Intel Keeps Playing Catch-Up with TSMC || Peter Zeihan

We've discussed what TSMC is up to in a recent video, so let's look at what another big name in the semiconductor space -Intel- is doing to keep up.

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#intel #tsmc #semiconductor

[austinbennett]

As someone with experience in both design and manufacturing in the industry, I can tell you that manufacturing is on a whole other level of difficulty compared to design. The fancy designs that fabless companies can cook up are directly tied to what the fabs can actually pull off with their processes and materials. It's one thing to plug a design into some fancy software, but it's a whole different ballgame to manipulate individual atoms and characterize quantum mechanical phenomena.

[colter]

Respectfully, as someone working in the semiconductor industry for 7 years, the hardest part is not design. The hardest part is pilot fab, or essentially climbing the yield curve. To go from 0% yield to 80% or 90%, the design is almost unrecognizable. TSMC does pilot and high volume.

[danisraelmalta]

I've commented on Peter "chip clips" before, and I will reiterate what i previously said - as a VLSI designer with 20+ years of experience, who worked in Intel, AMD, Apple and now in Nvidia - no, most of the design is not done in the US/Japan - I would claim that for the last 10 years, US and Japan together are less than 40% of the design phase (software, validation, verification, etc.). South Korea, India, certain parts of Europe and Israel have taken the rest 60% of the market.

edit - for all those who respond to my response:
1. I'm talking about design (architecture, functional, logic, circuit and physical), not production.
2. regarding Intel - I worked 12 years in Intel Haifa, where almost ALL Intel processors were designed since the notorious 8080, through the Pentium MMX - which I participated in its development - and all the way to modern "sky lake" architectures.
3. I haven't been in touch with Intel for more than a decade - but I can say that I believe that one of the downfalls of Intel was the marriage to Microsoft - Microsoft kept demanding performance over power usage which required larger SIMD lanes and better cache - which took Intel away from edge computing...
4. I've been working in the TPU design sector for several years now, both in startups (one bought by Intel, one bought by Amazon) and large American firms (currently at Nvidia as designer; yes - I am active along all these phases) - and I can state without doubt that the "world" piece in the design process outweighs US/Japan piece in the market - however, the Americans do seem to buy most of these startups transforming them into local hot spots of American firms.

edit #2 - since I cant reply directly to comments, I'm replying here:
Someone replied to me saying all high end chips are designed in the US. So, here is my view from Israel (a tiny player in the market) regarding high end chips (and if this is in Israel, think of everything done in Europe) like TPUs, DPUs and inference chips - AWS graviton, Inferentia and Trainium chips are designed in Israel (Amazon bought Annapurna Labs, which I worked at, in 2015), Intel Goya and Gaudi accelerators are designed in Israel (Intel bought Habana Labs in 2019; accidently, I worked there after leaving Annapurna Labs), Apple AI chips are designed in Israel (and so did many parts of M chips), Nvidia DPUs (such as BlueField-3 DPU) are designed in Israel, parts of Google TPUs are designed in Israel and there are many Israeli startups which design high end chips (see Hailo technologies for example). and this is only from Israel - a tiny country. I assure you that many other high end chips are designed in Europe, India (yes, its hard to get a good Indian engineer, they all moved elsewhere, but there are) and south korea and not only in the US or Japan. Sure - the US ends up buying most of these companies - but they come as an example that most high end designs are not limited to the US.

[chemist]

Whenever you make a video involving semiconductors from now on, consult an expert to review your premise. Every single video you've published on semiconductors has had some pretty major errors. Publishing multiple videos that are just factually incorrect hurts your reputation which is a shame because you usually have really good insights. Talk to Asianometry, TechTechPotato, hire an industry consultant, or find someone in your comments who would be willing to help you proof read your tech adjacent content in the future because it needs help.

[JanMan]

The hardest part of the process is manufacturing, which is why there’s only one company in the leading edge.

[portalminer]

I spent 25+ years at Intel and you are correct that they dropped the ball moving to EUV and they're still playing catch up but the designs are constrained by the transistor budget they're given and they can't put a more advanced design into silicon if they can't manufacture it with profitable yields.

