Intel Ponte Vecchio GPU Will Be Made on TSMC 6nm Process, CPUs Could Be TSMC 3nm

https://wccftech.com/intel-ponte-vecchio-gpu-tsmc-6nm/

by rbanffy • 6 years ago

112 136 6 years ago

klelatti12• 6 years ago

Why would Intel not be focusing on protecting its x86 business and working through the issues on getting CPUs onto TSMC first rather than a product which is currently generating zero revenue for Intel?

Just to clarify - not a point about Intel using TSMC at all - just not clear why they would put Ponte Vecchio on TSMC first when CPUs should be the priority.

EDIT - Added clarification.

mythz3• 6 years ago

Protecting its x86 business by outsourcing & relying on an external supplier for one of its core competencies?

They've announced they have contingency plans to hedge against further schedule uncertainty (assuming that means using TSMC), but their #1 priority would be to use their own fabs.

klelatti12• 6 years ago

Protecting their x86 server business should be their number 1 priority right now. Customers don't care if the product is manufactured in Intel or TSMC Fabs and the margins will still be more than satisfactory.

If the x86 based product falls behind customers have an incentive to move to ARM made on TSMC (Apple being the obvious case in point). In this respect AMD is doing Intel a long term favour by giving firms an x86 fall back.

Asuchug4• 6 years ago

This move might be bad for protecting margins but is great for protecting business - AMD will have to pay more if TSMC is using 100% of its production capabilities.

simion314• 6 years ago

They can do both, still attempt to fix their fabs, still use existing fabs and compete with lower prices (imagine Intel to be the budget choice, ironic) and create super fast CPUs on TSMC for some part of the market that wants the extreme performance.

Nokinside2• 6 years ago

For the same reason Intel is still able to sell more CPU's for servers and laptops than AMD despite AMD having better price/performace/power ratio.

Manufacturing capacity. TSMC fabs can't possibly supply all demand.

fluffything• 6 years ago

TSMC fabs can't possibly supply all demand.

Yet.

teruakohatu• 6 years ago

I am pleased TSMC is moving the industry forward, but I fear we are moving from an Intel monopoly to a TSMC monopoly. As a consumer the result will be the same.

legulere• 6 years ago

It's easier to switch from one fab to another than from x86 to another cpu architecture.

Koshkin3• 6 years ago

Linux has done it.

throwaway8941• 6 years ago

Yet another reason to use FOSS as much as physically possible.

Koshkin3• 6 years ago

At the hardware level, I wonder why, though - don't the modern x86 CPUs have a completely different internal architecture anyway?

iagovar• 6 years ago

Yeah, this situation seems quite worrying. It was already worrying with only two x86 companies (VIA is leagues behind).

It would also be nice to have some capable foundries in Europe, like STM or Infineon. Just in case.

NicoJuicy• 6 years ago

ASML?

bitL• 6 years ago

Was Dresden GF foundry shut down?

paulmd6• 6 years ago

If there is one company with the will, the liquid cash, and the volume to break away from TSMC, it is Apple. Just saying.

They design their own chips in-house, they are moving to use them across their full stack, they are already TSMC's #1 customer by a wide margin, and they could literally build a 3nm fab with 40k wafers per month with less than 10% of the liquid cash they have on hand ($5b for the node and $15b for the fab). And they are the type of company who brings everything possible in-house, and the type of company who looks at a single-source monopoly like TSMC as a business risk. Fabs are literally the last part of their hardware/software stack that they don't control and that another company could potentially leverage them over.

Right now there is no alternative to TSMC, people literally pre-eulogize NVIDIA Ampere and other products simply because they're on Samsung instead of TSMC. How do you think that looks to a company like Apple, that they are completely dependent on this company for node tech and subject to increasing competition for wafers as everybody else realizes there is no alternative and piles in too?

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/272096-3nm-process-nod...

pabs33• 6 years ago

The ASML monopoly is even more worrying.

cma• 6 years ago

Intel owns a fifth of ASML.

ragebol3• 6 years ago

What would it take to break that monopoly (technology-wise, not politically like eg. the big oil companies were a century ago)?

ASML bet on EUV and finally made it work well enough.

twic2• 6 years ago

I feel like HN found out about ASML a few months ago and now mentions it at any opportunity.

