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Comment by FirmwareBurner | Hacker News Reader

>I always saw it as an exceptionally low tolerance for risk.

Big laugh at the claim of intel having a exceptionally low tolerance to risk when they're the only semi company left still running their own fabs, decades after AMD sold off their own for being too risky of a venture to keep running by themselves. And every fab company out there will vouch for how risky that line of business is. Even more so to pour billions into a business like this while knowing Samsung/TSMC might beat you.

More correct would be that Intel has a low tolerance to risk for things that are way outside of their core competencies which have traditionally been designing X86 CPUs and fabbing them, and that's mostly it.

I commend them for not giving up on advancing their fab nodes despite the massive issues and setbacks(they could have spun it off like AMD did), and for building the ARC GPUs and keep improving them despite low sales.

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>> when they're the only semi company left still running their own fabs

Yes and even within that they are risk averse, no need to look beyond 10nm and their reluctance to EUV.

So they are really risk averse and they just want their success to continue infinitely. In fact, contrary to Pat G claiming that Nvidia is lucky; it's really Intel which was lucky.

>> commend them for not giving up on advancing their fab nodes despite the massive issues and setbacks(they could have spun it off like AMD did), and for building the ARC GPUs

even if the turn around time in semi market is longer, the way they faltered on their Arc timelines and no encouraging signs of their new fab nodes is not commendable!

>even if the turn around time in semi market is longer, the way they faltered on their Arc timelines and no encouraging signs of their new fab nodes is not commendable!

Sure, Intel fucked up along the way, and it's easy to point fingers and laugh from the comfort of the armchair at Intel tripping over massively complex engineering challenges, but if designing and building successful GPUs and sub-7nm fabs was easy, everyone would be doing it.

It is unfortunate that you are equating pointing to the facts as finger pointing and laughing. It would be better if you substantiate instead with facts and data that imply/prove otherwise.

Further, neither do the facts nor my comment in any way implies building GPU's is easy. OTHO, when a company like Intel with their massive competitive advantage (when their fabs were the market leaders) thus leading to financial muscle fritter it away in what is supposedly their strength (fabs), don't you think that they in fact deserve to be laughed at?

In addition, what kind of risk are they alone taking when Biden is throwing billions upon billions at them and backstopping them.

The billions Biden threw their way isn’t really that much when their fabs cost billions to build. Don’t think the grants cover the full cost of their new fabs - it was 50 billion total right divided among all the corporations including TSMC, IIRC.

>It is unfortunate that you are equating pointing to the facts as finger pointing and laughing. It would be better if you substantiate instead with facts and data that imply/prove otherwise.

Is it that unfortunate? Because if you knew how difficult semi fabrication or GPU design is, you probably wouldn't say these failures are such big deals worth pointing out as negatives, but part and parcel of the process of solving such complex problems only 3 players worldwide have mastered.

Do you see Nvidia trying to fab chips? Do you see TSMC trying to design GPUs? Imagine Intel is doing both at the same time. Of course they will fail at points along the way, the important thing is they stay in the game to provide us with competition.

> Yes and even within [fab] they are risk averse, no need to look beyond 10nm and their reluctance to EUV.

Wasn't there an article on HN 2 days ago about Intel pushing 2 new technologies simultaneously in their next node? (ribbon gate and backside power?)

> Wasn't there an article on HN 2 days ago about Intel pushing 2 new technologies simultaneously in their next node? (ribbon gate and backside power?)

When I read "ribbon gate" just now, I assumed you were referring to some scandal.

Let's hope that's not prescient :)

> Yes and even within that they are risk averse, no need to look beyond 10nm and their reluctance to EUV.

Actually from what I heard, their failures with their Intel 7 was partly due to trying too many unproven technologies - i.e. they pulled a Zumwalt. With their current Intel 4 & 3 I heard they were more conservative.

>their failures with their Intel 7 was partly due to trying too many unproven technologies

Everything about bleeding edge semi fabbing is unproven technology.

Intel actually had trouble getting 14nm off the ground and it was late to ramp up, that should have been a signal that past progress might be coming to an end. I believe that when things got difficult managements response was to try to catch back up by going crazy on the 10nm jump and it went horribly.

What was more shocking is how long them seemed to be in denial before putting contingency plans in place.

I thought AMD had to spin off their fabs due to cost and cash flow issue because Intel was too busy playing dirty?

"Real men have fabs!" - AMD founder and CEO at the time, Jerry Sanders [1]

He said this some time in the 80's to early 90's as a defence for their expensive commitment to still be running their own fabs when most big semi companies like Motorola were selling off their fabs and going fabless because it was eating their resources and it was impossible to compete with the likes of TSMC on node shrinks and value.

So even without Intel screwing with them in anti-competitive ways, they could not have kept their fabs competitive much longer. The writing was already on the wall way back then but Jerry Sanders was just being stubborn.

[1] https://archive.is/igC4r

I mean... Maybe? But Intel proved their success of owning fabs throughout the 90s and 2000s, only 20-30 years after that statement were Intel even considered to be possibly dis-advantaged by owning it's fabs. But that was also a very different market.

So I don't think it's as direct a link as you seem to claim. Maybe it was the right decision even if AMD had the money to keep it going. But it will likely forever be one of those questions that has no solid answer either way.

Intel had the margin and volume to be the exception to the rule, meanwhile Qualcomm, Broadcom, and a ton of other fabless design firms were making good money unencumbered by the risk of investing in a fab division, and with the ability to switch to the best fab for each chip at a given time.

>> I thought AMD had to spin off their fabs due to cost and cash flow issue because Intel was too busy playing dirty?

IMHO Ruiz cut back on engineering and increased marketing. Then purchased ATI which I though was an odd or even dumb move (it was not). But that expensive purchase along with the failure of bulldozer almost killed the company. That's why they spun off Global Foundries - to stay alive.

> More correct would be that Intel has a low tolerance to risk for things that are way outside of their core competencies which have traditionally been designing X86 CPUs and fabbing them, and that's mostly it.

As a former Intel-er myself (during Craig Barrett, Paul Otellini times) I would disagree. Intel took bold and foolish bets bying DiaLogic, selling Xscale, betting on WiMAX mobile technology while fighting LTE backed by all telcos. I would characterize Intel's risk management as "passive-aggressive".

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