Intel’s New IDM 2.0 Strategy

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16573/intels-new-strategy-20b-for-two-fabs-meteor-lake-7nm-tiles-new-foundry-services-ibm-collaboration-return-of-idf

by addaon • 5 years ago

122 93 5 years ago

anandtech.com

RcouF1uZ4gsC2• 5 years ago

Hopefully Gelsinger will be to Intel what Nadella was to Microsoft. Both are engineers following finance people who while they still made a lot of money, lost the tech initiative.

I would love to see a 3 way competition between Intel, AMD, and Apple for consumer chips.

ncw96• 5 years ago

I’d expect to see Qualcomm in the mix as well, at least for laptop chips.

wyldfire• 5 years ago

They are in the mix, though their share is likely extremely small. But there's several Snapdragon-based laptop designs currently on sale.

nicoburns• 5 years ago

And indeed a continuing 3 way competition between TSMC, Samsung and Intel for actually fabricating the chips.

adamcstephens2• 5 years ago

I wouldn’t put Apple in the same category. They’ll never sell chips except as part of their vertically integrated systems.

ISL• 5 years ago

Even if they remain vertically-integrated, if they can sell an Apple datacenter blade or produce bespoke architectures for major cloud providers, the market is large -- Apple-scale.

RcouF1uZ4gsC2• 5 years ago

I was speaking here mainly for a consumer perspective buying complete systems. For me, my personal computers such as my laptop and/or desktop will likely contain a CPU made by Apple(if I buy a Mac) or Intel/AMD(if I buy a PC). Right now for laptops, Apple is blowing away the competition, especially Intel. I would love for Intel to get back in the game so I have more choices.

ksec2• 5 years ago

Gelsinger will be to Intel what Nadella was to Microsoft

Nadella is good only because his predecessor was crap. ( Sorry Steve Ballmer ).

I dont think they are in the same league. Gelsinger will be a far better CEO as this company roadmap has shown. Engineers alone dont make great CEO, that was the word Andy Grove told Gelsinger. You need a product person, with vision, strategy, engineering and business senses. And somehow they are a very rare breed.

bryanlarsen3• 5 years ago

Hopefully the foundry business works this time. A TSMC monopoly would suck.

greggyb4• 5 years ago

Samsung, Global Foundries, UMC, and SMIC are other large players in the foundry space. It would be very difficult for TSMC to eliminate these competitors.

55873445216111• 5 years ago

Among these only Samsung and TSMC have 7/5nm in production. GF and UMC aren't even pursuing it. SMIC is far behind.

krastanov• 5 years ago

Some of these foundries explicitly do not compete on cutting edge node-sizes. Global Foundries, for instance, have said they will focus on specialty circuitry, but will not try to compete on things like <10nm node sizes. I think it is fair to say they are not really competitors as their business is sufficiently different.

bryanlarsen3• 5 years ago

TSMC has 85% of the 5nm, 7nm and 10nm market.

cjdell• 5 years ago

I wonder if Intel would allow AMD to build chips using their fabs. That'll be interesting to see. I believe it happened once before in the early days.

frabert• 5 years ago

I believe the opposite was true, when AMD was an OEM for Intel CPUs

ldargin• 5 years ago

They probably would. Their money would still be green.

trynumber95• 5 years ago

Foundry service seems like a good idea. 14nm may be a bit long in the tooth for modern phones, laptops, servers but it would be a cutting edge process for most embedded products. Intel built more 14nm capacity than usual because of the 10nm problems. As they finally move to 10nm and 7nm EUV processes, it makes sense to try to sell their 14nm fab space/time to anyone who wants it.

varispeed3• 5 years ago

Or maybe they could pivot and work on foundry equipment that small businesses could setup in their garage? I think it should be a good time to start democratising the chip production and so far there is probably no company who can provide tools in this segment affordable for small and medium businesses.

Macha• 5 years ago

First of all there are serious economies of scale to chip processing, especially at these low scale, that I think it's unlikely a SME could compete in this space.

Secondly chipmaking is not always the most environmentally friendly process, at least on a local level (Intel[2], AMD[1] have superfund sites at former plants, they aren't the only one), so I'm not sure people should want someone running one "from their garage"

[1] https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/SiteProfiles/index.cfm?fus...

