Nvidia Would Consider Using Intel as a Foundry, CEO Says (bloomberg.com) 21
Nvidia, one of the largest buyers of outsourced chip production, said it will explore using Intel as a possible manufacturer of its products, but said Intel's journey to becoming a foundry will be difficult. From a report: Nvidia Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang said he wants to diversify his company's suppliers as much as possible and will consider working with Intel. Nvidia currently uses Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co and Samsung Electronics to build its products. "We're very open-minded to considering Intel," Huang said Wednesday in an online company event. "Foundry discussions take a long time. It's not just about desire. We're not buying milk here."
Risky (Score:2)
Intel is getting into GPU market with ARC as we speak. So Nvidia would be literally giving its trade secrets directly to Intel if it gave it designs to turn into chips.
Limiting access to designs from Intel's fabs to Intel's GPU designers at Intel is going to be a hell of a challenge and a hell of a risk for Nvidia.
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The risk isn't in copying the design as is. The risk is availability of design to Intel's GPU designers, who can save a tremendous amount of resources in R&D as they can learn certain things from working design rather than need to do reseach.
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It would be monumentally stupid for Intel to spend billions building a fab business, then destroy the trust of customers by stealing things from them. You can bet Intel will have the proper separation in place between it's own designers and the people in the fab business. This kind of thing is not all that uncommon.
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This assumes that "intel leaning some lessons" is the same thing as "intel copying nvidia".
This assumption is fundamentally wrong in any complex system. "Learning some lessons you missed in your R&D until then" doesn't result in copying. It results in modifying your designs to take lessons learned into account. Those aren't the same thing.
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And what, in your opinion, keeps Intel engineers from putting a chip from Nvidia under a microscope right now?
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You appear to confuse "looking at the thing" with "knowing the design of the thing".
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Intel is getting into GPU market with ARC as we speak. So Nvidia would be literally giving its trade secrets directly to Intel if it gave it designs to turn into chips.
Limiting access to designs from Intel's fabs to Intel's GPU designers at Intel is going to be a hell of a challenge and a hell of a risk for Nvidia.
Not really. There will be a threat of huge penalties in place and Intel will be very careful to make sure that nothing leaks to their own GPU people. Nvidia does not have to do anything here, but Intel may decline such an order because they think the risk is too great. Also note that Intel can already just buy some Nvidia GPUs and reverse engineer them. They have everything needed for that including the expertise. They cannot really use what they learn though, see above.
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Except that there's no threat if you do it right, because I'm not talking about copying things. And "looking at the chip" doesn't actually tell you more than fundamentals of the design the same way that actual design does.
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The foundry does not get the "actual design". They just get the "tape out" and the test code.
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>They don't get "actual design". They just get the "actual design" needed for lasers to get to etching.
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It's not likely that NV will produce any dGPUs on Intel processes. They might consider using Intel for CPUs though. Though why they would do that is anyone's guess. The only process Intel will be able to offer in volume in the near future will be 10ESF/Intel 7, which is already behind the curve. Samsung's 4LPE would be a better choice.
To clarify one thing (Score:2)
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Indeed. A large part of being a foundry is interfacing with customers and making sure customers actually get the product they want and need. That includes abstracting properties of the manufacturing process in a way that customers can understand, for example. That also includes understanding what kind of design a customer wants to make and make sure there are no pitfalls, for example hot-spots that give a chip a very limited lifetime. Then there may be things customers want to put in, but that Intel has lit
This is a story because? (Score:2)
Why is this a story?
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Nvidia is fabless. Which means they don't have the ability to make chips on their own. Which means they find someone who is able to make their chips at reasonable prices. Which means Intel can compete with other foundries.
Why is this a story?
Politics. Intel was for a long time too arrogant to go into that business and its real edge was making worse CPUs with a better manufacturing process. Opening that process up to others removed that edge. On the other hand, Intel has serious trouble with their current manufacturing processes, so they may not have that much of an edge left there anyways.
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