There are loads of companies in the supply chain for fabs, all of them specialising in vital bits of equipment that nobody else can replace. ASML is not the only ASML.

MangoCoffee2• 6 years ago

there are only few foundries that can afford or want their machines. Globe Foundry vow out of 7nm race and SMIC can't get US's approval. there are about a hand full of companies that want their machine. Samsung, Intel and TSMC.

ASML is a niche of a niche.

icefo3• 6 years ago

As a customer I'm somewhat happy Intel finally pays for their anticompetitves practices (karma wise) but at the same time I'm worried about the US losing its advantage in chip manufacturing.

Do we know what really went wrong at Intel ? I know they made a big bet on a technology that didn't pay off. Is it that they just had no competition for years and became complacent ?

I also wonder how much TSMC will ask Intel to split the company to ensure that their process does not leak to the Intel side. There is probably lots of interesting details about what works you can obtain if you work closely with TSMC engineers.

_Understated_• 6 years ago

Do we know what really went wrong at Intel?

Now this doesn't come from any position of authority or knowledge of the industry but if I had to guess I'd say their problem has been twofold: shareholder value and lack of competition.

Intel, for years, has been the standard choice for the datacenter: AMD never really had a look in there. As a result, Intel has still been making tons of money for years and, by extension, the shareholders have also been making it too so there hasn't been any real reason to take too many risks or change direction especially as AMD was a fraction of the size.

AMD have only just recently (last couple of years) been an actual, quantifiable, threat to them so, if I had to guess, Intel are in a bit of a panic as the world makes a slow shift to AMD (possibly ARM and more specialized chips too!).

I can imagine that the lead time for chip designs is measured in years so Intel can't just make a massive direction change overnight, hence the reason to ask for external help.

Time will tell if this turns out to be a brilliant move for Intel...

DrBazza• 6 years ago

What ultimately seems to stifle US companies, is management, bureaucracy, and "value to shareholders". They seem to forget their engineers, and what their business actually is.

IBM in the past, Boeing recently, Intel right now.

adventured• 6 years ago

As a customer I'm somewhat happy Intel finally pays for their anticompetitves practices

They already paid for that several times over. AMD only exists today because Intel was forced to license their technology. Intel has been artificially restrained for decades. Competition all over the world has benefitted massively from that.

Now of course people conveniently forget that history and pretend Intel wasn't made to fight with one hand tied behind its back for three decades.

There's nothing quite like watching the tied-down champ get beat, and then watching the crowd gloat about it.

The US did this to itself by crippling Intel. The US always does this to its champions, meanwhile competitor nations do the exact opposite, aggressively promoting and shielding their most valuable companies. Then people wonder golly gee what happened to such and such company, we tied its hands behind its back and it got beat to a bloody pulp, how could that outcome happen. Get up champ, take some more punches.

Anyone think China is going to cripple its strongest companies? South Korea is going to break Samsung into pieces? Taiwan is going to break up TSMC or force it to license its technology to Intel to spur competition? Germany is going to break up its oligopoly auto companies? Of course not, nobody else behaves that way. Meanwhile the US is going after its most powerful tech companies and always does. US competitors laugh their asses off as we make everything easier for them.

xoa• 6 years ago

As a consumer the result will be the same.

I don't think this is correct, because TSMC isn't so vertically integrated. There is not a "TSMC CPU" or GPU per se, they're providing a service to other businesses, not in direct competition with every other design. That doesn't mean there couldn't potentially be adverse results, but if so they'll probably be different adverse results since TSMC is entering more into a "basic infrastructure" role vs B2C. Chip design matters a lot to ultimate performance/efficiency, and fabless has promoted rather then reduced competition there. Their customers also have very deep pockets themselves, and TSMC has a lot to gain from keeping demand high with improvements.

In fact a potentially more worrisome aspect then any immediate competition threat is the sheer reduction in redundancy of critical production (as we've seen with hard drives and NAND production for example). TSMC has four of their 300mm gigafabs in Taiwan and a 5th in construction, and another four 200mm fabs. They've got a single 300m in China, and that's it for that size. They've got a 200mm in China, one in the US, and one in Singapore. A lot of capacity is in one small island.

