Friday, August 16th 2024
TSMC Reportedly to Manufacture SoftBank's AI Chips, Replacing Intel
SoftBank has reportedly decided against using Intel's foundry for its ambitious AI venture, Project Izanagi, and is opting for TSMC instead. The conglomerate aims to challenge NVIDIA in the AI accelerator market by developing its own AI processors. This decision marks another setback for Intel, which has faced several challenges recently. In February 2024, reports emerged that SoftBank's CEO, Masayoshi Son, planned to invest up to $100 billion to create a company similar to NVIDIA, focused on selling AI accelerators. Although SoftBank initially worked with Intel, it recently switched to TSMC, citing concerns about Intel's ability to meet demands for "volume and speed."
The decision, reported by the Financial Times, raises questions about Intel's future involvement and how SoftBank's ownership of Arm Holdings will factor into the project. While TSMC is now SoftBank's choice, the foundry is already operating at full capacity, making it uncertain how it will accommodate this new venture. Neither SoftBank, Intel nor TSMC has commented on the situation, but given the complexities involved, it will likely take time for this plan to materialize. SoftBank will need to replicate NVIDIA's entire ecosystem, from chip design to data centers and a software stack rivaling CUDA, a bold and ambitious goal.In July, SoftBank expanded its semiconductor portfolio by acquiring Graphcore, a British AI chip designer. While the acquisition amount remains undisclosed, this move is consistent with SoftBank's significant presence in the chip industry. The company already holds a majority stake in Arm, another British chip designer, which it purchased for $32 billion in 2016. Despite Arm's return to the stock market last year, SoftBank maintained its controlling interest.
In a separate development, Intel divested its position in Arm. The American tech giant sold its 1.18 million shares, generating approximately $146.7 million from the transaction.
Source:
Data Centre Dynamics
The decision, reported by the Financial Times, raises questions about Intel's future involvement and how SoftBank's ownership of Arm Holdings will factor into the project. While TSMC is now SoftBank's choice, the foundry is already operating at full capacity, making it uncertain how it will accommodate this new venture. Neither SoftBank, Intel nor TSMC has commented on the situation, but given the complexities involved, it will likely take time for this plan to materialize. SoftBank will need to replicate NVIDIA's entire ecosystem, from chip design to data centers and a software stack rivaling CUDA, a bold and ambitious goal.In July, SoftBank expanded its semiconductor portfolio by acquiring Graphcore, a British AI chip designer. While the acquisition amount remains undisclosed, this move is consistent with SoftBank's significant presence in the chip industry. The company already holds a majority stake in Arm, another British chip designer, which it purchased for $32 billion in 2016. Despite Arm's return to the stock market last year, SoftBank maintained its controlling interest.
In a separate development, Intel divested its position in Arm. The American tech giant sold its 1.18 million shares, generating approximately $146.7 million from the transaction.
37 Comments on TSMC Reportedly to Manufacture SoftBank's AI Chips, Replacing Intel
They were last to move to EUV and have suffered.
They are going to be the first to move to high NA EUV.
They will have a 1-2 year advantage on everybody.
Now if they would start making chips for the HEDT market (16 P-cores, avx512).
www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/amd/revenue-eps
This will probably mean a new architecture.
In memory computing with phase change memory or ReRam.
so no while it’s very unlikely SoftBank will get anywhere in its latest foley it’s going to cost them less breaking ground with the help of intel than it will with tsmc
Tsmc building a fab in Japan would be a second.
Technology wise meeeh, they need a design first
I don't think GPU's likely be doing that given they already have a GPU core that's perfectly suited for math and additionally the higher capacity I think is both more vital and precious in terms of real estate space than memory dimm's are on a PC system for the average consumer user. In the case of servers perhaps not, but they don't represent standard usage so needs will vary in some cases you might need tons of capacity while in others.
Another angle on the memory thing is maybe they'll license FPGA technology or something and could both be used for compression/decompression at times, but also depending on usage be reconfigured as programmable co-processors integrated into system memory. That would be kind of neat novelty to see happen or maybe they'll license CPU/GPU cores from various manufacturers to create a kind of SOC on the memory dimm's themselves that can do compression/decompression as well as other specialized tasks. That's just me trying to think outside the box though on new ways to fuse and merge some of these technology components together in some new ways. I'm sure there would be some positives and negatives to any of these idea's naturally.
AMDhad plans to put FPGA on package....Intel spent a lot of money and did it. A complete "infrastructure", I mean a package with CPU-plus-FPGA and software is Too expensive. It makes sense Only for Data Centers, and unfortunately for Intel, many providers of Data Center solutions use GPUs from NVIDIA and AMD.
Or at least they could do it fast enough at scale as long as Soft Bank was okay with the chips oxidizing and frying due to runaway voltage after one year of operation.
>>stack rivaling CUDA, a bold and ambitious goal...
$100 Billion is Not enough. I'm sure for 99.99% that it will never happen.
www.eejournal.com/article/amds-x86-cpu-and-fpga-tango-on-sapphire-technologys-embedded-pc-motherboard/
Why? On Windows platforms compression of files is a very-very old and mature technology! Next, starting from Windows 10 there is a Memory Compression feature and take a look at a Task Manager ( memory related attributes ). So, from software side Microsoft has implemented it Twice . The only problem is that a hardware based solution for Memory Compression will be more complex. For example, all external Memory Extenders are Not for a regular PC consumer because all these Memory Extenders are very expensive. Take a look at prices for CXL Memory Expander by Samsung.
Remember DirectStorage and GPU decompression? One of its goals was (is?) to avoid sending uncompressed data to the GPU over (relatively) slow PCIe bus.
There's at least one more issue: the compression ratio is unpredictable. How would a smart DIMM handle that?
That's a black swan moment.
Intel is done.
SoftBank and TSMC wasn't in my bingo chart this year and that's some dark magic. It's also SoftBank. They find a way.
Intel decided to ignore all the fires, hasn't gotten their new fab running yet and the clock is still ticking.
It's more characteristic of AMD to fumble and I get that but when every tech news outlet screeches about Intel selling"defective" chips, class action and just general REEEE...
Who is waiting in line to be the next
guinnea pigcustomer for an unproven fab that may be cranking out another expensive continuation of these problems?The server space isn't interested in replacing mission critical chips every 2 months to 2 years over catastrophic degradation or anything "this fails proven automation" checkbox.
The usual consumers are way more likely to risk it but I won't do it and I don't know anyone that does.