[2] https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/SiteProfiles/index.cfm?fus...

axlee• 5 years ago

Economies of scale work against that model. Unless for hyper-specialized chips, and even, there is no way low-volume companies can compete against the industry behemoths.

bredren2• 5 years ago

Not sure why this was downvoted.

3D printing is at a really neat early platform stage right now. Cool scene, lots of innovation.

I can see chip level “3d printing” or rather custom local chip fabrication as a waypoint toward the natural conclusion of all this:

molecule-level synthesis Neil Stephenson wrote about in Diamond Age.

camdenlock• 5 years ago

I have nothing relevant to add here, except to ask: is it just me, or does Intel’s branding suck? How do I pronounce X^e exactly?

wmf3• 5 years ago

Xe is officially pronounced as the letters X E.

I suspect large companies have too many branding people with too little to do.

slashdot2008• 5 years ago

X to the e

Like the Xzibit song "X to the Z", which might have been good branding as it comes with a theme song

IanCutress2• 5 years ago

This is the reason I made this video :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3o3-yxUwjSQ

varispeed3• 5 years ago

This is underwhelming. By the time they manage to get 7nm fab it will already be obsolete. Why not something more ambitious or admit they cannot compete with Apple and AMD any longer and focus on chipsets or other peripherals? They could free x86 specification and let other companies with more energy pick a fight with ARM, no?

bgorman• 5 years ago

No one builds a leading-edge fab for one process node. The new factories will be able to support more advanced processes, unless Intel is wildly incompetent.

colinmhayes2• 5 years ago

Unless Intel is wildly incompetent

The last 6 years have proven that their process team is beyond wildly incompetent.

bryanlarsen3• 5 years ago

Intel 7nm is roughly equivalent to TSMC 5nm.

MangoCoffee2• 5 years ago

the problem is yield. by the time Intel get to 7nm (Intel 7nm delay. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53525710#:~:text=Intel%2....). TSMC will pull ahead with 3nm and 2nm. TSMC's 3nm is already in risk production.

i don't think "nm" matter anymore. the profitable yield level is more important. Intel's Rocket Lake is still on 14nm. it doesn't look like Intel's 10nm yield is profitable.

cronix• 5 years ago

I wonder how Intels chips would stack against Apple/AMD if they were to also use TSMC for outsourcing manufacturing instead of doing it themselves.

ArkanExplorer• 5 years ago

The problem is that the Netherlands, and to an extent ASML, is basically shut down due to COVID restrictions. EUV equipment is the bottleneck here.

We can't really expect supply chains to get back to normal and innovation to continue until absolutely all COVID restrictions are lifted.

trynumber95• 5 years ago

ASML's financial reports suggests EUV machine production rate has not been impacted:

In EUV... we successfully increased our manufacturing output in 2020 to 35 systems, however due to fab readiness of our customers we shipped 32 of these systems

It seems they built EUV machines faster than their customers were able to install them.

Furthermore ASML insists the upgraded NXE:3600D machines will start shipping in mid 2021 as planned.

IanCutress2• 5 years ago

They said it would be leading edge EUV-based node, they didn't say which one.

amelius5• 5 years ago

Today Intel will be announcing a $20 billion (USD) investment in two new manufacturing facilities

If Microsoft can pay $10B to buy Discord, then can't Intel pay like $100B to get back on top of the semiconductor game?

wmf3• 5 years ago

Probably not. In retrospect Intel probably could have avoided their 10 nm problems by developing multiple 10 nm variants in parallel but it's not clear that there is even enough hireable talent to do that.

greggyb4• 5 years ago

There is enough hireable talent. Samsung is producing 8nm at volume, and TSMC 7nm, with Apple reserving all of the upcoming 5nm.

Clearly the talent is there to support multiple cutting edge nodes developed in parallel. Whether Intel could afford to hire multiple teams like that is a different question.

fomine34• 5 years ago

Then CPU team also need to develop multiple designs to fit multiple 10nm process candidates.

ykl3• 5 years ago

Microsoft has 6x the cash on hand compared to Intel, 7x the market cap, and roughly 3.5x less debt-as-a-percentage-of-market-cap. $100 billion is nearly 40% of Intel's total market cap; $10 billion is less than half of a percent of Microsoft's total market cap.

