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Market cap today for TSM is 187B and 164B for Intel. This gap will only increase as TSM's intense focus on building semis for others only improves their PRODUCTION processes over Intel. I see TSM's lead only increasing in the future as they focus on one thing, chip fabrication. Intel has to be careful for if they don't they could approach the tipping point into mediocrity, like has happened to many ex industry leaders in the tech industry. This is Darwinian business at its best. There is now almost no business or profession not open to significant disruption and like Amazon, TSM is the disruptor in semi fabrication.
Full disclosure, I have substantial holdings in the semi industry.
I completely agree. TSMC is at the very center of the fabless ecosystem. Intel's problems run deeper than missing mobile and floundering in IoT and AI while x86 stagnates - those are symptoms. The disease is management and their attachment to a failing business model.
I completely agree. TSMC is at the very center of the fabless ecosystem. Intel's problems run deeper than missing mobile and floundering in IoT and AI while x86 stagnates - those are symptoms. The disease is management and their attachment to a failing business model.
At the Design Automation Conference this week the foundries all had events with Synopsys: TSMC and Samsung had breakfasts open to everyone. GF had a dinner. Intel Foundry had a breakfast but it was closed to all press, media, and analysts. Way to go Intel! It is either their way or the highway.
Can you describe something more about Intel's silicon photonics strategy?
I heard a lot about it from Intel presentations but i haven't seen anything yet. Nothing ground-breaking what there was not before.
I expected that they plan to integrate optical interface directly into CPU package, but i havent heard about it recently.
Btw.: You probably heard about HPE the machine. It should revolutionize datacenter computing by attaching large ammounts of system memory by optical interfaces instead of small parts dedicated to individual CPU. Interesting part in the story is that photonics ASICs are made by TSMC (16nm). (Another interesting thing is that instead of x86 they used ARM and instead 3DXpoint they, which is yet broken, they used regular DRAM, but it is another story.)
Intel likes to describe technologies such as silicon photonics like it's something only they can do. I don't think Intel will achieve an advantage with silicon photonics because their competitors have access to the same technologies. It's like of like Fin-Fet, which Intel branded as Tri Gate, or 3D Xpoint, which is phase change memory that the rest of the industry had mostly abandoned because it's a broken technology. An so no surprise 3D Xpoint turned out to be broken tech that doesn't live up to the hype.
