Assuming they’re telling the truth, they’ve successfully built one chip from that fab. That’s good, but it doesn’t mean the fab is capable of manufacturing at scale while turning a profit.
They need an external customer for the fab so they can iterate and work out the issues. It’s anyone’s guess if someone trusts intel to manufacture on their behalf instead of sticking with an established player. They’re stuck in a chicken and egg situation - can’t reach high yields without a customer, but a customer only wants to sign up if the yields and future deliveries are guaranteed.
Intels only hope might be that someone, not naming names, coerces an established company to sign up.
ExoticPearTree · 34m ago
> They need an external customer for the fab so they can iterate and work out the issues.
I guess you mean Intel to iterate using its own money to get the customer's chip right, no?
baq · 2h ago
That's too pessimistic. In general, customers don't want to be dealing with a monopolist and foundry customers are no different. It's in everyone's interest to solve the unproven process problem, so if Intel has evidence that the process isn't bust, customers will find a product which can be used as a pipe cleaner for mutual benefit.
YetAnotherNick · 20m ago
Specially companies like Nvidia for which the gross profit margin is so high their risk of losing TSMC is higher than risk of losing money.
threatripper · 4h ago
If we assume that intel gets successful with 18A with their x86 processors, would they even have the money to finance the node after that? And the node after that which gets exponentially more expensive?
In the past x86 raked in enough money to burn a lot of it on new fab tech but non-x86 has grown immensely and floods TSMC with money. The problem for intel is that their fab tech was fitted to their processor architecture and vice versa. It made sense in the past but in the future it might not. For the processor business it may be better to use TSMC for production. For the fab it may be necessary to manufacture for many customers and take a premium for being based in a country in need. So, a split-up may be inevitable and this fabbing a competitive ARM chip surely helps in attracting more customers. Customers who may pay a premium for political and security reasons.
blackoil · 3h ago
Apple, Nvidia and US govt can provide the required funds if they have confidence in its ability to deliver. These companies will benefit from breaking current monopoly of TSMC.
mallets · 52m ago
Samsung is already in a much better position for this. They have external customers and experience facilitating them. Unlike Intel's track record which doesn't inspire confidence at all.
zimpenfish · 2h ago
> Apple, Nvidia and US govt can provide the required funds if they have confidence in its ability to deliver.
Given Apple's history with Intel's ability to deliver, I'm guessing the confidence there isn't high.
walterbell · 1h ago
Are you referring to 5G radio modems or another chip?
toxic72 · 6m ago
Probably the Intel CPUs in Macbooks before Apple made the push for the M1 - circa the Intel quad core era where their laptop chips had major heat issues... ~2012 IIRC?
indemnity · 7m ago
Probably Intel’s fumble when Apple asked them for better performance per watt for the laptop CPUs and whether they wanted the iPhone CPU business back in 2006.
cromka · 2h ago
Amazon and Google probably as well?
nxobject · 1h ago
Random question: where did the ARM core design come from?
unwind · 1h ago
Intel are believed to hold an Arm architectural license [1] as far as I know, they have made Arm-based things in the past.
It should be RISC-V... who is in charge at Intel??
Is this related to the rumors of softbank (ARM) money injection in Intel?
FirmwareBurner · 1h ago
>It should be RISC-V... who is in charge at Intel??
Why should it be that? What are your arguments?
dlojudice · 16h ago
Very unlikely to happen but Intel could release an Arm chip with native x86 translation. Arm and AMD IP would be needed but this would be the best chip for Windows
mort96 · 4h ago
I don't understand what the difference is between "an ARM chip with native x86 translation" and a dual-ISA x86 and ARM chip.
And I don't understand why you'd want a dual-ISA x86 and ARM rather than just an x86 chip. You wouldn't get whatever CPU front-end simplicity advantages there are from ARM, since your front-end would get significantly more complex and consume significantly more transistors than with a normal x86 chip. And I don't think there's a market of people who want ARM for compatibility reason; any Windows software which supports ARM also supports x86.
What they could do is to release an ARM chip with a slightly extended ISA to add the select features which are difficult to emulate in software, such as loads and stores with the memory ordering guarantees x86 provides but ARM doesn't. Apple does this AFAIK, and it's one part of why Rosetta 2 is so good. But any ARM CPU maker could do this.
Denver does it because it was supposed to be an x86 CPU, but they couldn't get an agreement with Intel for patent licensing, so they pivoted into being the first available aarch64 CPU since decode was happening entirely in software.
LoganDark · 3h ago
> I don't understand what the difference is between "an ARM chip with native x86 translation" and a dual-ISA x86 and ARM chip.
Look at Apple's Rosetta 2 for an example. M-series Apple Silicon has special undocumented modes that mirror x86 architectural quirks that don't usually exist in ARM, in order to support AOT-translated machine code. The chip doesn't support x86 instructions, but it has the amenities to support x86 code. That could be what "native x86 translation" meant?
mort96 · 1h ago
That's what I suggested in my comment's last paragraph. I don't think that counts as "an ARM chip with native x86 translation", but really the only person who can say whether that's what dlojudice meant is dlojudice.
cromka · 2h ago
And why wouldn’t Intel be capable of doing the same?
They need an external customer for the fab so they can iterate and work out the issues. It’s anyone’s guess if someone trusts intel to manufacture on their behalf instead of sticking with an established player. They’re stuck in a chicken and egg situation - can’t reach high yields without a customer, but a customer only wants to sign up if the yields and future deliveries are guaranteed.
Intels only hope might be that someone, not naming names, coerces an established company to sign up.
I guess you mean Intel to iterate using its own money to get the customer's chip right, no?
In the past x86 raked in enough money to burn a lot of it on new fab tech but non-x86 has grown immensely and floods TSMC with money. The problem for intel is that their fab tech was fitted to their processor architecture and vice versa. It made sense in the past but in the future it might not. For the processor business it may be better to use TSMC for production. For the fab it may be necessary to manufacture for many customers and take a premium for being based in a country in need. So, a split-up may be inevitable and this fabbing a competitive ARM chip surely helps in attracting more customers. Customers who may pay a premium for political and security reasons.
Given Apple's history with Intel's ability to deliver, I'm guessing the confidence there isn't high.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture_family#Archit...
Is this related to the rumors of softbank (ARM) money injection in Intel?
Why should it be that? What are your arguments?
And I don't understand why you'd want a dual-ISA x86 and ARM rather than just an x86 chip. You wouldn't get whatever CPU front-end simplicity advantages there are from ARM, since your front-end would get significantly more complex and consume significantly more transistors than with a normal x86 chip. And I don't think there's a market of people who want ARM for compatibility reason; any Windows software which supports ARM also supports x86.
What they could do is to release an ARM chip with a slightly extended ISA to add the select features which are difficult to emulate in software, such as loads and stores with the memory ordering guarantees x86 provides but ARM doesn't. Apple does this AFAIK, and it's one part of why Rosetta 2 is so good. But any ARM CPU maker could do this.
https://threedots.ovh/blog/2021/02/cpus-with-sequential-cons...
Look at Apple's Rosetta 2 for an example. M-series Apple Silicon has special undocumented modes that mirror x86 architectural quirks that don't usually exist in ARM, in order to support AOT-translated machine code. The chip doesn't support x86 instructions, but it has the amenities to support x86 code. That could be what "native x86 translation" meant?