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I look at Intel's inability to pivot as emblematic of the lessons of Christensen's The Innovators Dilemma; the same things that make a business great in one environment locks them into failure later. Focus on high-end margin over volume; focus on wide moat x86 over narrow-moat ARM; these are...
There is no single word of truth in this businesskorea article. Other than the professor who claimed Samsung has a "pervasive bureaucracy", that is obvious.
I think it would be great for Ann Kelleher to advance, after what she accomplished, but she probably won't. After all, it's a tough culture, and she is most likely feared and hated as much as liked and respected. She had to take actions that some liked (I imagine), some opposed, and lost, and...
TSMC improves their facility design specifications with each fab, several fabs a year for the last decade, guided partly by TSMC (in the form of a spec) but more by the turn-key contract holder. Turn-key is a key enabler for innovation, and efficiency, in my opinion. But it only works in TW...
Strive for excellence: at TSMC, but not Intel: It's simply a fact that TSMC lets innovation in through many channels while Intel has uber-aggressive innovation-rejecting mechanisms called the Virtual Factory and Copy Exact.
TSMC operates in many ways like a startup despite being a monopoly...
I agree with hist78 that keeping foundry and design together means neither will succeed, and best chance for one to survive, means separating.
I also agree with BruceA Intel x86 assets form the foundation of a foundry. It's exactly what is missing at Samsung.
The one thought I can add to this...
One thing that gets missed in these geopolitical analyses (and this a good one) is that to "win" you need your competitors fabs to shut down. That is what China has been inflicting on the west for years. A fab shuts down, sells its equipment to who...China.
Keeping the old, marginally...
You build some fab shells to collect US and Euro Chips Act money, while stealthily going fab lite. It has to be stealthy, so stealthy. The handouts and private financing wouldn't be there if you were not planning to operate the shells. It wouldn't be the first time an IDM built a shell in...
Intel is going fab lite (and shell heavy):
Ocotillo sold, Leixlip sold
The characteristics of private equity deals are well known. They provide a lot of fees to the private equity firm, marginally sustainable cash flow burdens to the cash flow source, and sooner or later, bankruptcy for the...
According to Morningstar, TSMC stock is undervalued after much good news about AI has been incorporated this year, and they have a ”wide moat” which means being able to sustain competitive advantage for at least the next 20 years. That jibes with my industry knowledge. Look at 28nm for...
chinatimes.com looks like a quality source. I don't know how you find these Dan but keep it up. Being in Mandarin, I clicked translate in Edge and it took care of it pretty well. Zhang Jiarui also seems like a quality journalist.
50% TSMC content is, effectively, a tipping point. Intel is fab lite (and shell heavy).
I think building fab shells has strategic optionality, that makes it worth it; think how much advertising and positive press Intel gets for some steel and concrete. And Intel has shown a talent for banking...
"Focus on what is shipping in volume"
Agree.
"Lake" products are mostly non-Intel-manufacturing, with Intel packaging. A retreat from front-end manufacturing, with Foveros becoming the main differentiating ingredient. Intel and AMD products will be pretty similar in the "Lake" world...
"More capable substrates open the door to innovation at every other level in the packaging process."
The US needs domestic-located packaging capability.
I look at 5 nodes 4 years as a statement of Intel R&D performance, not manufacturing. Samsung and TSMC could well be doing the same thing, just less public about it, and most likely are. But as Elon Musk says "Manufacturing is hard". Samsung yields have consistently struggled going from R&D...
I didn't really propose a solution, did I? It's not changing the regulations or eliminating regulations. If you were to change something it would make the problem worse; it would create uncertainty. Possibly cause a crash. US regulations aren't really the issue in my opinion. A fab is a...
Some of the important standards that influence fab engineering decisions include SEMI S2, National Fire Protection Association, Factory Mutual 4910, National Electrical Code, ISO, IEC and ASTM standards, BSI standards, CE Mark, REACH, RoHS, China RoHS, and the list goes on.
My impression is...
The US National Debt clock is at $34T currently. That's $101,847 per citizen. https://www.usdebtclock.org/
The main/only way to ever get out from under this is through technology and growth. AI is the main vehicle under consideration to achieve enough growth to pay back those trillions.
The...
Pulling quotes out of the talk:
Stu Pann: "We need to be in the foundry business for scale"..."Only by being in the foundry business and offering up our technology to other people can we get the scale in the business we need"
"We're making investments in Europe and Asia" (??)
"I think we're...
