Friday, August 3rd 2018
Chances of Intel Going Fabless Higher Than Ever
Intel is one of the few semiconductor companies that manufactures a majority of its products on its own silicon fabrication foundries. The breadwinner for the company continues to be CPUs, and a majority of its revenues continue to come from its client-computing group (CCG). CPUs, like GPUs, are required to be built on the latest silicon fabrication process to keep up (or catch up) with Moore's Law. Intel is plagued with severe technological roadblocks toward advancing its foundry process from 14 nanometer (nm) to its next step, 10 nm. In its latest Q2-2018 earnings call, the company confirmed that the 10 nm node won't put out before Q4-2019, even as rival AMD's CEO announced that its first 7 nm processors will be up for purchase by the end of 2018 (a year ahead with a more advanced process, on paper). Analysts are beginning to paint a very grim future for Intel's foundry business.
The prospects for Intel going fabless, at least for its cutting-edge products, is higher than ever. Analysts, speaking with Taiwan-based industry observer DigiTimes, mentioned that there is speculation of Intel scaling down its foundry business. Something like this, if true, could hint at the company looking for foundry partners with newer silicon-fabrication nodes at a more advanced stage of development (eg: GlobalFoundries 7 nm) to manufacture its processors, while relegating its own foundries to manufacture less complex products such as chipset, NAND flash, 3D XPoint memory, 5G PHYs, etc. Fancy a Core processor made by GloFo in the great state of New York?
Source:
DigiTimes
The prospects for Intel going fabless, at least for its cutting-edge products, is higher than ever. Analysts, speaking with Taiwan-based industry observer DigiTimes, mentioned that there is speculation of Intel scaling down its foundry business. Something like this, if true, could hint at the company looking for foundry partners with newer silicon-fabrication nodes at a more advanced stage of development (eg: GlobalFoundries 7 nm) to manufacture its processors, while relegating its own foundries to manufacture less complex products such as chipset, NAND flash, 3D XPoint memory, 5G PHYs, etc. Fancy a Core processor made by GloFo in the great state of New York?
80 Comments on Chances of Intel Going Fabless Higher Than Ever
At least according to those who know more than me. So I'll take their word for it. The news isn't so terrible in that respect.
Of course, this probably doesn't matter to Wall Street.
I'm surprised that Intel is taking its time on upgrading other facilities...
Intel 10nm is broken because they chose to be too bold on the changes, very high increase in density, newer materials, etc. Analysts are only interested in driving stock prices with their opinion, other than that, their opinion is no better than a 5 year old kid.
Could GF keep the demand?
www.techpowerup.com/246465/amd-2nd-generation-ryzen-threadripper-retail-boxes-pictured
:D
But... Im taking this news with a grain of salt. In either case its going to take years.
Oh... and I have an 8700K in my system.
Just noticed your avatar, that explains many things...