Intel internal foundry model and IDM 2.0

[benb]

The best business model isn’t IDM, Foundry, it isn’t Intel, Samsung or TSMC.

I think the best business model is an old one, that starts with a founder, who is motivated by a scientific or technical True North. That attracts a certain type of person who is interested in the technology, like Steve Jobs was with Steve Wozniak’s phone phreaker device. Steve and Woz, in a garage, working on a personal computer, is the best business model.

I think the modern equivalent of this is the people repairing electronics. The ability to repair is the ability to improve. The problem is, right to repair is suppressed, constrained.

It won’t be any large business that does this, but a semiconductor industry entity that enables repair, upgrade, and hardware hacking generally, will be successful. That’s the direction we should be heading in.

 

[blueone]

The best business model isn’t IDM, Foundry, it isn’t Intel, Samsung or TSMC.

I think the best business model is an old one, that starts with a founder, who is motivated by a scientific or technical True North. That attracts a certain type of person who is interested in the technology, like Steve Jobs was with Steve Wozniak’s phone phreaker device. Steve and Woz, in a garage, working on a personal computer, is the best business model.

I think the modern equivalent of this is the people repairing electronics. The ability to repair is the ability to improve. The problem is, right to repair is suppressed, constrained.

It won’t be any large business that does this, but a semiconductor industry entity that enables repair, upgrade, and hardware hacking generally, will be successful. That’s the direction we should be heading in.

How does one start a semiconductor foundry in a garage?

 

[Yatto]

For sure, and I also doubt Apple will use anything besides TSMC (unless something very bad happens). However I can't ignore that evidently it isn't a complete showstopper to have an IDM foundry since Apple went back to Samsung (even if it was only as a second source rather than the primary) for one generation after the lawsuit, and that this hasn't stopped Qualcomm or MediaTek (companies that are more direct competitors with Samsung than Apple is) from using Samsung to supply part of their demand.

Regardless this is still a MAJOR part of TSMCs value proposition (one you can't really put a price to). But if Samsung can snag customers that they literally compete with for SOCs within Samsung's own phones and appliances, than I don't see why intel can't put up enough walls in their operation for folks like Qualcomm, MediaTek, Broadcom, CISCO, and NVIDIA to feel comfortable enough to consider IFS.

Apple stopped using Samsung due to Samsung's inferior process and the potential conflict of interest.
Mediatek isn't using Samsung for their SoC production and definitely won't have plans to do that.
Qualcomm's really the only company using Samsung for their mobile SoCs, and pretty much the only reason is that those SoCs are used for Samsung phones (Qualcomm's biggest customer) so they are not really "competing" with Samsung.

 

[nghanayem]

Apple stopped using Samsung due to Samsung's inferior process and the potential conflict of interest.
Mediatek isn't using Samsung for their SoC production and definitely won't have plans to do that.
Qualcomm's really the only company using Samsung for their mobile SoCs, and pretty much the only reason is that those SoCs are used for Samsung phones (Qualcomm's biggest customer) so they are not really "competing" with Samsung.

1. Samsung 14 was not way worse than N16 (unlike later TSMC nodes which are much better than their Samsung "counterparts"). And as I stated Apple did come back despite the conflict of interest when Samsung did have nodes that were highly competitive with TSMC's offerings.
2. Back in the day MediaTek was much less heavily involved in the TSMC ecosystem than they are today, and I'm pretty sure they still use Samsung for embedded products where the cheaper price is more valuable than being 5% better PPA.
3. Samsung dual sources Qualcomm as a second supplier for mobile SOCs (with Samsung making their own). So yes Qualcomm and Samsung do compete. These Qualcomm chips in non Samsung phones also compete with Samsung phones with Samsung SOCs in them, and I would argue even this is more direct than Apple and Samsung given how entrenched the mobile OS world is.

 

[hist78]

1. Samsung 14 was not way worse than N16 (unlike later TSMC nodes which are much better than their Samsung "counterparts"). And as I stated Apple did come back despite the conflict of interest when Samsung did have nodes that were highly competitive with TSMC's offerings.
2. Back in the day MediaTek was much less heavily involved in the TSMC ecosystem than they are today, and I'm pretty sure they still use Samsung for embedded products where the cheaper price is more valuable than being 5% better PPA.
3. Samsung dual sources Qualcomm as a second supplier for mobile SOCs (with Samsung making their own). So yes Qualcomm and Samsung do compete. These Qualcomm chips in non Samsung phones also compete with Samsung phones with Samsung SOCs in them, and I would argue even this is more direct than Apple and Samsung given how entrenched the mobile OS world is.

Actually Samsung smartphone division is doing triple sourcing with Mediatek's SOCs for the medium range product line in addition to Qualcomm and Samsung LSI.

Samsung also buys some low end smartphone SOCs from Chinese companies.