Intel Reported To Be Looking At Acquiring GlobalFoundries

[Brane215]

OMFG this is funny. Intel's once-legendary process nodes are so shit they're actually thinking about buying up the barrel-bottom that is GloFo.

WTF are you on about ? GloFo is not bottom player. They just aren't going to the cutting edge. Their 12/14 processes are very decent and they are making a fair buck on htier segments.

[andre30correia]

a good why to move their own to new process and maintain the old fiable ones for some years, I really don t care if it is 14/12 or 7 or 5, I want cpu in market at lower prices

[Brane215]

a good why to move their own to new process and maintain the old fiable ones for some years, I really don t care if it is 14/12 or 7 or 5, I want cpu in market at lower prices

But if you are just a monkey, using it for masturbation and gaming, how long will that famed market need you ?

BTW: 12/14nm processes aren't old by any means. They just aren't so intensely forced at any cost to really bleeding edge. EUV die exposure at lower geometries looks more like childbirth than a production step.

Try, for example, getting Xilinx FPGA in process, more advanced than 20nm ( let alone 7nm) and report back. If you can afford it after that experience.

[uxmkt]

Intel's once-legendary process nodes are so shit they're actually thinking about buying up the barrel-bottom that is GloFo.

The joke is on you. Remember, "buy low, sell high". That said, with the recent announcements of Russia and (somewhat older announcement) China's CSA producing 28nm RISC-V cores makes GloFo's 14nm look outright futuristic.

[Brane215]

The joke is on you. Remember, "buy low, sell high". That said, with the recent announcements of Russia and (somewhat older announcement) China's CSA producing 28nm RISC-V cores makes GloFo's 14nm look outright futuristic.

Nm claims below 28 nm are pure martketing bulls**t.
If you think 14 nm is retro, try doing it yourself for fun.
Intel isn't earmarking $30B just for laughs. GloFo must have been doing something right...

[Mike Frett]

And what about buying AMD...

You're talking about a monopoly. Sure, go for it if you only want one player with prices higher than what they are now and low quality.

[Limit]

I don't see any problems with the regulators. There are enough competitors. It would probably even create a new one that could compete with Samsung and TSMC after GF alone failed to do so.

If Intel seriously wants to get into the foundry business, buying GF isn't the worst move. GF has experience in the market, a long customer list and have different kind of fabs and processes for customer requirements that Intel's fabs couldn't satisfy. You should remember that many customers aren't always looking for the latest and best process node, but rather the cheapest one that is just good enough. That was the problem last time Intel tried to start a foundry business. Their processes were the best at that time, but just too expensive for most potential customers.

[piotrj3]

They should spend the money fixing their nodes. They have nothing which is even remotely close to TSMC's 7nm in terms of power efficiency and TSMC has long been churning chips using their 5nm node. Who cares that TGL reaches 5.3GHz when it's eating that much power in the process.

Intel 10nm is very similar efficiency/density as TSMC 7nm+. Simply "nm" aren't there real measurement but marketing term.

Why AMD is winning is because of multi chip design and that over the years they fixed mostly problems of memory controller, cache layout, chip-to-chip latencies, and that Intel on desktop is still using 14nm instead of 10nm. In laptops newest intel 10nm chips are doing actually fine vs newest Ryzens, both from power efficiency perspective as well single and multi core performance.

[piotrj3]

What the...? Intel needs to be snapped back hard and immediately. They were already needing to be legally banned from booking space at competing fabs, simply buying out the capacity AMD and Nvidia, and to some extent Apple need to compete with them. Now they want to purchase competing fabs outright? Hell no. We need Global Foundries to get off their butt and compete again as a player in the industry, even if they remain one or two nodes behind, instead of giving up and fading, and the market and its customers need the fabs to be independent instead of further consolidated. I also see that Intel does not need a $50B investment from the US government for new fabs, since they have this kind of cash to use on anticompetitive moves.

Also, Gelsinger has been at Intel long enough to demonstrate what kind of leader he wants to be, and all he has shown is the same kind of underhanded garbage Intel has engaged in since the 80s. Switching marketing pukes for an engineer at the top has not improved their attitude towards the rest of the world one bit.

How about instead of Intel buying Global Foundries, governments sever Intel's product development and fabrication components completely? That would seem to be much more helpful.

The problem is largely that GloF doesn't have incentive to improve now, what means long term it is doommed to die. And only 3 big companies that heavly invest into research and engineering is now TSMC, Samsung and Intel. Considering Intel wants to sell capacity to 3rd parties now, I don't see it as bad thing to let Intel take over them and potentially modernize it. Keep in mind investment to 7nm 5nm and below are very long term investments, which means even if GloF decided tomorrow to build 5nm fab, first time you would see 5nm from them would be in 4 years.

[avem]

Intel 10nm is very similar efficiency/density as TSMC 7nm+. Simply "nm" aren't there real measurement but marketing term.

Why AMD is winning is because of multi chip design and that over the years they fixed mostly problems of memory controller, cache layout, chip-to-chip latencies, and that Intel on desktop is still using 14nm instead of 10nm. In laptops newest intel 10nm chips are doing actually fine vs newest Ryzens, both from power efficiency perspective as well single and multi core performance.

I was talking specifically about power consumption/efficiency and performance. Nowhere in my post I referred to "nanometers" which for TSMC mean nothing nowadays. No, Intel chips are not doing fine vs Ryzen chips. The multithreaded performance for Ryzen 5000 CPUs is leaps and bounds better while power consumption is significantly lower.

Also TGL CPUs have a habit of reaching exorbitant temperatures and throttling a a result of "doing fine" according to you.