Taiwan is on the ocean around the ring of fire. I know TSMC has of course done major disaster prep, but it's not impossible for the world to throw curveballs. Taiwan has had earthquakes in the last 100-someodd years up to magnitude 8.3, but only 7s for the last 50+ (the biggest more recent one for them I think was 1999). Of course construction codes (and major manufacturers even more so) take earthquake resistance into account. But what if there was a 9er and a typhoon say?

And of course there is geopolitics too, China has made no secret of its desire to retake Taiwan but haven't been taking recent actions to make it attractive and peaceful. And of course the very presence of so much critical-to-US production there enhances the risk (hope?) that yes, the US will in fact honor its defense agreement and cause the whole thing to get very hot.

So not that other fabs wouldn't be good for competition reasons too, but redundancy may be valuable in and of itself. However, if so it's not something the market can likely provide, the market tends to optimize out that kind of redundancy since it is by definition not efficient. Fabs represent enormous capital expenditure with long lead times that requires extremely large scale to operate profitably, so governments would probably have to step up and flat out pay for redundant capacity. And arguably should, but even at the government level $10-20b isn't nothing.

speedgoose3• 6 years ago

Why would you name a product "old bridge" ? Nobody speaks Italian at Intel's marketing department?

fredoralive• 6 years ago

Intel uses place names (etc) for code names. I guess they’re using bridges for GPUs and it’s named after the famous bridge in Florence?

Geezus_42• 6 years ago

It sure it gave them romantic thoughts of a country bridge and probably tested well.

pwdisswordfish2• 6 years ago

I mean, they’ve already had “Sandy Bridge”, literally in English. That’s not much better…

stellalo2• 6 years ago

Because it’s beautiful: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lastingimages/17342493661

speedgoose3• 6 years ago

There is a lot of beautiful bridges in the world.

arcticfox• 6 years ago

I think the cross section between the people that would read

* "Ponte Vecchio" as "old bridge"

* and not know what the Ponte Vecchio actually is

* and would interpret the name as a bad thing

is probably small enough that it doesn't matter.

tannhaeuser• 6 years ago

Not sure an Italian wouldn't be irritated by "old bridge" as the name of a supposedly high-end electronics product even when (I'm assuming) most if not all Italians of course know the place; "Ponte Nuove (Nuovo?)" could make some sense at least. What's with the bridge metaphor and cultural appropriation anyway?

rrrazdan• 6 years ago

I'd like to add one more

* and also assume that a corporation named something without figuring out what the name meant!

toyg• 6 years ago

Intel uses geographical codenames, have a look at this (out of date) list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_codenames

Ponte Vecchio is, of course, a famous bridge in Firenze.

barbegal• 6 years ago

It is also the name of many less famous bridges across Italy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponte_Vecchio_(disambiguation)

jonas21• 6 years ago

And several of Intel's codenames have been bridges ("Sandy Bridge", "Ivy Bridge").

627467• 6 years ago

I don't like sand on my CPU either...

greggyb• 6 years ago

Your CPU is made of sand.

twic2• 6 years ago

Hey, at least they didn't call it Millennium Bridge:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Bridge,_London#Reso...

klelatti12• 6 years ago

Actually as a recovery from engineering failure that might be a good omen.

romanoderoma2• 6 years ago

Because it's the name of the most popular bridge in Florence (and probably in Italy)

https://www.italiandualcitizenship.net/wp-content/uploads/20...

nabla92• 6 years ago

Intel has still good profit margins, much better than AMDs. But Intel has rarely been the best in microarchitecture. It has been almost always the superior process technology that gave them the edge over competition.

If Intel is forced to compete against Nvidia and AMD as fabless for several years, it's very bleak future for them.

Nokinside2• 6 years ago

Intel going fabless is like Boeing ordering aircraft from Airbus. Desperate but temporary. Intel can't cut their core business because everything is build around it. They can fall but they can't quit.

"TSMC internally does not consider orders for Intel's processors as long-term ones, and therefore is unlikely to build additional production capacity for the new contract if it comes, according to industry sources." https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20200728PD201.html

klelatti12• 6 years ago

To work for TSMC it would have to be a long term commitment. But Intel has the cash to pay for it and given recent events it would boost investor confidence if Intel could say (e.g.) 30% of our CPUs in future will be made by TSMC.

m4rtink• 6 years ago

Intel going fabless is like Boeing ordering aircraft from Airbus. Desperate but temporary. Intel can't cut their core business because everything is build around it. They can fall but they can't quit.

