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AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

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Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#81

Post by qzw »

akdev1l wrote: post #38
timmg wrote: post #34

What I really want to know, from someone who does know: Is Intel cooked? Like, will they be able to manufacture chips that compete with TSMC? They used to be a crown-jewel of US tech. But it seems like every time I read the news, they are announcing a delay or shutting down some product.

Tldr; yes they are kind of cooked

Cooked in the short/medium term, yes, but remains to be seen in the longer term. I feel like they’re ironically in the same position AMD was in before AMD spun off Global Foundries: not being able to keep up with the new nodes on the manufacturing side, which also drags down the design side. They could follow the same playbook and sell off the foundries, which will be a blow to their pride, but should free them up to compete better on designs alone.

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#82

Post by CivBase »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #69
CivBase wrote: post #24

5-20% more expensive? That's way cheaper than I expected. That's pretty good, especially for 4nm.

Even 5% more expensive means 80% of people buy the taiwan version for $475 instead of $500. 20% more expensive and 99.9% of people buy the $500 one instead of the $600 one. Never make the mistake of falling for people's virtue signalling and pay attention instead to how they actually apply those virtues (spoiler: saving money is the #1 acted upon virtue, being far stronger than any other).

If the US can maintain even just 5-10% of production volume, that's a huge win IMO. It means the US has a foundation of knowledge, equipment, and supply chains to expand on in the event of an emergency.

Taiwan is in a precarious position, which is a huge liability for "western" powers. And a liability for us is effectively also a liability for Taiwan, considering we are their protectorate. North America and western Europe are comparatively safe.

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#83

Post by treyd »

vonneumannstan wrote: post #79
cogman10 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no reason Intel couldn’t do the same. Intel is doing the same. IDK if they are working on new fabs at this point, but the last few generations of chips from intel have used TSMC. My expectation is that Intel might still run fabs, but they'll be mostly contracting them out to people who want cheap ASICs and 10 year old fab tech.

How does this scale? TSMC can't literally be the only fab in the world...

They're the only fab company in the world with the technology to allow Intel, AMD, and Nvidia to compete with each other on the playing field they do.

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#84

Post by cogman10 »

vonneumannstan wrote: post #79
cogman10 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no reason Intel couldn’t do the same. Intel is doing the same. IDK if they are working on new fabs at this point, but the last few generations of chips from intel have used TSMC. My expectation is that Intel might still run fabs, but they'll be mostly contracting them out to people who want cheap ASICs and 10 year old fab tech.

How does this scale? TSMC can't literally be the only fab in the world...

They aren't.

Samsung comes in a close second in terms of tech. GloFo is also still floating around though lagging pretty bad AFAIK. Micron has it's own fabs that they are actively developing (in fact, they are building new facilities right now).

What TSMC is is cutting edge. That's why everyone that needs top performance uses them.

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#85

Post by bee_rider »

actionfromafar wrote: post #32
chazeon wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boards are low tech and low profit, does American company and workers even want to do it?

The tariffs are apparently going to bring back t-shirt and sneaker production to the US so it can be great again, so why not boards, too.

We’re at least 4 years away from that, as it would require a round of STEM college students to go EE instead of computer science.

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#87

Post by [deleted] »

vonneumannstan wrote: post #79
cogman10 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no reason Intel couldn’t do the same. Intel is doing the same. IDK if they are working on new fabs at this point, but the last few generations of chips from intel have used TSMC. My expectation is that Intel might still run fabs, but they'll be mostly contracting them out to people who want cheap ASICs and 10 year old fab tech.

How does this scale? TSMC can't literally be the only fab in the world...

[deleted]

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#89

Post by hajile »

timmg wrote: post #34

What I really want to know, from someone who does know: Is Intel cooked? Like, will they be able to manufacture chips that compete with TSMC? They used to be a crown-jewel of US tech. But it seems like every time I read the news, they are announcing a delay or shutting down some product.

Intel's fab issues are overstated in my opinion. They were stuck on 14nm for a very long time because they bit off too much with 10nm. People act like that means ALL research in nodes smaller than 10nm must have stopped, but that's simply not true as research into tech and materials needed for smaller nodes happens in parallel.

It's also noteworthy that GAAFET being a complete redesign of major parts of the manufacturing process levels the playing field significantly. A big example of this is Japan's Rapidus which was founded in 2022 and has managed to invent (and license) enough stuff to be prototyping GAA processes.

Intel's 18a process seems to be quite good. It's behind TSMC in absolute transistor density (SRAM density seems to be the same as N3E), but ahead on hard features like BSPD and maybe on GAA too. I suspect that they didn't push transistor density as hard as they could because BSPD and GAA tech were already big, risky changes.

We'll have a much better idea of Intel's fab future with 14a and 10a as they should show a trend of whether Intel's fabs can catch up and pass TSMC or if they run out of steam after the initial GAA bump.

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#90

Post by karmakaze »

octopoc wrote: post #10

The article doesn’t say, but I assume these are SOTA AI chips? If so, it’s a huge deal that American can build them. Another interesting point: > AMD and larger rival Nvidia Corp. recently gained a reprieve on restrictions imposed on shipments of some types of artificial intelligence accelerators to China. It’s still not clear how many licenses will be granted — or how long the companies will be allowed to ship the c…

Export restrictions work similarly to tariffs or subsidies. In the long term they limit domestic products from global competition. DeepSeek comes up with more efficient algorithms out of necessity to compete using lesser hardware. Companies with deep pockets like OpenAI will be first and best, but only for a limited period if they don't invest in efficiency as well as capability.
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