By: Beastian (noemail.delete@this.aol.com), March 23, 2021 5:39 pm
Room: Moderated Discussions
Jon Masters (jcm.delete@this.jonmasters.org) on March 23, 2021 3:31 pm wrote:
> The "Intel Unleashed" event this afternoon featured the announcement of
> a new "IDM 2.0" model including a second attempt at doing a foundry:
>
> 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
>
> Have to give Intel kudos for today's news. Second to a full spin-out this is exactly the
> right thing. The proof of independence will be in the pudding, etc. but it has potential.
Credit to Gelsinger as this announcement is timing the markets very well by landing right in the middle of a production shortage, but how it will affect Intel's bottom line in the future is another story:
1) They can kiss those jealously guarded, fat x86 IP margins goodbye as most customers will be fabbing non-Intel IP at the foundries. It will be something like cellular modems, GPUS, or ARM based server SoCs for hyper-scalers. Not only does Intel lose the easy IP margins, they empower their competition to compete with their existing server and laptop market share. There's little chance they'll ever license x86 as they'll try to ride this dwindling moat of software compatibility for as long as they can, but ARM designs and emulation will eventually bridge this moat.
2) By the time these American factories are finished by 2023, their leading edge competition in TSMC and Samsung will have also finished their American fabs. There may even be a glut of supply at that point and this will crush their margins.
I look forward to a day when cutting edge consumer CPUs and GPUs are both READILY AVAILABLE and CHEAP though!
> The "Intel Unleashed" event this afternoon featured the announcement of
> a new "IDM 2.0" model including a second attempt at doing a foundry:
>
> 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
>
> Have to give Intel kudos for today's news. Second to a full spin-out this is exactly the
> right thing. The proof of independence will be in the pudding, etc. but it has potential.
Credit to Gelsinger as this announcement is timing the markets very well by landing right in the middle of a production shortage, but how it will affect Intel's bottom line in the future is another story:
1) They can kiss those jealously guarded, fat x86 IP margins goodbye as most customers will be fabbing non-Intel IP at the foundries. It will be something like cellular modems, GPUS, or ARM based server SoCs for hyper-scalers. Not only does Intel lose the easy IP margins, they empower their competition to compete with their existing server and laptop market share. There's little chance they'll ever license x86 as they'll try to ride this dwindling moat of software compatibility for as long as they can, but ARM designs and emulation will eventually bridge this moat.
2) By the time these American factories are finished by 2023, their leading edge competition in TSMC and Samsung will have also finished their American fabs. There may even be a glut of supply at that point and this will crush their margins.
I look forward to a day when cutting edge consumer CPUs and GPUs are both READILY AVAILABLE and CHEAP though!
