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The White House reportedly discussing taking a stake in Intel, sending shares climbing

UMC is not us so i doubt also this is a recipe for disaster

Perhaps read this story:
https://cwnewsroom.substack.com/p/intel-foundry-gamble-umc-tsmc-taiwan

Why Did Intel Choose UMC?

Why would Intel risk IP leakage by effectively leasing its legacy fabs to a Taiwanese partner?

The answer: Intel wants to learn how to build “T-like”processes, and UMC knows how to do it.

“UMC’s greatest value is that it knows how to do T-like,” a former TSMC executive said.

Put simply, when customers are unwilling to redesign for Intel’s native process, Intel must adapt its technology to match TSMC’s as closely as possible. That’s the only way to win over customers with minimal friction.
An IC design executive explained that to truly achieve T-like compatibility, the process technology, design rules, and PDKs (process design kits) must closely mirror TSMC’s, without infringing on its patents.

A UMC executive elaborated: “We wait for TSMC products to launch, then reverse-engineer their structure and characteristics. Then we work around the patents so that when customers use our T-like process, they can’t tell the difference. There’s a ton of know-how involved.”

“We’re probably the best in the world at doing T-like,” he added.

That capability has sparked industry speculation that Intel might eventually acquire UMC. “There were a lot of rumors about GlobalFoundries making a move, but the real talks were between UMC and Intel,” said one senior industry insider.

When I asked CFO Chi-Tung Liu whether Intel had considered acquiring UMC, he replied flatly, “Not to my knowledge.”

To be fair, Intel’s new CEO, Lip-Bu Tan(陳立武), is still in the early stages of a corporate overhaul amid considerable leadership turnover. In such a turbulent period, the future of the UMC partnership, initiated by former CEO Pat Gelsinger, remains uncertain.

The most pressing question right now is whether Intel still has the will to fully commit to the foundry business.
A former TSMC fab director put it bluntly: If Intel tries to offer 14A for foundry clients, “they might just burn a pile of money for nothing.”

His reasoning: bleeding-edge foundry customers are highly sophisticated, and time-to-market is critical. “One misstep and everything falls apart.” Intel’s already “several generations behind,” why would any customer take that risk?

This may be the moment when Intel needs to swallow its pride and embrace the T-like approach, giving customers a low-risk way to switch. And for UMC, that could mark a rare opening.

But a UMC executive told me they would never publicly say they’re doing “T-like.” “We say we’re working on mainstream process technologies,” he said, “but in reality, mainstream just means T-like.”
 
All Memory Makers are IDM TI is an IDM

Yes, Texas Instruments is an IDM, but they don’t make CPUs, GPUs, or mobile SoCs. Their main business is in analog and mixed-signal products. Have we noticed that all advanced logic semiconductor players, except Intel and Samsung, operate under the non-IDM business model?

One of the main reasons is that products like CPUs, GPUs, and mobile SoCs demand rapid and frequent advancements in PPA (Power, Performance, and Area). The requirements for scale, capacity, technology development, capital expenditure, market timing, cost, and flawless execution are enormous. Foundries make this possible by pooling orders from multiple fabless companies.

The IDM model is not a sustainable business model for competing in advanced logic semiconductors. It’s not a surprise that advanced logic semiconductors IDM players like Samsung and Intel are struggling.

Some may suggest a hybrid IDM model with foundry services for external customers to bring larger volume to the IDM's fabs. But the conflicts of interest, both between internal divisions and between internal and external parties, give such a model only a slim chance of survival.

When former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger proudly introduced the so-called IDM 2.0 (IDM + foundry services for external customers) in March 2021, he ignored the fact that Samsung had already been following the same approach for many years. It hasn’t worked out well for either of them.
 
Perhaps read this story:
https://cwnewsroom.substack.com/p/intel-foundry-gamble-umc-tsmc-taiwan

Why Did Intel Choose UMC?

Why would Intel risk IP leakage by effectively leasing its legacy fabs to a Taiwanese partner?

The answer: Intel wants to learn how to build “T-like”processes, and UMC knows how to do it.

