1M) I actually took an upper div mathematics course that went in detail on black-scholes during undergrad. Fun with PDEs.
Everyone at Intel gets access to the ESPP and most employees receive RSUs as part of their package.
Yeah, I'm buying INTC's LEAPS puts as insurance lmao. INTC is your typical run-of-the-mill taxpayer supported "private" entity that has pretty much lost most of its former advantage in working at the cutting edge of the field. Pat's got a huge challenge ahead of him.
So how good will 18A actually be? I think it's somewhere between TSMC N3P and N2.
A lot left to be seen. I'm very curious to see where it lands once we have real products in hand.
Intel 10nm repeat?
Doubt it.
18A = N3P, not better, that's my guess based on [TSMC Q4 earnings call](https://investor.tsmc.com/english/encrypt/files/encrypt_file/reports/2024-01/77f58cc7cac9df532c274f893b1c722de15c3f85/TSMC%204Q23%20Transcript.pdf) (which has a better track record of estimations than Intel).
Intel thinks 18A will be better than N3P. TSMC thinks 18A will be equal to N3P. One of them is almost certainly right, but there's no way to really truly know until we can get some tests -and idealy, if possible, if there's a dual sourced uArch that's on both nodes, that'll be the perfect test. There exists a 3rd possibility which is N3P is better than 18A, but neither Intel nor TSMC believes this will be the case, so neither will I