News Intel reaches 'exciting milestone' for 18A 1.8nm-class wafers with first run at Arizona fab

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So if I understood correctly, a month ago Broadcom abandons Intel because the production processes were poor, then after a month news that Broadcom and Nvidia are testing 18th production, then news that they postpone factories for problems beyond 2030 and then new CEO and TO 18th is ready for production, today. Tomorrow will another piece of news come out that will say the opposite?
Question: when the Chinese claim to have reached Nvidia they shout propaganda news and then it comes to mind, but will this also be propaganda towards the Taiwanese to make them lower their prices?
 
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Marco_il_bello said:
So if I understood correctly, a month ago Broadcom abandons Intel because the production processes were poor, then after a month news that Broadcom and Nvidia are testing 18th production, then news that they postpone factories for problems beyond 2030 and then new CEO and TO 18th is ready for production, today. Tomorrow will another piece of news come out that will say the opposite?
Question: when the Chinese claim to have reached Nvidia they shout propaganda news and then it comes to mind, but will this also be propaganda towards the Taiwanese to make them lower their prices?
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It is all fake news. Even the market is sensitive to rumors, which is sad. Modern news is yesterday's National Enquirer.
 
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Anything that ultimately keep AMD from spiraling out of our hands like happened with Nvidia and their prices, is a good thing.

I am not Intel fan, never was, but this is good for the market. I dont want any one single entity cornering the whole market like nvida had with its 4000 series. When that happens companies tend to charge what they want rather than what they think the market will pay. And this is exactly the state we are in now.

3500 dollars for a GPU anybody? We are talking brand new car levels of money for a GPU now. Yesh, ok, it might be a tata car from india but a brand new car it is still.
 
Shiznizzle said:
Anything that ultimately keep AMD from spiraling out of our hands like happened with Nvidia and their prices, is a good thing.

I am not Intel fan, never was, but this is good for the market. I dont want any one single entity cornering the whole market like nvida had with its 4000 series. When that happens companies tend to charge what they want rather than what they think the market will pay. And this is exactly the state we are in now.

3500 dollars for a GPU anybody? We are talking brand new car levels of money for a GPU now. Yesh, ok, it might be a tata car from india but a brand new car it is still.
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don't hope for anything, because if the REAL competition comes they ban it, perhaps many have forgotten the Huawei case, you are good and you pass the competition ban you.
So competition won't exist
 
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Even if the chips are 2x better than the competition Intel is still a design and end product competitor so I'm not sure if they can attract the big fabless players to their foundry but if they're good enough they certainly will force them. On the other hand it can be very lucrative to keep the best chips to oneself and only share them with certain non-competitors like the US military. Leveraging superior design and manufacturing technologies has always been Intel's strategy and can once again help them become a product monopolist.
 
Marco_il_bello said:
So if I understood correctly, a month ago Broadcom abandons Intel because the production processes were poor, then after a month news that Broadcom and Nvidia are testing 18th production, then news that they postpone factories for problems beyond 2030 and then new CEO and TO 18th is ready for production, today. Tomorrow will another piece of news come out that will say the opposite?
Question: when the Chinese claim to have reached Nvidia they shout propaganda news and then it comes to mind, but will this also be propaganda towards the Taiwanese to make them lower their prices?
Click to expand...
I believe that 2030 was for Ohio. There has basically been just one leaker with negative news about Intel's 18A and then responses from more credible sources refuting him. But he will still get stories the next time he leaks.
 
3en88 said:
Even if the chips are 2x better than the competition Intel is still a design and end product competitor so I'm not sure if they can attract the big fabless players to their foundry
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The big fabless players are losing millions on every launch because they can't get enough stock fast enough, let alone the bad press.
Also nvidia has probably maxed out the amount of money they can make from tsmc alone and I bet nvidia likes money.
 
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Hopefully Intel 18A is competitive.
TSMC's advanced nodes are at max capacity, and I'm sure most of it is gobbled up by Apple and Nvidia, not AMD and Intel.

The other major player in fabs, Samsung, has dropped the ball worse than Intel when it comes to advanced nodes.
 
The biggest positive is certainly that the Arizona fabs are producing wafers already. From my understanding these are to Intel 18A what Ireland has been to Intel 4/3. Seems like a much less hectic ramp than that was though which may be by design as Fab 62 has lagged 52 in construction. I imagine this should help assuage capacity concerns as they pitch to external customers.
 
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phead128 said:
How is test wafers different from engineering samples that was shared with customers months ago?
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Everything until now was produced in Oregon which is the leading fab for every new Intel node, but it's also the home R&D with limited volume. There are two EUV fabs in Arizona Fab 52 (where these come from) and 62 (should be operational this year) which are for full volume production. So while the Oregon fab can supplement and provide initial volume it cannot be solely relied upon and that's just with Intel's production volume. Given that 18A is the first big push for external foundry services it's imperative that they can expand capacity immediately which the Arizona fabs provide.
 
Marco_il_bello said:
So if I understood correctly, a month ago Broadcom abandons Intel because the production processes were poor, then after a month news that Broadcom and Nvidia are testing 18th production, then news that they postpone factories for problems beyond 2030 and then new CEO and TO 18th is ready for production, today. Tomorrow will another piece of news come out that will say the opposite?
Question: when the Chinese claim to have reached Nvidia they shout propaganda news and then it comes to mind, but will this also be propaganda towards the Taiwanese to make them lower their prices?
Click to expand...
That Broadcom leak was from when they looked at 18a way back in last August. So obviously the process has evolved a lot since then. Also keep in mind Broadcom wants HUGE dies so any error issues will be much more impactful. 50 errors on a wafer with 50 dies is going to be completely useless. 50 errors on a wafer with 200 GPU dies just means those with errors will simply be cut down to lower SKU GPUs like the 5070ti vs the 5080 and still be completely useable.

This is what I thought was so stupid when that leak quickly turned into "OmG 18a iS dOoMeD!" Not only was it a very early look at the process, but it was from a point of view that needs near perfect yields that TSMC also struggles with. People need to understand "yield" isn't just the process itself, but also takes what's ON it into account. Apple can deal with any errors on 3N because their chips are miniscule and errors effect less of the overall chips and they have huge margins. But when you get into monstrous dies like Broadcom or Nvidia's Blackwell AI cards every error becomes a game changer.

Those big dies don't avoid the cutting edge because of higher prices, they avoid them because they inherently have higher errors.
 
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