News TSMC founder says Tim Cook told him Intel did not know how to be a foundry

[Admin]

Founder of TSMC remembers how his company managed to land a supply contract with Apple.

TSMC founder says Tim Cook told him Intel did not know how to be a foundry : Read more

 

[Gururu]

Obviously Intel was too expensive, otherwise Apple would be manufacturing its phones in the U.S.

 

[rluker5]

In 2011 Apple was looking for older nodes Intel was unstoppable and TSMC was a distant second if not 3rd in process node leadership.

14 years is a long time in the tech business and this conversation probably isn't relevant to the present anymore.

 

[ezst036]

LOL

 

[Loadedaxe]

LOL

IKR, some of these comments....smh.

 

[systemBuilder_49]

"When the customer asks a lot of things, we have learned to respond to every request," Chang said. "Some of them were crazy, some of them were irrational, [but] we respond to each request courteously. […] Intel has never done that, I knew a lot of customers of Intel's here in Taiwan and all [of them] wished that there were another supplier."

LOL !! I was at the largest TSMC plant 6w ago, and wondered what was happening inside that giant building! They were probably laughing at some customer questions before answering them as best they could, and with great courtesy !!

 

[rammed5559]

This blog content is great stuff but there are certain things I like (example writing [ word and not close with] but just continue writing) to not do as it's really make me feel like content was written just to write about anything

 

[EzzyB]

TSMC says competition is bad.

OK.

 

[jkflipflop98]

Too bad for him. TSMC isn't going to exist in 10 years.

 

[phead128]

Intel is filled with incompetent middle-managers who contribute zero value, and greedy executives who care about stock prices above innovation at the leading edge.

 

[newtechldtech]

In 2011 Apple was looking for older nodes Intel was unstoppable and TSMC was a distant second if not 3rd in process node leadership.

14 years is a long time in the tech business and this conversation probably isn't relevant to the present anymore.

nope. this is TODAY ... He is talking about ALL customers ! even TODAY

I knew a lot of customers of Intel's here in Taiwan and all [of them] wished that there were another supplier."

 

[newtechldtech]

Remember guys that Intel is the same company that insisted on 4 cores CPU forever while they had the technology to give us more cores , until AMD did ! they never "cared" to bring something new into the market instead of money to their pockets using 20 years old technology again and again and again.

That was the main Reason Steve Jobs left intel and started RD Apple own Chip.

 

[nogames]

Obviously Intel was too expensive, otherwise Apple would be manufacturing its phones in the U.S.

No, we are talking about the main chip not the entire phone. The production of that would still happend in China (mainly).

But it was not a question of price, but of mindset and capabilities at Intel that prevented the US production for the main chip.
The youtube channel Asionometry made a great video about Intel Foundtry and the problems.

 

[TerryLaze]

Remember guys that Intel is the same company that insisted on 4 cores CPU forever while they had the technology to give us more cores , until AMD did ! they never "cared" to bring something new into the market instead of money to their pockets using 20 years old technology again and again and again.

That was the main Reason Steve Jobs left intel and started RD Apple own Chip.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/2960
intel had hexa cores since 2010...nobody (on mainstream) would buy them because the technology was too expensive.
Because of how expensive it was AMD gave us 3-4core cpus in 2011 that they called 6-8 cores.
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/a...ion-lawsuit-eight-cores-settlement,40256.html

AMD only released ryzen when it became cheap enough to actually make 8 core cpus and intel turned their high end CPUs into mainstream for the same reason.

 

[ihateregister]

Tim Cook... ? My guy looks like a mummy. Steve Jobs was running Apple in 2007, tim cook didnt even work at apple. Also, Apple approached Intel, not the other way around. Times change. I think TSMC days are numbered, china will invade Taiwan any day now. What's more funny is how they're "certain" they can blow up the Taiwan fabs if China invades. Wow, great plan!

 

[Balakan9]

Ah.... Some memories

Apple A8 was single sourced from tsmc 20nm.
Samsung's 20nm was never successful on planar shrink, this got Samsung LSI head KH Kim fired.