Basically, Microsoft is just much much bigger and has much much more cash on hand and much much more ability to raise debt compared to Intel. All of these factors mean that relatively speaking, $10 billion to Microsoft is a sum that would barely even make a blip on their annual results; $100 billion is life-or-death for Intel. I don't think it's clear that Intel would even be able to scrounge up $100 billion if they had to.

amelius5• 5 years ago

This makes me wonder why Microsoft doesn't invest more in semiconductor tech. Microsoft and Intel's interests are very much aligned, and they have a common competitor (Apple) who is ahead of them both.

ruffrey• 5 years ago

As an embedded hobbyist, I wondered this the other day. Why Intel wouldn’t open up old fabs to embedded developers. It could be a huge boon to that industry which is clearly growing rapidly, and much is developed overseas at larger sizes.

MangoCoffee2• 5 years ago

https://semiwiki.com/semiconductor-manufacturers/297320-inte...

"Another trust issue is competing with customers. Today’s systems companies are the fastest growing fabless customers (Apple et al) and who is one of the biggest systems companies in the world? Samsung. Which is why the majority of Samsung Foundry customers are chip only companies. Word to the wise for Intel Foundry Services do not compete with customers."

Intel foundry services must be a pure play foundry like TSMC in order to win customer's trust.

xiphias2• 5 years ago

TSMC wasn't a pure foundry either, it was spun off from ITRI in 1987 for the same reason. But you're right, Intel is in a really tough spot right now.

npunt• 5 years ago

Seems Intel senses the way the semi market has shifted.

In the early days of computers it made a lot of sense to co-develop IP and fabrication techniques, especially for CPUs. CPU IP was a way to move up the value chain and capture more $, and CPU IP had huge lock-in.

Nowadays better tooling makes it easier to develop chips, better software reduces architecture lock-in, and it's all about mass customization (of IP blocks) for thousands of specific use cases as the market has opened up and chips are in everything. The value chain has shifted and its more important to differentiate on fabrication than it is on IP.

In the short run x86 is a cash cow, but in the long run it steals focus away from pursuing the more optimal pure play foundry approach. Intel's main risk is being the worst of both worlds - less attractive IP and less attractive fabrication.

Since chips are so important there's also geopolitical considerations at play. If you want to build a semiconductor ecosystem in a region (like the US), you need contract foundries. If you just have Intel puttering along making their own stuff and ignoring others, you get a bunch of local chip designers having to outsource manufacturing, which creates supply chain risk. I imagine as Intel shifts it will get favorable treatment by US Gov't in the way TSMC does from Taiwanese Gov't.

sitkack• 5 years ago

But you can get an X86 plus ??? with the Intel fabs, this is huge. Intel will be your partner for your post x86 journey. This is clearly a "crossing the innovators chasm" territory.

pointyfence2• 5 years ago

Given Intel's operational track record for the last say 7 years, a manufacturing group that's been tightly coupled to its internal design group for eons focused on a very narrow product line, its past half-hearted and unsuccessful attempts at being a foundry, competing against its potential customers, years of organizational and operational mal and under investment, and a competitor like TSMC, it doesn't seem like this has a good probability of success.

Anything can happen, but basically, Gelsinger is selling a pivot that goes against Intel's intrinsic nature for a really long time. Which customers are going to sign up to be the test customers for Intel for anything of meaningful scale? I guess Intel could discount prices immensely like Samsung, but is that worth the risk to a major player?

If I had to pick a company to be a national US champion to revitalize the US semiconductor industry, is Intel really the right pick vs. say Texas Instruments?

burlesona• 5 years ago

How competitive is TI's fabrication tech though? I would imagine Intel is pretty far ahead of them, but I don't know much about the space.

trynumber95• 5 years ago

Regarding Texas Instruments, what's the latest and most advanced fabrication facility they have? The latest information I could find suggest 45nm.

