TSMC Reportedly to Manufacture SoftBank's AI Chips, Replacing Intel

[DaemonForce]

Bankruptcy isn't quite on the table when Intel has a thumb in so many pies but it's a terrifying thing to think about.
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 pig customer 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.

 

[ScaLibBDP]

I'm not saying ompression in general is a bad idea. But if you're doing it on the memory modules, you need to transfer uncompressed data over the memory bus, and that may be a serious bottleneck. If the CPU (or whatever sort of processor) is doing it, it sends and receives already compressed data to/from memory.
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?

>>...I'm not saying ompression in general is a bad idea.

It is a good solution to solve some processing problems, for example, matrix multiplication of very-very big dense matrices. On my Dell mobile workstation ( 32 GB of RAM ) I can Not multiply matrices greater than 64Kx64K due to memory limitations. Application of Memory Mapped files doesn't help since performance of processing drops significantly.

 

[Prima.Vera]

Since TSMC is building a FAB in Japan, and while SoftBank is a Japanese company, makes this a no brainer. Also, Taiwan is very close to Japan and has a huge market exposure. Plus manufacturing chips in Taiwan is cheaper than in US or Europe.

 

[kondamin]

Hahahahaah ✖
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.

SoftBank made it big by getting in to albibaba early.
they have been wasting those and some Japanese pensioner fund’s billions on stupid projects ever since and are basically broke.

they are a to big to fail construction from a nation that is on the verge of financial collapse it self

 

[shadad]

Too many strikes on Intel. May can try ask for bankruptcy?

I think Intel will come through this. Micorosoft helping by forcing many old PCs to be replaced. many big organizations will be forced to buy new Intel workstations to meet windows 11 requirements as Windows 10 support will be end. big profit is coming its way trust me.

 

[kondamin]

I think Intel will come through this. Micorosoft helping by forcing many old PCs to be replaced. many big organizations will be forced to buy new Intel workstations to meet windows 11 requirements as Windows 10 support will be end. big profit is coming its way trust me.

Small businesses aren't going to move until the upgrade messages become to annoying to ignore late next year, so those computers won't be bought until sometime 2026
Large corporations have a running schedule when they upgrade so they don't overload their it departments and they have the option of paying for extended support so there won't be a sudden influx of money from those.
home users still have decent computers they had to buy in 2020 at a premium and those all run windows 11.

There are a bunch of people still happy working on their 12 year old sandy bridge machines, for most people computers have been fine.
There won't be a miraculous upgrade cycle next year that is going to 'save the industry', best case it's going to be business as usual.

 

[Gucky]

Does TSMC even have capacity left?

 

[InVasMani]

Doesn't seem logical. You'd have to transfer uncompressed data, which means more data, over the memory bus. A better example of processing in memory would be an algorithm to search for certain patterns in memory. In this case, only the searched part would have to be sent over the bus to the processor, instead of everything.

Pity we couldn't use something akin to CF/SLI a bit differently as more of a secondary VRAM holding tank.

 

[watzupken]

Intel’s going to face some severe headwinds in the near to mid term looking at the fact that they are getting hammered from all sides, and it’s one bad news after another. Like I said before, there are clear messaging that don’t paint a good picture of Intel’s fab quality.
1. Meteor Lake yield issues that they confessed
2. Raptor Lake oxidation issue that they confessed and wilfully continued mass production.
3. Lunar Lake being built completely on TSMC for the first time in Intel’s history. Intel can claim what they want but the positioning is not good.
4. Some rumors of them further outsourcing to TSMC for future CPUs.
Now with Soft Bank also bailing out on Intel, it’s going to be problem. They can still sell their fab service, but expect low margins.

 

[Wirko]

They can still sell their fab service, but expect low margins.

Or not even that. Whoever is looking for fab service... is looking for reliability, not bargains.

 

[DaemonForce]

The only way I could see bargain chips happening is if there were a sudden push for embedded and home server stuff but something tells me that's NOT the intended direction of the new fab or its future. I've already seen this before with the recycling of existing chips and decomm'd office PCs ready for the landfil by the pallet load. Not cool.

It also doesn't help that there would be a juggle struggle between low power high performance compute and current to medium term media features for managing this and that when there's already some bizarre cartel behavior going on in the embedded space. A bunch of bottom grade Ampere chips could just bust in and snatch up ALL the customers, I'm sure.

 

[Noci]

The battle of capital involving high tech, partly under influence of global geopolitical tensions, nothing new.

Keep calm and game on .

 

[Marcus L]

Intel stock at lowest in 5+ years, maybe hdol on for a bit longer and buy low....