Intel Executives Say a Manufacturing Spinoff Is Possible (yahoo.com) 30
Intel's interim co-CEOs acknowledged that the company may be forced to sell its manufacturing operations if a new chipmaking technology slated for next year does not succeed. Reuters reports: Speaking at a Barclays investment banking conference in San Francisco on Thursday, Michelle Johnston Holthaus and David Zinsner - who were tapped as co-CEOs after the ouster of former CEO Pat Gelsinger last week - were asked if the company's continued combination of manufacturing and design was tied to the success of a new chipmaking technology called 18A due next year. Intel plans to use that technology to bring manufacturing of a flagship PC chip back in-house after being forced to outsource its biggest product to rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. "Pragmatically, do I think it makes sense that they're completely separated and there's no tie?" Holthaus said of the company's product and manufacturing divisions. "I don't think so. But someone will decide that."
Zinsner, also chief financial officer, outlined how Intel is already separating the finances and operations of this manufacturing division into a standalone subsidiary. Zinsner said Intel Foundry, as the division is known, is already run separately from Intel's other businesses and is setting up a separate operational board and business process software system. "That's going to happen," Zinsner said. "Does it ever fully separate? That's an open question for another day."
Zinsner, also chief financial officer, outlined how Intel is already separating the finances and operations of this manufacturing division into a standalone subsidiary. Zinsner said Intel Foundry, as the division is known, is already run separately from Intel's other businesses and is setting up a separate operational board and business process software system. "That's going to happen," Zinsner said. "Does it ever fully separate? That's an open question for another day."
Won't help (Score:2)
Re:Won't help (Score:4, Insightful)
What would happen if they had another defective batch for two years, like the 13 and 14th gen chips?
At least at the moment intel is definitely responsible and can be easily forced to replace your CPU with a fixed one.
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How many prayers (Score:4, Funny)
How many prayers does it take to succeed in the chip business?
Is there a Moore's Law equivalent? I'm just assuming that the number of prayers required is a direct ratio to the number of transistors.
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None. Good engineers do not believe in higher powers saving their asses.
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https://slashdot.org/story/24/... [slashdot.org]
Gelsinger was allegedly pushed out over this (Score:4, Insightful)
There are allegations circulating that the board pushed him out over his refusal to consider spinning off the fabs. Also Intel may lose their CHIPS money if they follow through.
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CHIPS money is reimbursement for attaining pre-defined milestones in the projects.
$0.00 upfront.
Money is allocated based on a project plan, but not paid until the milestones are reached. It is not some cost+ boondoggle.
Kick out the GPU division (Score:1)
Letting them put out crap GPUs for over 3 decades made Intel completely miss out on AI.
That division is the root of all evil within Intel.
Re: Kick out the GPU division (Score:3)
Mod parent way TF up. There's not enough sand in the world to make up for this waste of silicon.
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Modern AI, if you insist calling it AI, is not done with GPUs anyway.
Sell to who? (Score:4, Insightful)
If Intel's 18A process is unsuccessful then they'll be trying to sell a bunch of 10nm and older fabs that have "INTEL HAD TO GO TO TSMC TO STAY COMPETITIVE" spraypainted on them. Certainly not worthless; it's not like 10 and 14nm logic silicon is super old and busted(and there's still an awful lot done on considerably larger processes); but who is the buyer who would value them more than Intel does; and what customers are they going to be fabbing for that Intel's 'foundry services' attempts wouldn't be able to reach?
Is the hypothesis that the fabs are internally mismanaged in some way that would be decisively improved by whatever private equity outfit is feeling flush on a given day? Is it purely a matter of a finance guy seeing an opportunity to increase the amount of finance Intel does in the future, even if that's unrelated to how long that future is?
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but who is the buyer who would value them more than Intel does
Intel is underusing them because they won't just fab anything for anyone. They are potentially capable of producing a lot more profit in someone else's hands. They won't work for producing modern, competitive processors, so their value to intel is very low. There is zero demand for less competitive parts which cost more because the dies are larger and use more power because the features are larger.
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They do apparently have some foundry or advanced packaging customers, and they did some internal P&L rearrangement to allow for better accounting of the Intel
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it's definitely not a case where spinning off would be required to do 3rd party work.
Not all of it, no, just the stuff that competes with them that they would not do or would give an unfavorable deal on. Intel has a long and storied history of anticompetitive activity, so that is not a stretch in any way.
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I understand that there are some customers who are concerned about handing over chip designs to Intel fabs, even if Intel promises that the info will be firewalled from it's own designers.
So, there is a chance that there will be more potential customers if Intel is no longer in control of those fabs.
The death of Intel? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: The death of Intel? (Score:2)
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AMD made the same move years ago (they spun off their foundry in 2009 and sold it off in 2012) and has been doing significantly better since then.
I'm not saying it will work out the same for Intel, but its not an automatic assured death sentence.
I'd really hate to see Intel go under as competition is good for the consumer and we need multiple players in the industry.
Wow, such ignorance. (Score:3)
These co-CEOs know nothing about the history of Intel? Sure they were lucky with IBM starring the whole x86 PC, but the biggest reason they kept growing through the 90s and 00s was their fabs. Even through the period when they had complete dogshit designs (netburst) vs the competition, their fabs were the only reason (apart from various anti-competitive schemes) they were keeping up and were able to pull ahead again the moment they got a competitive design again.
How the mighty have fallen (Score:2)
I guess Intel will now either start to make good CPUs or die. My money is on the latter.
So Intel is turning into AMD ? (Score:3)
Looks like Intel tried to use the political connections of their CEO to force Apple and Nvidia to use their foundries:
https://www.tomshardware.com/t... [tomshardware.com]
Another thing was to get subsidies from the government under the CHIPS act:
https://www.tomshardware.com/t... [tomshardware.com]
Now that these have no chance of materializing, and their attempt to corner the market for EUV litography machines proved too expensive, the CEO was kicked out and they have to follow in the steps of AMD.
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Maybe if the US gov promises to buy XXX number of nvidia / Apple products fabed at Intel US fabs, they will agree.
Otherwise why would they want to create products that will be beaten by the competition using TSMC fabs?
Spin off the fabs and lose the government money (Score:2)
The whole "CHIPS act" money requires that Intel keep its fabs. So, Intel can not spin off the fabs without losing that $8 billion+.
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Maybe the spinned off ex Intel fabs can apply for CHIPS act money.
How much does Intel build? (Score:2)
I only found an Intel site claiming 300 quadrillion transistors in 2024. Which is just 11 million M1 chips, and a number on Wikipedia is about 22 quintillion total in 2024 (all manufacturers), which is about 70 times more.