Comment by cameron_b
4 days ago
I understand the part where Intel is trying to get external customers interested in the output of their fab by exhibiting an implementation of an ARM processor.
In the past I understand that they did some custom implementation of Xeon cores for hyperscalers, but the meat and potatoes was the chip they designed.
Do we take this to mean that the current leadership assess the value proposition -of Intel- to be in the /making/ of the chips, akin to TSMC, and not in the /designing/ of them, as in all past seasons at Intel?
I suppose a key factor here is how far from reference this chip is. If they mean to innovate in ARM ISA territory, that's a development to ponder. But if this is a "we can also make those things" statement, I'm hearing bears in the woods.
>Do we take this to mean that the current leadership assess the value proposition -of Intel- to be in the /making/ of the chips, akin to TSMC, and not in the /designing/ of them, as in all past seasons at Intel?
No… Gelsinger laid all of this out very clearly. He wanted the design side of the house and the manufacturing side of the house to stand on their own. He didn’t want the design side relying solely on process to maintain performance leads, and he also wanted them to have the flexibility to use any fab should manufacturing fall behind.
In order for manufacturing to survive design potentially going to competitors for certain generations, they need to also support outside business.
https://www.intc.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1451/...
The fabs need external customers not just intel to be profitable.
The custom designs for hyperscalars don’t count as external customers, they’re just part of Intels own production set.
And since nobody but AMD or VIA can make x86, it has to be ARM or other ISAs instead.
The article title is a bit clickbait since ARM is the eventuality of having external customers. The real key point is that they have made chips that aren’t their own at all.
As I understand it, Intel's strength was in manufacturing their own design in their exclusive (and most advanced) process. So the advantage was being vertically integrated. State of the art processes are too expensive these days. x86 CPUs alone cannot sustain them. Specially, when AMD builds their CPU also with state of the art processes. So by becoming a foundry, Intel may be able to have state of the art fabs and use it in their own designs of x86 CPUs, GPUs, etc.
The use of standard cells for a process somewhat opens it for outside users.
The 80386 was the first use of standard cells for x86, which also introduced "automatic place and route" via a graduate student project named "Timberwolf."
https://www.righto.com/2023/10/intel-386-die-versions.html
> I'm hearing bears in the woods
No, why?
The world desperately needs a TSMC competitor.