I think it's more like both Boeing (Intel) and Airbus (AMD) buying ordering their planes from say Samsung - a company that is a relatively neutral third party, that has busines from many sources and might simply not prioritize your order due to other more lucrative ones.

perardi• 6 years ago

Except for the Sandy Bridge era. AMD was definitely not ahead for a while there.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/the-sandy-bridge-review-...

nabla92• 6 years ago

It seems like you misunderstand the argument.

It's not about absolute performance of the processor. CPU performance is always combination of microarchitecture and process.

Traditionally Intel had better processors with worse microarchitecture due to better process technology.

Veedrac5• 6 years ago

But Intel has rarely been the best in microarchitecture.

When is the last time Intel was behind in microarchitecture? Ice Lake beats Zen 2, then you follow all the way back through Bulldozer, where AMD was utterly outclassed, then what? K10 vs. Sandy Bridge?

Zen 2 is basically a copy of Skylake, made 5 years late, that only got to compete with Skylake because Intel froze in time.

klelatti12• 6 years ago

'Rarely' is probably overdoing it but Intel has had significant architecture mis-steps. It's been able to come back so strongly in part because of it's manufacturing leadership. Once that is gone though it will be much harder.

gruez2• 6 years ago

When is the last time Intel was behind in microarchitecture? Ice Lake beats Zen 2

I'm not sure whether you can make that conclusion just because the two products have similar performance. zen 2 has better IPC, which is a better indicator of microarchitecture than raw performance. In the case of Intel, the only reason they're still ahead is because of the high clocks from a very refined 14nm process.

Zen 2 is basically a copy of Skylake

Source for this?

tuckfrump666• 6 years ago

AMDs Ryzen is going to eat Intel's lunch and they are clearly worried.

ckastner• 6 years ago

Does TSMC even have the capacity to produce 6nm, 5nm, 3nm etc. for the leading CPU manufacturs AMD, NVIDIA, Apple, and Intel?

If not, that's probably good news for TSMC's future profit margin, but it's worrisome that there isn't much of an alternative.

It would be great to see Samsung open up its fabs more.

agloeregrets• 6 years ago

The world-wide PC market including Intel and AMD totaled about 290 million units last year. 190 million of them were laptops.

Apple sold about 200 million iPhones, 70 million iPads and 60 million Apple Watches (and not including other A-series devices such as T2 chips, Apple TV, or HomePod) All of these are split among TSMC’s 10nm and 7nm parts. So it’s fair to say that TSMC with investment in fabs can work on that scale. I’m intrigued that Intel would be chasing the low cost 6nm however.

gsnedders2• 6 years ago

I’m intrigued that Intel would be chasing the low cost 6nm however.

My guess would very much be availability of delivery dates; I would be unsurprised if the first couple years of 5nm was largely sold out, and provided you can deal with the lower density 6nm (which is, after all, primarily just an incremental 7nm improvement with the same design rules, etc.) it allows them to bring it to market sooner.

flemhans• 6 years ago

What happens after 3 nm?

0 nm? -3 nm?

VMG• 6 years ago

  10^-1 deci d
  10^-2 centi c
  10^-3 milli m
  10^-6 micro µ
  10^-9 nano n
  10^-12 pico p
  10^-15 femto f
  10^-18 atto a
  10^-21 zepto z
  10^-24 yocto y

Veedrac5• 6 years ago

2nm then 1.4nm. Not sure what's after that.

ksec2• 6 years ago

1nm, then 0.8nm around 2030.

All assuming things according to plan and wired stuff like quantum tunnelling effect dont kick in.

mytailorisrich3• 6 years ago

I think that the radius of a Silicon atom is about 0.1 nm. ~1 nm may be the limit of what's possible. The next nodes after 3 nm are likely going to be 2 nm and 1.4 nm.

3 nm is not available yet, though. Current best is 7 nm, I believe.

KorfmannArno2• 6 years ago

Is the process of making smaller scales possible redundant or does it depend on new findings in science that no one anticipated?