“UMC’s greatest value is that it knows how to do T-like,” a former TSMC executive said.


An IC design executive explained that to truly achieve T-like compatibility, the process technology, design rules, and PDKs (process design kits) must closely mirror TSMC’s, without infringing on its patents.

A UMC executive elaborated: “We wait for TSMC products to launch, then reverse-engineer their structure and characteristics. Then we work around the patents so that when customers use our T-like process, they can’t tell the difference. There’s a ton of know-how involved.”

“We’re probably the best in the world at doing T-like,” he added.

That capability has sparked industry speculation that Intel might eventually acquire UMC. “There were a lot of rumors about GlobalFoundries making a move, but the real talks were between UMC and Intel,” said one senior industry insider.

When I asked CFO Chi-Tung Liu whether Intel had considered acquiring UMC, he replied flatly, “Not to my knowledge.”

To be fair, Intel’s new CEO, Lip-Bu Tan(陳立武), is still in the early stages of a corporate overhaul amid considerable leadership turnover. In such a turbulent period, the future of the UMC partnership, initiated by former CEO Pat Gelsinger, remains uncertain.


A former TSMC fab director put it bluntly: If Intel tries to offer 14A for foundry clients, “they might just burn a pile of money for nothing.”

His reasoning: bleeding-edge foundry customers are highly sophisticated, and time-to-market is critical. “One misstep and everything falls apart.” Intel’s already “several generations behind,” why would any customer take that risk?

This may be the moment when Intel needs to swallow its pride and embrace the T-like approach, giving customers a low-risk way to switch. And for UMC, that could mark a rare opening.

But a UMC executive told me they would never publicly say they’re doing “T-like.” “We say we’re working on mainstream process technologies,” he said, “but in reality, mainstream just means T-like.”
I think it's different
In the first place, there is no problem because both sides have agreed to the technical leak.
Since it is made with an old production lane, there is no risk of leakage of intellectual property rights.
Well, in the first place, if a decent person will take measures against leakage for trust

Basically, I think it's a feeling of developing and producing processes with the UMC using the mature manufacturing equipment of Intel.
Intel wants to learn how to do Foundry, and I think the UMC has the advantage of keeping costs down when entering the US.
 
I think it's different
In the first place, there is no problem because both sides have agreed to the technical leak.
Since it is made with an old production lane, there is no risk of leakage of intellectual property rights.
Well, in the first place, if a decent person will take measures against leakage for trust

Basically, I think it's a feeling of developing and producing processes with the UMC using the mature manufacturing equipment of Intel.
Intel wants to learn how to do Foundry, and I think the UMC has the advantage of keeping costs down when entering the US.
Personally, I don't think this partnership itself is ridiculous.
 
The "IDM 2.0" model worked fine at IBM and AMD. Until it didn't.
It depends on if of you can keep yields up and the fabs occupied or not.
As long as the demand was met, it would have been better...
If there is a profit to support IDM...

It's the opposite of the idea that IDM itself is the cause.

Personally, I think it's
the idea is that I made the wrong choice, so I couldn't maintain the IDM model properly.

As a result, IDM has become a burden,
But IDM is not a process, it's the result
It's not that it was wrong from the beginning, it's not something that the existence itself is denied
 
They will learn nothing but they will gladly take the bailout money. How sad! It seems Intel is circling the drain.

How about 15% of the US defense companies' sales to Taiwan goes to POTUS and is used annually to invest in the new ATFS foundry!
If the Taiwanese government doubles that (they promised to invest for 0 tariffs for Taiwanese produced chips) UMC (Taiwan) gets a larger stake in the new ATFS foundry, that does T-mainstream foundry for US military and other US-based companies, after IFS is completely separated from Intel Product/Design.

Some Wall Street bankers from LBT's and Yeary's phone list dump another couple of 10s B$ state and local civil servants pension funds from California, NY, Illinois etc and money shouldn't be a problem for the next 10 years!

