Intel’s CEO: ‘We are not in the top 10’ of leading chip companies

[kevin01]

Hence, in my opinion, focusing on AI would be easier than focusing on the foundry business. As CEO, he should prioritize maximizing shareholder value. The AI path is not only easier but also offers greater potential rewards.

The AI path is certainly not easy nor easier. Intel has always been a distant No. 3 in the GPU market, and the No. 2, AMD, will still not be able to compete favorably with NVIDIA in AI training by 2026.

Jensen has excellent vision and great execution. In addition to CUDA, NVIDIA has another crucial advantage that AMD and Intel don't have: high-performance networking (Mellanox was acquired by Jensen in 2019). Grabbing shares from NVIDIA will be more difficult for Intel than grabbing foundry shares from TSMC.

What can Intel do in AI? I think the leadership team has basically given up on the AI training market, which is wise, in my opinion. Intel will likely focus on competing in AI inference or creating new products/markets.

My favorite strategy: when you can't win, create or play a new game.

 

[KevinK]

Based on my experience, there was a big uplift and earlier deployment of what I would call broad DTCO with 32/28nm, with the move to FinFET. I say broad, because both TSMC and Common Platform had to begin broad ecosystem enablement via PDKs, etc. much earlier, because the ecosystem and large customers with their own IP could no longer extrapolate transistor characteristics. That lead to many more early MPWs and a much more structured, staged PDK and foundational/interface IP validation / DTCO process. TSMC, at the apex of the ecosystem, benefited the most. Realistically, others had to buy their way in to IP access and do speculative work ahead of customer demand- a very expensive undertaking, but necessary.

I think Intel is learning, but it’s a long cycle and means exposing some of the stuff they used to hold super close to the vest, far more widely, and respond to feedback that might affect their products coming out of the oven.

There's also an intrinsic conflict of interest- I remember one case where the IDM side of an IDM/Foundry combo discovered routing rule changes for 3rd party IP on a real design that would improve yield. Guess how long that improvement took to percolate back to the PDK

 

[DanX]

I think you’re a little too dialed in on the analog part. The PDK is also the embodiment of the DTCO tradeoffs and design points targeted by the digital process. If Intel wasn’t doing DTCO leveraging external customer digital designs early in the process, that would likely lead to “poor quality” PDKs.

I developed PDK before.
This definitely should be outsourced.

 

[Daniel Nenni]

My favorite strategy: when you can't win, create or play a new game.

Or change the rues so you win.

While working for start-up companies the last 20+ years I have seen some amazing pivots. Lip-Bu is going to have the most important investor call next week. Either you will see an amazing pivot or Intel will be fabless in the not too distant future, my opinion.

 

[Artificer60]

If Lip-Bu Tan is going to divest the fabs why drag this whole thing out? Why wouldn't he just dump the whole thing right away and be done with it? I have to be honest, I don't see what kind of pivot he could make that would make a difference for Intel's manufacturing arm. Either they can produce wafers at the leading edge or they are out of the foundry game in any meaningful way.

What Intel needs to do is find a way for foundry to make $2,000,000,000 per quarter and the way to do that is to sell more wafers. If we do some quick and dirty back of the napkin math, assuming that intel can sell each good die for $100, there are 500 dice on a wafer and each wafer yields 85%. Let's also assume that it costs Intel $10,000 to make each wafer. When you run those numbers Intel needs to sell just under an additional 14K wafers a month. I think that is an achievable goal by 2027.

Turning a profit at good margins is going to be a much longer process, but my impression is that Mr. Tan was in this for the long haul. Maybe I'm wrong. I guess time will tell.

 

[IanD]

Perhaps I was too much focusing on analog. Or perhaps my experience is far enough in the past that DTCO plays a greater role now than nearly a decade ago. Either way, point noted.

If you're developing analog/mixed signal IP -- especially high-speed stuff like SERDES -- in nodes like N2 DTCO plays a *massive* role in design. You have to find clever ways to use the (very!) restrictive design rules to get the best performance/lowest power out of circuits, and the difference this makes can be bigger than a full node process step...

As for digital, there's no choice -- DTCO is the core of the cell libraries and tools.

 

[siliconbruh999]

If Lip-Bu Tan is going to divest the fabs why drag this whole thing out? Why wouldn't he just dump the whole thing right away and be done with it? I have to be honest, I don't see what kind of pivot he could make that would make a difference for Intel's manufacturing arm. Either they can produce wafers at the leading edge or they are out of the foundry game in any meaningful way.

What Intel needs to do is find a way for foundry to make $2,000,000,000 per quarter and the way to do that is to sell more wafers. If we do some quick and dirty back of the napkin math, assuming that intel can sell each good die for $100, there are 500 dice on a wafer and each wafer yields 85%. Let's also assume that it costs Intel $10,000 to make each wafer. When you run those numbers Intel needs to sell just under an additional 14K wafers a month. I think that is an achievable goal by 2027.

Turning a profit at good margins is going to be a much longer process, but my impression is that Mr. Tan was in this for the long haul. Maybe I'm wrong. I guess time will tell.

They need to be able to do so with process that are not bad in Price and PPA relative to market and Intel 7 is bad in both price and PPA while 18A isn't and 18A ramping to that volume and yield will take money and time which Intel doesn't have much left.

 

[XYang2023]

The AI path is certainly not easy nor easier. Intel has always been a distant No. 3 in the GPU market, and the No. 2, AMD, will still not be able to compete favorably with NVIDIA in AI training by 2026.

Jensen has excellent vision and great execution. In addition to CUDA, NVIDIA has another crucial advantage that AMD and Intel don't have: high-performance networking (Mellanox was acquired by Jensen in 2019). Grabbing shares from NVIDIA will be more difficult for Intel than grabbing foundry shares from TSMC.

What can Intel do in AI? I think the leadership team has basically given up on the AI training market, which is wise, in my opinion. Intel will likely focus on competing in AI inference or creating new products/markets.

My favorite strategy: when you can't win, create or play a new game.

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