[fialeeca]

You are oversimplifing semiconductor fabrication, and how extremely complex that step is. First off, TSMC is a trillion dollar market cap company. It didn't get that valuation by accident. Second, if it wasn't extremely complex and proprietary, there would be over a dozen company & industry fabs like the old days ... but as you state, there is now only TSMC, Intel, and Sammy (and no, they aren't that far behind). While Intel does have everything in-house, their manufacturing side is extremely grossly inefficient vs TSMC and Sammy manufacturing. I would agree Intel rested on their past success too long, and that was likely due to installing a bean counter as Chairman of the Board vs someone with an engineering PhD.

[naguoning]

Wildly simplifying the difficulty of what TSMC has been doing (and to a lesser extent Samsung etc). It is not without reason that basically no one has been able to catch them despite the amount of money being thrown at it not just by the USA but also China etc. TSMC is one of the most if not THE most sophisticated manufacturers in the world.

[yugytomm]

It's crazy that all the most advanced machines for TSMC, Samsung and Intel are manufactured by a single company in the Netherlands.

[jacobrogers]

This is what happens when you have to give a book report and only read the back cover.

I completely agree with the critiques in these comments. While semiconductor design is undeniably challenging, manufacturing at the cutting edge is a vastly more complex and demanding process. TSMC’s dominance in the fabrication sector isn’t just a matter of scale but a testament to their mastery of systems engineering. Achieving reliable yields at advanced nodes like 2nm involves manipulating materials at the atomic level, developing proprietary processes, and fine-tuning equipment like EUV lithography systems from ASML. These tools alone cost hundreds of millions of dollars per unit and require highly skilled teams to operate effectively.

On the other hand, while design benefits greatly from advancements in EDA tools and AI, these tools are still reliant on the capabilities of the manufacturing process. A brilliant design is meaningless if the fab cannot execute it at scale with acceptable yields. The oversimplification completely glosses over this relationship and fails to acknowledge the immense difficulty of systems integration, materials science, and process engineering that companies like TSMC excel at. Intel’s years-long struggle to catch up in manufacturing highlights just how hard this process is.

Honestly, I wish Peter would just say "I don't know" but he's so committed to being a know-it-all that he won't. Glad the people who've spent decades in the industry are in these comments setting the record straight.

[talideon]

Intel's problems are its management and a deeply inflexible engineering culture. They've essentially spent 50 years failing upwards on the back of an ISA they've wanted to ditch all this time while never quite adjusting to the reality of that.

[DolphLongedgreens]

This could easily be a 90 minute video from someone with knowledge in the field.

[dalehodgkins]

Hi Peter, can you let whoever made your background map know New Zealand still exists 😂😂

[xasm]

gosh his incompetency is this area is unimaginable, I mean design is complex - yeah that is why there are so many startups who do design and even backward countries like Russia were able to come up with designs while yet not being able to print and package, not even saying that the current directions for scaling the performance might heavily rely on the packaging and not on printing resolution, anyway I enjoy watching these standups

[clorox]

I am a chef, designing new dishes and plate decoration is difficult, but knowing what the limits of your team can do is crucial.

Execution is far more difficult and important than planning and designing.

[doronnac]

Mr. Zeihan, with respect, you're comparing apples and oranges. Both manufacturing and design are extremely hard.

[invaderjoshua]

This was a really badly done video. You need to consult more with experts in high end technological development before you state your opinions as facts. Fabrication is absolutely the hardest portion of semi conductor design.

[ohhs]

Intel has been behind the curve for decades. It's hard to believe they are still around.

[widam]

that's why you don't put a vanilla CEO in your company that only is interested in the "investors" profits instead of an engineer CEO that will bring innovation..

[davidbeach]

I live in Columbus and Intell is in the process of building a chip plant in central Ohio. They are spending around 20 Billion Dollars. Thats a HUGE amount of money and progress is noted on the local news on a frequent basis.