Hi Rob, Great summary. Just one nuance: I think the challenge for Intel goes a bit beyond having a foundry that is trusted by US customers - it's about having a foundry that is competitive with TSMC which will require getting leading edge nodes working , cost and yield competitive and having processes that work as well for customers. And all this needs to be so good as to overcome a track record that is not as good as TSMC's. Of course this assumes that there is no political intervention to push customers away from TSMC and to Intel.
Yes, trusted and competitive. In an attempt to be brief, I ripped out about 1600 words on Intel as a foundry that I will publish in the future. FWIW I can talk a little about the first-hand experience when PPAC was comparable, based on my few years at Intel Custom Foundry when 14 nm was leading-edge and Intel and TSMC were close. The biggest questions were all trust-related. The IDM model still creates questionable incentives, customers have to trust your benchmarks for future technology and Intel hasn't executed great there. Additionally, there were some strategy questions that reflected not being a pure-play foundry. TSMC allows a lot of technology customization that Intel doesn't, and the IP ecosystem will be difficult and expensive to build out. Having competitive tech is one of those things that is necessary but not sufficient for being a leading-edge foundry.
Hi Rob, Great summary. Just one nuance: I think the challenge for Intel goes a bit beyond having a foundry that is trusted by US customers - it's about having a foundry that is competitive with TSMC which will require getting leading edge nodes working , cost and yield competitive and having processes that work as well for customers. And all this needs to be so good as to overcome a track record that is not as good as TSMC's. Of course this assumes that there is no political intervention to push customers away from TSMC and to Intel.
Yes, trusted and competitive. In an attempt to be brief, I ripped out about 1600 words on Intel as a foundry that I will publish in the future. FWIW I can talk a little about the first-hand experience when PPAC was comparable, based on my few years at Intel Custom Foundry when 14 nm was leading-edge and Intel and TSMC were close. The biggest questions were all trust-related. The IDM model still creates questionable incentives, customers have to trust your benchmarks for future technology and Intel hasn't executed great there. Additionally, there were some strategy questions that reflected not being a pure-play foundry. TSMC allows a lot of technology customization that Intel doesn't, and the IP ecosystem will be difficult and expensive to build out. Having competitive tech is one of those things that is necessary but not sufficient for being a leading-edge foundry.
I hope you're able to publish those 1600 words soon. I for one will read them with extreme interest!