
Intel Ponte Vecchio GPU Will Be Made on TSMC 6nm Process, CPUs Could Be TSMC 3nm - rbanffy
https://wccftech.com/intel-ponte-vecchio-gpu-tsmc-6nm/
======
websg-x
Sorry, but that fake news. The news is for manipulation of Taiwan stock
market. TSMC dominated the Taiex index.

We are having a fun day on PTT. A popular Taiwan BBS frequent by lot of real
TSMC engineers.

One example,
[https://www.ptt.cc/bbs/Stock/M.1595925811.A.03E.html](https://www.ptt.cc/bbs/Stock/M.1595925811.A.03E.html),
people are poking fun with how only naive people(韭菜）believe the 5nm, 3nm cpu
news.

~~~
chvid
If it is fake then it certainly has been repeated a few places.

~~~
websg-x
Same sources, 電子時報(digitimes)，中國時報(chinatimes)，經濟日報(economic
daily)，工商時報(commercial times). Known for publishing false rumors to move stock
market.

The rumor is 180000 wafers for GPU next year, which is impossibly large. In
comparison, AMD book 200000 wafers for all of their CPU, GPU, and PS5/XBOX
cpu.

~~~
icefo
And they face no repercussions for that ? That's the kind of things that tend
to annoy powerful people

~~~
me_me_me
Ummmm... so its powerless people using their non=existing resources who try to
manipulate stock market to annoy powerful people?

~~~
icefo
People who try to move stock market have certainly some power (or at least lot
of money or it's useless) but that doesn't mean that people who lost money or
the regulators are okay with market manipulation.

Maybe they can't do anything about it. I admit my knowledge of finance is
limited. I've read about the SEC doing investigations after Elon Musk tweet
for example.

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teruakohatu
I am pleased TSMC is moving the industry forward, but I fear we are moving
from an Intel monopoly to a TSMC monopoly. As a consumer the result will be
the same.

~~~
legulere
It's easier to switch from one fab to another than from x86 to another cpu
architecture.

~~~
Koshkin
Linux has done it.

~~~
ragebol
Linux is not tied to a single architecture. Not sure if it ever has been,
really.

~~~
pedrocr
From the original announcement email by Linus:

> It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will
> support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have :-(.

And he meant it too, as later in the thread when someone says they don't
believe him about the non-portability:

> Simply, I'd say that porting is impossible. It's mostly in C, but most
> people wouldn't call what I write C. It uses every conceivable feature of
> the 386 I could find, as it was also a project to teach me about the 386\.
> As already mentioned, it uses a MMU, for both paging (not to disk yet) and
> segmentation. It's the segmentation that makes it REALLY 386 dependent
> (every task has a 64Mb segment for code & data - max 64 tasks in 4Gb.
> Anybody who needs more than 64Mb/task - tough cookies).

This is a historical curiosity of course. The Linux kernel supports more
architectures than anything else.

~~~
Macha
Was there a effort to make it cross platform, or just the tech that looked 386
only at the time like a MMU becoming more widespread (I remember a
fail0verflow talk on ps4 linux a while back where they mentioned a MMU and
clock as requirements to port Linux to an architecture)?

~~~
monocasa
MMU is less of a requirement these days, since the uclinux patches were
upstreamed.

And it was ported to Alpha early on to be ported to a very 'not 386' style
architecture. Before that it was very x86 specific.

------
gumby
This is absurd. Intel’s fab capacity is several _times_ TSMC’s so even if
intel had chosen to do this there is no way TSMC would be able to satisfy
Intel’s needs. In addition most of TSMC’s capacity has already been committed.

That’s the business side; ignore the technical errors like 3 nm.

There’s already a comment saying this is market manipulation; I just wanted to
point out the logical fallacy to avoid “is no” — “is so”.

~~~
paulmd
Intel already confirmed on their earnings call that Ponte Vecchio will be
based on "external process technologies", so while yes, 6nm is (probably) an
error, Intel is 100% certainly running their GPUs on TSMC.

[https://www.extremetech.com/computing/313222-intel-amd-
repor...](https://www.extremetech.com/computing/313222-intel-amd-reportedly-
fighting-for-capacity-at-tsmc)

They're not moving _everything_ to TSMC, just this specific line of products -
which is a new line and would have required additional fab capacity
_somewhere_. That's either 14nm (completely full), 10nm (massively low yields
on something this big), or outside the company.