I'd really like to know if the fab producers repeat some kind of procedure to create smaller chips or if a new prodigy to make breakthrough findings has to be found every other year to adhere to Moore's Law.

dispat0r• 6 years ago

7 nm is the best for shipping products 5 nm is in production for apples next mobile chip later this year.

sepulchers• 6 years ago

The names of nodes from companies like TSMC don't correspond to the actual size anymore.

paulmd6• 6 years ago

I think that the radius of a Silicon atom is about 0.1 nm. ~1 nm may be the limit of what's possible. The next nodes after 3 nm are likely going to be 2 nm and 1.4 nm.

the node names do not represent any actual measurement of the chip anymore, and have not for at least a decade. There is no measurement of a "5nm" chip that measures 5nm, and scaling is in fact largely dominated by how close you can place the transistors, not the actual transistors themselves.

MangoCoffee2• 6 years ago

3D packaging and chiplet.

people will find a way to go either beyond nm or something brand new.

dathinab• 6 years ago

I hope they then give up that utterly useless and confusing branding style ;)

cletus• 6 years ago

Is anyone other than me truly shocked at Intel's fall from grace here? Intel outsourcing their chip fabrication because they're basically unable to do it themselves. Like... who would've seen that coming 10 years ago? Or even 5 (back before 10nm was the debacle it became)?

I realize Intel recently ousted their chip chief (who, as I understand it, was poached from Qaulcomm a few years earlier) but if I were on the board, I'd be looking at this situation and calling it what it is: a massive failure in leadership and the pissing away of one of the greatest industry leads and I'd be going further and cleaning house entirely of the executive team.

Oh and free advice for the board: don't put a bean counter in charge of a hardware company. Seriously.

EricE• 6 years ago

don't put a bean counter in charge of a hardware company. Seriously.

Or pull a Boeing and move your management away from having a tech background and moving them half way across the country from the rest of the company too.

websg-x3• 6 years ago

Sorry, but that fake news. The news is for manipulation of Taiwan stock market. TSMC dominated the Taiex index.

We are having a fun day on PTT. A popular Taiwan BBS frequent by lot of real TSMC engineers.

One example, https://www.ptt.cc/bbs/Stock/M.1595925811.A.03E.html, people are poking fun with how only naive people(韭菜）believe the 5nm, 3nm cpu news.

nuker• 6 years ago

Yeah, 3nm made me smile immediately :)

chvid• 6 years ago

If it is fake then it certainly has been repeated a few places.

websg-x3• 6 years ago

Same sources, 電子時報(digitimes)，中國時報(chinatimes)，經濟日報(economic daily)，工商時報(commercial times). Known for publishing false rumors to move stock market.

The rumor is 180000 wafers for GPU next year, which is impossibly large. In comparison, AMD book 200000 wafers for all of their CPU, GPU, and PS5/XBOX cpu.

bhouston• 6 years ago

When I suggested 2 days ago that Intel should cut their losses on their long failed fab strategy and use TSMC I was downvoted and told I was wrong...

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23932541 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23932529

gumby• 6 years ago

This is absurd. Intel’s fab capacity is several times TSMC’s so even if intel had chosen to do this there is no way TSMC would be able to satisfy Intel’s needs. In addition most of TSMC’s capacity has already been committed.

That’s the business side; ignore the technical errors like 3 nm.

There’s already a comment saying this is market manipulation; I just wanted to point out the logical fallacy to avoid “is no” — “is so”.

paulmd6• 6 years ago

Intel already confirmed on their earnings call that Ponte Vecchio will be based on "external process technologies", so while yes, 6nm is (probably) an error, Intel is 100% certainly running their GPUs on TSMC.

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/313222-intel-amd-repor...

They're not moving everything to TSMC, just this specific line of products - which is a new line and would have required additional fab capacity somewhere. That's either 14nm (completely full), 10nm (massively low yields on something this big), or outside the company.

ksec2• 6 years ago

While I do read wccftech from time to time, one must realise they are not a reputable site. You need to read everything with the largest grain of salt.

If we could also stop posting or upvoting anything from wccftech would also be great.

lostmsu• 6 years ago

I feel like links to wccftech com should be banned here. Most of them are outright false information.

Intel Ponte Vecchio GPU Will Be Made on TSMC 6nm Process, CPUs Could Be TSMC 3nm

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