Opinion: Apple Should Have Gone With Intel Instead of TSMC

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Opinion: Apple Should Have Gone With Intel Instead of TSMC

Posted by Unknown on Wednesday July 3, 2013 @05:14AM from the smaller-better-way-more-expensive dept.

itwbennett writes "Apple is planning to have its ARM processors manufactured by TSMC — a move that blogger Andy Patrizio thinks is a colossal mistake. Not only is TSMC already over-extended and having trouble making deadlines. But Intel was clearly the better choice: 'Intel may be struggling in mobility with the Atom processors, but Intel does yields and manufacturing process migration better than anyone,' says Patrizio. 'While TSMC wrestles with 28nm and looking to 20nm, Intel is at 22nm now and moving to 14nm for next year. This is important; the smaller the fabrication design, the less power used.'"

14 of 229 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Poor premise by Lunix+Nutcase · 2013-07-03 05:18 · Score: 4, Insightful

Sounds like a silly premise. Who says Intel would even want to do it? Why would Intel want to go back into ARM fabrication when they are trying to beat ARM chips with Atom?
1. Re:Poor premise by tnk1 · 2013-07-03 05:20 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Yeah sounds silly.
  On the other hand, why would Samsung want to make chips for Apple when Apple is suing them?
  The answer to all of these questions is money. Lots and lots of money.
2. Re:Poor premise by BasilBrush · 2013-07-03 05:29 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  The silliest premise is that some blogger knows more about the issues with different chip fabs than Apple does. For that blogger to say Apple made a mistake, before we've seen any results from the deal? Stupid. Simply click bait.
3. Re:Poor premise by Guspaz · 2013-07-03 05:36 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  There's a lot of misinformation in these comments...
  1) Intel does have a foundry business. They will make chips for third parties. They call this "Intel Custom Foundry", and they've already got clients using ARM chips (Netronome for example).
  2) Apple is a huge potential customer, to the extent that Intel doesn't currently have enough foundry capacity to make both their own chips and Apple's chips (Apple sells almost as many iOS devices as Intel does chips). Getting the contract to make Apple's SoCs would be a huge win.
  You can bet that Intel would rather that THEY were manufacturing Apple's ARM chips than TSMC.
4. Re:Poor premise by iamhassi · 2013-07-03 05:38 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  The blogger's entire article is is based on hearsay, rumors and speculation. No quotes from Apple, TSMC, Intel or any other company he mentioned in the article. No facts at all in the article. Maybe Intel turned Apple down? Maybe we should trust the judgement of a billion dollar company like Apple over a silly blogger's opinion? I'm sure there's many great reasons Apple didn't choose Intel.
  
  --
  my karma will be here long after I'm gone
5. Re:Poor premise by Macman408 · 2013-07-03 08:44 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  +1 to this...
  Intel has great foundries and process engineers, and they have been pretty consistently ahead of TSMC and other foundries. There are also a million reasons to NOT use Intel. For one, there is no way Apple will ever be Customer #1 at Intel - Intel will always always ALWAYS be customer #1 at their own fabs. If there's limited capacity, Apple would lose out to Intel. TSMC might not be willing to put Apple on a pedestal over all their other customers, but they at least won't be 2nd place to anybody - in a limited-capacity situation, Apple would get a fair share of some sort, rather than zero.
  There's also an argument to be made for spreading the wealth around; Intel got their leadership position because everybody bought CPUs from them, giving them huge piles of cash to invest in R&D, making it hard for everybody else (eg AMD) to compete because they don't have the process advantage that Intel does.
  Also, TSMC isn't a competitor, but Intel is trying to be with their mobile chips. TSMC sells fab space to whoever wants it, but they don't make any chips or sell any devices. Intel isn't quite a direct competitor with Apple, but there may be some desire to not give them any more profits that could be used to fund R&D of mobile chips/devices that could be used by Apple's competitors. The revenue TSMC earns will go into further process R&D, since that's their only business.
  So there are all kinds of reasons to not use Intel for fab, even assuming that they would offer it to Apple.
Does the CPU matter? by Kenja · 2013-07-03 05:19 · Score: 1, Insightful

People are buying the platform, and it only comes from one vendor. It's not like with Android where you can compare different hardware specs. Apple will produce a single product at a given price point with a given set of hardware specs, and that's what people will buy. Not saying this is a good or bad thing, just that it's a thing.