------
nabla9
Intel has still good profit margins, much better than AMDs. But Intel has
rarely been the best in microarchitecture. It has been almost always the
superior process technology that gave them the edge over competition.

If Intel is forced to compete against Nvidia and AMD as fabless for several
years, it's very bleak future for them.

~~~
Nokinside
Intel going fabless is like Boeing ordering aircraft from Airbus. Desperate
but temporary. Intel can't cut their core business because everything is build
around it. They can fall but they can't quit.

"TSMC internally does not consider orders for Intel's processors as long-term
ones, and therefore is unlikely to build additional production capacity for
the new contract if it comes, according to industry sources."
[https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20200728PD201.html](https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20200728PD201.html)

~~~
klelatti
To work for TSMC it would have to be a long term commitment. But Intel has the
cash to pay for it and given recent events it would boost investor confidence
if Intel could say (e.g.) 30% of our CPUs in future will be made by TSMC.

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cletus
Is anyone other than me truly shocked at Intel's fall from grace here? Intel
outsourcing their chip fabrication because they're basically unable to do it
themselves. Like... who would've seen that coming 10 years ago? Or even 5
(back before 10nm was the debacle it became)?

I realize Intel recently ousted their chip chief (who, as I understand it, was
poached from Qaulcomm a few years earlier) but if I were on the board, I'd be
looking at this situation and calling it what it is: a massive failure in
leadership and the pissing away of one of the greatest industry leads and I'd
be going further and cleaning house entirely of the executive team.

Oh and free advice for the board: don't put a bean counter in charge of a
hardware company. Seriously.

~~~
EricE
>don't put a bean counter in charge of a hardware company. Seriously.

Or pull a Boeing and move your management away from having a tech background
and moving them half way across the country from the rest of the company too.

------
klelatti
Why would Intel not be focusing on protecting its x86 business and working
through the issues on getting CPUs onto TSMC first rather than a product which
is currently generating zero revenue for Intel?

Just to clarify - not a point about Intel using TSMC at all - just not clear
why they would put Ponte Vecchio on TSMC first when CPUs should be the
priority.

EDIT - Added clarification.

~~~
mythz
Protecting its x86 business by outsourcing & relying on an external supplier
for one of its core competencies?

They've announced they have contingency plans to hedge against further
schedule uncertainty (assuming that means using TSMC), but their #1 priority
would be to use their own fabs.

~~~
klelatti
Protecting their x86 server business should be their number 1 priority right
now. Customers don't care if the product is manufactured in Intel or TSMC Fabs
and the margins will still be more than satisfactory.

If the x86 based product falls behind customers have an incentive to move to
ARM made on TSMC (Apple being the obvious case in point). In this respect AMD
is doing Intel a long term favour by giving firms an x86 fall back.

~~~
mythz
That's fairly short-sighted, a 200B company shouldn't be protecting their core
business by handing over their manufacturing reins to effectively create a
monopoly that most of the world relies upon for chip manufacturing to make up
for a 6 month delay, whilst still incurring the massive fixed costs of their
existing fabs.

How much more secure would their business be if they're at the mercy of
Monopoly supplier with no competition?

At least Apple's business is protected as they're a value-added supplier with
a near impenetrable network monopoly to prevent competition, but most of
Intel's business is chips, conceding manufacturing of them to a single
supplier who's now worth nearly 2x Intel, who are big enough to buy ARM or
merge with AMD seems unwise for their long-term prospects.

~~~
klelatti
I didn't say they should hand all their manufacturing to TSMC.

Rather, if they have fallen behind on manufacturing (which they have) and
decided that they need to access TSMC fabs (which they seem to have) then the
priority should be x86 not Ponte Vecchio.

Why? Because whilst they are behind on process some firms have an bigger
incentive to switch to ARM (eg Apple). Once they have gone to ARM they are
much less likely to come back to Intel x86. If they can keep them away from
ARM they have a chance of getting them back if/when they get their
manufacturing back on track.

