While I am not sure it was intentional, UMC often would be a fast follower to TSMC, and before 28nm this worked out well for them as designs could be easily ported from TSMC nodes to UMC nodes. Once TSMC started accelerating away and UMC's nodes stopped being design compatible this model fell apart, and UMC needed a more differentiated offering. Samsung and Intel are doubling down in an attempt to accelerate ahead of TSMC. The thought then crossed my mind if fast following could work for these IDMs. TSMC used fast following to great effect to accelerate past the other semiconductor companies with HKMG last, finFETs on bulk Si, and EUV. In the case of intel they are now benefiting from the work that TSMC and Samsung put in at 7 and 5nm to accelerate their own EUV efforts. With this I wonder if it would potentially be desirable to remain a fast follower rather than attempting to zoom ahead of the current technological leader?
To clarify I don't think these firms have any plans of doing this, given that Samsung has the ambitious goal to be the number one foundry and intel has the much more modest goal of being No.2. But I wonder if these firms chose a different path, or if their current path leads to a financial situations that makes "being in first place" becomes too expensive to justify. In theory it should be both easier to catch up to whomever is the current technological lead than to beat them due to all of the whitepapers, teardowns, and vendor experience acting as a strong tailwind. While this stopped working for UMC because their nodes stopped being plug and play with TSMC - giving TSMC an unassailable first movers advantage - but in theory the IDMs are not bound in a similar manner because their primary business is selling end product not wafers. In theory these IDMs don't have to have the best cost structure because they are selling the wafer at ASP*number working dies rather than wafer cost*1.X. Their captive customers also either can't leave or face significant capacity or cost penalties to leave (reducing the risk of a UMC situation). One additional benefit of this scheme could be that when new nodes are rolled out they could be in an even healthier state than a normal leading edge node would be when it is new, given the extra time it had to incubate (think things like UMC 14nm or GF 22/12 FDX which had to already be mature when they entered HVM).
In short; could staying at N+1 with TSMC be something that is sustained for a long period of time (with maybe a few outsourcing jobs or parts of an MCM design being thrown to TSMC here and there)? Or even with things like MCM and the general slowing of transistor improvements would the IDMs start bleeding share to competitors if they are always a bit behind on the process front (potentially risking that these IDMs even lose the scale needed to even "run the race" at a slower pace)? While it would certainly not be a way to build up a strong healthy foundry, would this business model allow the IDMs to "stay in the race" without having to burn mountains of cash and developing a foundry to help amortize their costs?
To clarify I don't think these firms have any plans of doing this, given that Samsung has the ambitious goal to be the number one foundry and intel has the much more modest goal of being No.2. But I wonder if these firms chose a different path, or if their current path leads to a financial situations that makes "being in first place" becomes too expensive to justify. In theory it should be both easier to catch up to whomever is the current technological lead than to beat them due to all of the whitepapers, teardowns, and vendor experience acting as a strong tailwind. While this stopped working for UMC because their nodes stopped being plug and play with TSMC - giving TSMC an unassailable first movers advantage - but in theory the IDMs are not bound in a similar manner because their primary business is selling end product not wafers. In theory these IDMs don't have to have the best cost structure because they are selling the wafer at ASP*number working dies rather than wafer cost*1.X. Their captive customers also either can't leave or face significant capacity or cost penalties to leave (reducing the risk of a UMC situation). One additional benefit of this scheme could be that when new nodes are rolled out they could be in an even healthier state than a normal leading edge node would be when it is new, given the extra time it had to incubate (think things like UMC 14nm or GF 22/12 FDX which had to already be mature when they entered HVM).
In short; could staying at N+1 with TSMC be something that is sustained for a long period of time (with maybe a few outsourcing jobs or parts of an MCM design being thrown to TSMC here and there)? Or even with things like MCM and the general slowing of transistor improvements would the IDMs start bleeding share to competitors if they are always a bit behind on the process front (potentially risking that these IDMs even lose the scale needed to even "run the race" at a slower pace)? While it would certainly not be a way to build up a strong healthy foundry, would this business model allow the IDMs to "stay in the race" without having to burn mountains of cash and developing a foundry to help amortize their costs?