 
How about 15% of the US defense companies' sales to Taiwan goes to POTUS and is used annually to invest in the new ATFS foundry!
If the Taiwanese government doubles that (they promised to invest for 0 tariffs for Taiwanese produced chips) UMC (Taiwan) gets a larger stake in the new ATFS foundry, that does T-mainstream foundry for US military and other US-based companies, after IFS is completely separated from Intel Product/Design.

Some Wall Street bankers from LBT's and Yeary's phone list dump another couple of 10s B$ state and local civil servants pension funds from California, NY, Illinois etc and money shouldn't be a problem for the next 10 years!

I don't know what it means anymore
 
I don't know what it means anymore

Lutnick will inform POTUS that ATFS stands for American Trump Foundry Services and Bessent will hide the logo of America Taiwan Foundry Services on the founding letter during the official signing ceremony in the gilded novel ballroom at the WH.

And they will tell POTUS that ATFS will perform T-like foundry services and that the T stands for Trump-like.....
 
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There are two elements that are the foundation for success these are so obvious but the details are the key 1) Strategy and 2) Execution.

The intel IDM2.0 wasn't necessarily bad, but how it was executed by Pat and the rest of the company was/is a disaster! That will be LBT's greatest challenge is turning around the Execution of which the foundation is the culture and capability of the leadership in manufacturing and TD. Culture isn't something you stick on the wall, in conference rooms, outside the elevator, but how the leaders drive decisions and follow-up in all meetings top to bottom.
 
Perhaps read this story:
https://cwnewsroom.substack.com/p/intel-foundry-gamble-umc-tsmc-taiwan

Why Did Intel Choose UMC?

Why would Intel risk IP leakage by effectively leasing its legacy fabs to a Taiwanese partner?

The answer: Intel wants to learn how to build “T-like”processes, and UMC knows how to do it.

“UMC’s greatest value is that it knows how to do T-like,” a former TSMC executive said.


An IC design executive explained that to truly achieve T-like compatibility, the process technology, design rules, and PDKs (process design kits) must closely mirror TSMC’s, without infringing on its patents.

A UMC executive elaborated: “We wait for TSMC products to launch, then reverse-engineer their structure and characteristics. Then we work around the patents so that when customers use our T-like process, they can’t tell the difference. There’s a ton of know-how involved.”

“We’re probably the best in the world at doing T-like,” he added.

That capability has sparked industry speculation that Intel might eventually acquire UMC. “There were a lot of rumors about GlobalFoundries making a move, but the real talks were between UMC and Intel,” said one senior industry insider.

When I asked CFO Chi-Tung Liu whether Intel had considered acquiring UMC, he replied flatly, “Not to my knowledge.”

To be fair, Intel’s new CEO, Lip-Bu Tan(陳立武), is still in the early stages of a corporate overhaul amid considerable leadership turnover. In such a turbulent period, the future of the UMC partnership, initiated by former CEO Pat Gelsinger, remains uncertain.


A former TSMC fab director put it bluntly: If Intel tries to offer 14A for foundry clients, “they might just burn a pile of money for nothing.”

His reasoning: bleeding-edge foundry customers are highly sophisticated, and time-to-market is critical. “One misstep and everything falls apart.” Intel’s already “several generations behind,” why would any customer take that risk?

This may be the moment when Intel needs to swallow its pride and embrace the T-like approach, giving customers a low-risk way to switch. And for UMC, that could mark a rare opening.

But a UMC executive told me they would never publicly say they’re doing “T-like.” “We say we’re working on mainstream process technologies,” he said, “but in reality, mainstream just means T-like.”

UMC did “T like” CMOS processes down to 28nm. So did SMIC and Chartered Semiconductor, now GlobalFoundries. Today it is called IP theft. This is back when processes came out a few years apart. Now processes are much closer together and technically much farther apart. EUV is an example. UMC still does not have EUV or FinFETs for that matter.
 
Nope, UMC cannot do T like FinFET processes.