~~~
mythz
Either way conceding manufacturing of their flagship products to their
competitor is not without consequence, and shouldn't be their primary
preference - it's their contingency plan, as it should be.

~~~
klelatti
Sure, their primary preference would be to use in-house, but their flagship
products today are being built using either an old or a problematic process
node and that's a big problem that is not going to get sorted in 6 months.

Reading the earnings call I think its reasonably clear that they will be going
outside for at least some of their manufacturing - the 'contingency plan' is
really around what happens if things get worse.

------
ckastner
Does TSMC even have the capacity to produce 6nm, 5nm, 3nm etc. for the leading
CPU manufacturs AMD, NVIDIA, Apple, and Intel?

If not, that's probably good news for TSMC's future profit margin, but it's
worrisome that there isn't much of an alternative.

It would be great to see Samsung open up its fabs more.

~~~
agloeregrets
The world-wide PC market including Intel and AMD totaled about 290 million
units last year. 190 million of them were laptops.

Apple sold about 200 million iPhones, 70 million iPads and 60 million Apple
Watches (and not including other A-series devices such as T2 chips, Apple TV,
or HomePod) All of these are split among TSMC’s 10nm and 7nm parts. So it’s
fair to say that TSMC with investment in fabs can work on that scale. I’m
intrigued that Intel would be chasing the low cost 6nm however.

~~~
gsnedders
> I’m intrigued that Intel would be chasing the low cost 6nm however.

My guess would very much be availability of delivery dates; I would be
unsurprised if the first couple years of 5nm was largely sold out, and
provided you can deal with the lower density 6nm (which is, after all,
primarily just an incremental 7nm improvement with the same design rules,
etc.) it allows them to bring it to market sooner.

------
bhouston
When I suggested 2 days ago that Intel should cut their losses on their long
failed fab strategy and use TSMC I was downvoted and told I was wrong...

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23932541](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23932541) * [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23932529](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23932529)

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speedgoose
Why would you name a product "old bridge" ? Nobody speaks Italian at Intel's
marketing department?

~~~
toyg
Intel uses geographical codenames, have a look at this (out of date) list:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_codenames](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_codenames)

Ponte Vecchio is, of course, a famous bridge in Firenze.

~~~
barbegal
It is also the name of many less famous bridges across Italy.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponte_Vecchio_(disambiguation)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponte_Vecchio_\(disambiguation\))

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lostmsu
I feel like links to wccftech com should be banned here. Most of them are
outright false information.

------
ksec
While I do read wccftech from time to time, one must realise they are not a
reputable site. You need to read everything with the largest grain of salt.

If we could also stop posting or upvoting anything from wccftech would also be
great.

------
flemhans
What happens after 3 nm?

0 nm? -3 nm?

~~~
mytailorisrich
I think that the radius of a Silicon atom is about 0.1 nm. ~1 nm may be the
limit of what's possible. The next nodes after 3 nm are likely going to be 2
nm and 1.4 nm.

3 nm is not available yet, though. Current best is 7 nm, I believe.

~~~
KorfmannArno
Is the process of making smaller scales possible redundant or does it depend
on new findings in science that no one anticipated?

I'd really like to know if the fab producers repeat some kind of procedure to
create smaller chips or if a new prodigy to make breakthrough findings has to
be found every other year to adhere to Moore's Law.

~~~
mytailorisrich
Making transistors and connections is a bit like Minecraft: you need blocks to
create structures and in this case the blocks are atoms of semiconductors.

It means that, leaving whatever physics considerations aside, the size of
structures is limited by the size of the building blocks.

1 nm is about 5 silicon atoms so cannot be physically shrunk much further. I
suspect that there are further physics limitations (e.g. you may be an
isolation channel to be wide enough to actually isolate by preventing things
like tunneling, etc.)

~~~
KorfmannArno
I got that. Just what is the process of actually making chips smaller and
smaller until the limit would eventually be met.

~~~
SonOfLilit
Each additional step requires solving a lot of new engineering problems and
usually some new physics too, and it's not a linear process: many techniques
are proposed that become cost effective only when previous techniques hit
their size limits, and then a lot of research is done and most techniques are
never gotten to work at scale and just a few pan out and become the next
process.

This is a great talk on the history of chip processes:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGFhc8R_uO4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGFhc8R_uO4)

This is about some of the challenges that had to be solved for a current
modern process:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0gMdGrVteI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0gMdGrVteI)

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tuckfrump666
AMDs Ryzen is going to eat Intel's lunch and they are clearly worried.