The options in the US don't really look so bleak to go back to 45nm. Intel, Samsung and TSMC have all announced plans for new fabrication facilities in the US. $20B for two plants in Arizona for Intel, $17 billion for new plant and upgrades to S2 in Austin for Samsung, and $12B for a new plant in Arizona for TSMC. I think this is the largest semiconductor investment in the US of all time. Of course it is all planned and plans may fall through.

pointyfence2• 5 years ago

I was thinking more along the lines of selecting a company that plays better with the rest of the industry and has a better operational history if you wanted to bring back more of a general semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem back to the US. Focus more on building out capabilities for the rest of the industries that don't need bleeding edge node development while Intel figures out its bleeding edge.

Intel strikes me as historically one of the more ethically challenged companies that heavily relied on monopolistic power. And then when it got into trouble and that monopoly's cracks were widening at a good pace, it started waving the flag after spending $20B+ on stock buybacks.

missedthecue• 5 years ago

Interesting that both Intel and TSMC chose AZ. Isn't chip manufacturing very water intensive? Other states like say Michigan have more water than they know what to do with, between their giant aquifers, great lakes, and 1 meter of annual rainfall.

UncleOxidant2• 5 years ago

Micron seems more likely than TI, but Intel is still the best shot for the US semiconductor revitalization.

fomine34• 5 years ago

Don't forget GloFo!

hedora• 5 years ago

Why are they building fabs in Phoenix? They’re incredibly water intensive, and Phoenix is in the middle of the desert.

rsj_hn• 5 years ago

Fun Fact: While Phoenix is indeed in a desert, it is a high desert (unlike the Mojave desert in Southern California), and there are canals that bring water from the Northern part of the Arizona, which has more mountains (in terms of square miles) than Switzerland. Also lots of great places to go skiing.

Arizona has so much water that historically it spent 2/3 of its water on growing water intensive crops like alfalfa and cotton. The nice thing about growing crops in the desert is year round sunlight allows you to get more harvests in. As rain damages cotton, the ideal place to grow it would be something like a desert with canals bringing in water from mountains nearby.

But semiconductor plants offer much better revenue per gallon of water than alfalfa or cotton, so it makes a lot of sense that Arizona is trying to migrate its water allocation to higher value-add industries, and of course the state would rather be known for semiconductors than for cotton.

ehvatum• 5 years ago

I hope the new IDM 2.0 strategy doesn't mean the end of the Platinum/Gold/Silver/Bronze branding. My local gas station car wash has for decades used the same branding nomenclature for their various tiers of car wash rigor, and it has been very successful for them. I can't imagine that central processing units should be any different from a car wash.

jimbob45• 5 years ago

I get that Arizona has lax regulations but it seems like they’re gonna have a tough time convincing top tier talent to move to Arizona of all places. Maybe it’s just me.

BeetleB• 5 years ago

Most of the top tier semiconductor talent is not in Silicon Valley, and some of it is already in Arizona. Intel has had fabs in Arizona since forever, and they have a fairly big footprint there.

ChuckMcM• 5 years ago

Smart move on Intel's part, there has been a big push for US manufacturing capacity and this will feed that. It is interesting to me that it took a crisis to force Intel to start offering IDM services. Something that I think they should have done years ago to absorb extra capacity.

ksec2• 5 years ago

IBM, US Fabs, $20B Foundry Investment, IFS ( Intel Foundry Services ) , Open / Industry EDA Tooling. This is all about US Fabs. And this is what Intel should have done in 2015. But the timing right now is simply perfect. I still get very emotional seeing Pat Gelsinger with Intel [1], but this whole strategy is about as good as it gets.

I mean one could write a thousand word essay lining these up from a geo-political point of view.

I am wondering if Apple would test IFS with their Modem. It make sense to have 2nd Foundry source, and Apple doesn't want to fund Samsung Foundry, NAND and DRAM. The best thing about all of these is the new IFS services, along with two additional Fabs meant lots more leading edge wafer capacity.

Then there is x86. All the essential x86 patents has expired. x86-64 was launched in 2003? I kind of wish they made a licensable "cleaned up" x86 and call it AE86 :)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25765443

Intel’s New IDM 2.0 Strategy

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