In terms of PPA or the PDK or both ? I think in terms of PPA Intel 14nm is better than TSMC 12nm based on the publicly available data but Intel PDK would be horrible but UMC has some experience with T like PDK so Intel wanted to leverage this to make a attractive FinFet Process. That's what i think for the existence of UMC-intel collaboration. We will only found about this next year
 
In terms of PPA or the PDK or both ? I think in terms of PPA Intel 14nm is better than TSMC 12nm based on the publicly available data but Intel PDK would be horrible but UMC has some experience with T like PDK so Intel wanted to leverage this to make a attractive FinFet Process. That's what i think for the existence of UMC-intel collaboration. We will only found about this next year

I guess that depends on what you mean by T Like. In the past a GDSII file from TSMC could be manufactured by other foundries with little or no modifications because the processes were similar. Intel 14nm is not similar to TSMC 12nm or Samsung 14nm. I do agree that Intel 14nm is a better process in all regards except for manufacturing costs. No one beats TSMC on manufacturing costs.
 
How about 15% of the US defense companies' sales to Taiwan goes to POTUS and is used annually to invest in the new ATFS foundry!
If the Taiwanese government doubles that (they promised to invest for 0 tariffs for Taiwanese produced chips) UMC (Taiwan) gets a larger stake in the new ATFS foundry, that does T-mainstream foundry for US military and other US-based companies, after IFS is completely separated from Intel Product/Design.

Some Wall Street bankers from LBT's and Yeary's phone list dump another couple of 10s B$ state and local civil servants pension funds from California, NY, Illinois etc and money shouldn't be a problem for the next 10 years!


It probably won’t work very well. Taiwan likes to buy American made weapon systems, and the White House and Congress love to approve those sales.

However, the US defense industry can’t deliver on time or on schedule. The delivery backlog had grown to almost $22 billion by the end of 2024. Congress is so concerned that it even passed a law requiring the Pentagon to report on the progress of Taiwan’s military sales and actions to improve them every six months.

The American defense industry has become an expensive, wasteful, inefficient, greedy, and slow noving business.
 
It probably won’t work very well. Taiwan likes to buy American made weapon systems, and the White House and Congress love to approve those sales.

However, the US defense industry can’t deliver on time or on schedule. The delivery backlog had grown to almost $22 billion by the end of 2024. Congress is so concerned that it even passed a law requiring the Pentagon to report on the progress of Taiwan’s military sales and actions to improve them every six months.

The American defense industry has become an expensive, wasteful, inefficient, greedy, and slow noving business.

But as long as DoD just takes the 15% off from those submitted orders (somehow) and dump those 3 B$ in INTEL's bank account, with another 3B$ by Taiwan government? We'll see what will happen when LBT revisits POTUS/Lutnick/Bessent the coming weeks. INTEL needs to bite-the-bullet someday. And I guess the CHIPS INTEL-subsidy is going to be abused to prop-up the balance sheet of INTEL. Instead of asking more investments by INTEL BF may now ask a say 10% stock share in INTEL? They only have a 100 B$ market cap at the moment?
Shared pain shared gain.

I wonder if POTUS is going to further blackmail Apple and the hyper scalers on their TSMC-chips?

First the Ukraine meeting today, see how that goes with all these European/Nato leaders in the WH with Zelensky.
 
But as long as DoD just takes the 15% off from those submitted orders (somehow) and dump those 3 B$ in INTEL's bank account, with another 3B$ by Taiwan government? We'll see what will happen when LBT revisits POTUS/Lutnick/Bessent the coming weeks. INTEL needs to bite-the-bullet someday. And I guess the CHIPS INTEL-subsidy is going to be abused to prop-up the balance sheet of INTEL. Instead of asking more investments by INTEL BF may now ask a say 10% stock share in INTEL? They only have a 100 B$ market cap at the moment?
Shared pain shared gain.

I wonder if POTUS is going to further blackmail Apple and the hyper scalers on their TSMC-chips?

First the Ukraine meeting today, see how that goes with all these European/Nato leaders in the WH with Zelensky.

It’s not that simple. Many weapons sales to Taiwan have already been inflated in price, for both good and bad reasons. Taiwan’s opposition parties hold a majority in the legislature and have already accused Taiwan's President and Premier of being incompetent and corrupt. It is becoming much harder to further inflate an already inflated price at a time when the US needs a strong Taiwan, both economically and militarily.
 
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