--

"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
This is not a tech issue by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-03 05:21 · Score: 3, Insightful

Intel supplies most of Apple's CPUs, yes?
To give one supplier most or all of your business gives them a HUGE advantage over you.
Just look at what happened to everyone who tied their business to Microsoft or IBM.
This is a business strategy issue - not a tech one.
Personally, I think Apple should take their cash and make their own processors, allowing for their OS to have a firmware component and thereby boosting performance and security.
1. Re:This is not a tech issue by Chas · 2013-07-03 05:53 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Personally, I think Apple should take their cash and make their own processors, allowing for their OS to have a firmware component and thereby boosting performance and security.
  No. Even Apple isn't THAT stupid.
  There are well established players in the fab market. Why the hell would Apple spend years and BILLIONS, breaking into, then playing "catch up", getting an "also ran" up and going?
  The company's FAR more agile this way.
  One major issue on a prospective fab line (that they own themselves) could set them back years and uncountable quantities of money.
  If that happens with a fab partner, they just go and shop their business around to another fab.
  Then there's the fact that Apple just flat out DOES NOT WANT that kind of low-level engineering business. They a boutique "gadget" supplier. And they really don't want to be anything else.
  
  --
  
  Chas - The one, the only.
  THANK GOD!!!
Intel isn't a foundry by mozumder · 2013-07-03 05:22 · Score: 3, Insightful

They make their own chips, and you buy what they make.
Apple isn't going to be able to get Intel to fab their custom chips for them. That isn't Intel's business model.
Intel sells their own CPUs. They don't sell your CPUs.
They just happen to have the best fabs.
Intel was not an option by Sycraft-fu · 2013-07-03 05:25 · Score: 4, Insightful

Intel's high end fabs are tasked to capacity with their own chips near as I know. They are probably not interested in taking on outside orders for ARM chips.
Now I suppose Apple could switch over to x86, but I doubt they'd be willing to do that given that they own a big stake in ARM. Also at this point Intel doesn't have x86 processors suitable for phones. They may make such a thing in the future but they do not now.
So ya, Intel would be the best option... if they were an option. They have fabs above and beyond anyone else, they spend billions in R&D on it and as such are nearly always a node ahead and have good yields. However, their fabs are for them. Their 22nm fabs are busily cranking out Haswell and Ivy Bridge chips. They are not for rent for cranking out ARM chips, unless something has changed since last I looked.
Re:Ultrabook II? by gl4ss · 2013-07-03 05:29 · Score: 3, Insightful

Remember when Intel took the MacBook air design and turned it into the Ultrabook reference design for its Wintel PC OEMs? Why would Apple not want that to happen again, only faster?
hmmrhh. that's not the reason. apple is still happy buying the latest and greatest from intel.
the reason intel isn't fabbing arms is that they get better money out of fabbing haswell with their production capability.
Apple nor anyone else wants to pay Intel enough to go back to fabbing arm cpu's. they made some top of the line arm's back in the day, but the real money in arm wasn't top end but the bottom end and they got better things to do with their fabs.

--
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Re:Ultrabook II? by alen · 2013-07-03 05:32 · Score: 5, Insightful

Ultrabooks have been around since the 90's. only thing that changed is that intel is now making decent ultra low voltage CPU's and they use flash memory instead of HDD. otherwise Sony used to make some PHB happy laptops in 2000 and 2001 that were thin. PHB's loved them for travel
Re:Ultrabook II? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-03 06:00 · Score: 5, Insightful

Apple nor anyone else wants to pay Intel enough to go back to fabbing arm cpu's. they made some top of the line arm's back in the day, but the real money in arm wasn't top end but the bottom end and they got better things to do with their fabs.
Do you seriously think Apple is not fronting the cash for TSMC's upgraded fabs? Paying cash up front to suppliers so that it can get first access to the newest parts is one of Apple's key strategies and it's the reason Tim Cook got to be the CEO.
If you ask me, Apple either knows something we don't about TSMC, or it wants to build TSMC up as a strategic move to counter Samsung, Qualcomm, Intel, and other companies.