Pretty certain I remember intel having 400mm wafers and that the project was killed during the economic downturn 2008-2012.
Then your memory just doesn't serves you right this time. 400/450mm-wafers being killed hasn't had ever anything to do with some economic downturn, it really didn't.
Yes, these types of huge wafers were heavily pushed by
Intel alone for years, namely
only for
installing said industrial competitive firewall and literal paywall before any smaller competing semiconductor foundries, which then would (in Intel's view)
hopefully just die off along the road to the top, when breaking their monetary back to pursue such vastly expensive tools and equipment for even handling said wafer-sizes in the first place, for staying with the big players anywhere close to the top.
And yes, Intel
alone and exclusively actually heavily pushed these wafers for years since 2008 – You're correct so far on that mark. Intel basically tried to shame the big players into submission for pursuing these types of wafer-sizes for half a decade, as always firmly backed by their myriad of media-outlets on payroll.
Yet Intel's babbling didn't even was actually
registered by others like TSMC, Samsung, GlobalFoundries, UMC and the myriad of smaller contract-manufacturers before anything 2012, who just were right in-between to scale their foundry-works up by quite a notch for, due to and mostly solely backed by
a billion ARM-cores being fabbed en masse – Actually establishing a sound and financially worthwhile businesses by that which lasts to this very day.
However, that very increased competition (or others actually also establishing a foundry-model) and establishing their businesses as viable foundry-options within the industry, was in turn precisely, what Intel actually tried to prevent from the get-go to begin with:
Competition in the semiconductor-space for them as a foundry!
What Intel actually wanted to push through, was to have a barrier in front of them before any other competitor. Intel tried nothing short of effectively yet
deliberately split divide the semiconductor-industry into the big-players with, of course,
Intel at the very top of it – Those who regularly could afford the enormous costs and sheer endless monetary means for maintaining the financial ecosystem for such wafer-sizes in the first place, which had nothing short but a price-tag of
∞,–).
… and the rest of the industry – Those who just
had to stay low and couldn't by any means monetarily afford the actual equipment and tooling for wafers beyond fairly new 12" 300mm-wafers, if even that: The majority of smaller contract-manufacturers was still already fully occupied by maintaining 8" 200mm-, 6" 150mm- or 5" 125mm-wafers.
So in went on for several years that way until around 2012, when the big ones were lulled enough by around 2015, to actually thinking about it – Equipment- & Tooling-manufacturers like Nikon, ASML and others were more or less waiting for the green light from the big ones for years by then, if anyone was trying to push through (and bear the incredible amount of expenses beign needed for 450mm-wafer equipment and associated tooling alone), even if ASML, Nikon, Canon and who knows else readily knew from the start, it would be nothing but a uphill-battle financially for everyone involved either way – The one being stupid enough to pursue these types of wafers first, would likely go bankcrupt over it anyway, that was basically a given.
Though luckily, especially TSMC's executives soon figured and by 2017 just plain
knew, that a) the Intel-projections were far and away from the truth and reality (Shocker!) and b) that
TSMC itself most definitely would end up killing themselves over it through the sheer costs, and c) eventually saw the writing on the wall: Especially that Intel distinctively actually intended
exactly that and nothing else to happen from the outset of things! So TSMC notified Samsung and the rest of the industry, and called it a day.
tl;dr: Intel tried nothing but to corner the foundry-market or better,
the semiconductor-market as a whole and tried shutting out others through mere costs associated with actual fabrication of wafers… In fact a walled semiconductor-garden for Intel themselves, and no-one else.
It wasn't even a lame game of who chickens out first: Intel didn't even
wanted to actually pursue these 450mm wafer-sizes themselves, since the sole intention was, to just actually
pretend to do so publicly, while actually let others bear the very costs of it, fragment and actually divide the semiconductor-market in half, only to retreat afterwards back to 300mm-wafers, when the stupid competitor was bankrupted over it and in essence effectively just lull smaller competitors into bankruptcy this way to clean the market.
Never said AMD was doing large wafers, the world economy broke during the gfc.
Fair enough. Though it surely looked that way at first glance.
The period that also brought AMD to ruin, because their financials were horrible and everyone wanted their money back right away.
What brought AMD at the brink of financial collapse and everyday near-bankruptcy for years, can in largest parts be mostly attributed to unfair competition from Intel and Intel's straight-up illegal practices, and to way lesser amount the actual takeover-costs of ATi…
Few actually know that fact, but no less than a figure but
Intel even had a hand in it and through their connections of
Intel Capital actually bribed the contracted legal firms, corporate advisors and the very accounting firm who AMD contracted to manage the acquisition, in deliberately asses and set a actual evaluation of assets and valuation
way higher, than what ATi would've been actually worth back then, in Intel's noble hope, that AMD might just die off over the actual way over-inflated acquisition and the take-over's cost, being purposefully bloated by several billion USD.
ATi's
own evaluation estimated their patents' and technologies' worth to be actually only around $3.2Bn,
not the $5.6Bn which was actually paid by AMD – That was never actually disclosed by the involved firms towards AMD, to intentionally inflate the price-tag for several billion, only to cripple and hopefully kill AMD in the process. Luckily, it didn't!
Thats the link between the two I was going for, shit economy ruining many good thing.
450mm wafers 2.5 times more space for chips per wafer would have been great
See above, the global economy had way lesser to do with it, than shady practices behind closed doors actually did.
Also, the majority of projections for 450mm-wafers over economic viability were (intentionally) way too optimistic and showed net revenues, which never actually would've materialised in the first place –
Guess who contracted these advisors in giving such skewed view-points, to hopefully yet intentionally lull others into bankruptcy to begin with!
paid way too much for that little bugger, and I thought I was so cool not to fall for the P4 hype 