Reason Apple started working with tsmc was due to an yield issue on A6 on 32HKMG, Samsung never solve that until IBM fixed that in last minute, almost cause iPhone release delay. And apple started to look at tsmc for foundry services.

The failure of 20nm prompted Samsung to move finfet to "true" 14nm. While tsmc 16nm keep same BEOL as 20nm. A9 die tape out to tsmc is 16% larger than tape out to Samsung on same design.

Samsung 14nm was a huge success.(tsmc stock dropped 35% during that period). They had Qualcomm and Nvidia as customer, but found out they don't have enough capacity.

Apple intended to give all A9, however Samsung screwed up two things
Samsung has very bad iddq on that node that cause worse battery life. And apple need to run iPhone at lower vdd, means slower speed

Turns out iPhone 6s was a huge success, and Samsung had no capacity to fulfill Apple demands, even fill Austin S2 and Global Foundries Fab8.

That was the last time Apple use Samsung as foundry

 

[Balakan9]

Intel is filled with incompetent middle-managers who contribute zero value, and greedy executives who care about stock prices above innovation at the leading edge.

Unfortunately, after Andy G stepped down as CEO, Intel's focus shifted from technology and RD to Operation and Finance

Craig Bartlett at least knows how to run manufacturing. But the biggest mistake is to have finance guy to run Intel after that.

Then Otellini , Krzanich, and Swan just continue screwed up Intel, especially Swan

Pat could have been a good CEO if he had the position 15 years earlier. Pat today, talked too much and no longer hands on.

And .... Sorry but one main reason for Intel's fall is Intel's focus on DEI
Other than Tracy Smith, none of the board members have real experience in semiconductor industry.

Good luck on finding next CEO by this board.

 

[Dustyboy1492]

Remember guys that Intel is the same company that insisted on 4 cores CPU forever while they had the technology to give us more cores , until AMD did ! they never "cared" to bring something new into the market instead of money to their pockets using 20 years old technology again and again and again.

That was the main Reason Steve Jobs left intel and started RD Apple own Chip.

This stupid conspiracy AMD fanboy narrative is just wrong, give me a break.

 

[newtechldtech]

This stupid conspiracy AMD fanboy narrative is just wrong, give me a break.

what is wrong exactly ? Intel had their cores in the Xeons system and never bothered releasing more than 4 cores for consumers . Only After AMD released the first 8 cores CPU they felt the pain AND lost the consumer market.

 

[TerryLaze]

what is wrong exactly ? Intel had their cores in the Xeons system and never bothered releasing more than 4 cores for consumers .

Neither did AMD, they also waited until 2017 to release a decent 8 core.

Only After AMD released the first 8 cores CPU they felt the pain AND lost the consumer market.

Last quarter, only for client which is the consumer market:
intel revenue 7,330 net 2,722
amd revenue 1,881 net 276
Just in case you can't figure it out but that is 10 times as much money that intel makes, as a bottom line, from the consumer market compared to amd...

 

[rluker5]

nope. this is TODAY ... He is talking about ALL customers ! even TODAY

Try reading the article. This is the context of Tim Cook's quote:
"When Intel's CEO Paul Otellini approached Tim Cook in early 2011, offering to manufacture Apple's chips, Apple paused discussions with TSMC for two months to evaluate the proposal.

Morris Chang, concerned about this pause, traveled to Apple's headquarters to check on the situation. In a private meeting, Tim Cook reassured Chang that Apple would not choose Intel.

"Intel just does not know how to be a foundry," Tim Cook reportedly told Chang. "
What year was Tim Cook's quote from again?

 

[rluker5]

Remember guys that Intel is the same company that insisted on 4 cores CPU forever while they had the technology to give us more cores , until AMD did ! they never "cared" to bring something new into the market instead of money to their pockets using 20 years old technology again and again and again.

That was the main Reason Steve Jobs left intel and started RD Apple own Chip.

Tell that to my daughter. She has my old 4770k from 2013 and refuses an upgrade. Back then people were saying I was silly for not getting the 4670k since nobody needed more than 4 threads at that time. It was utterly bottlenecked by my SLI 780tis. It took until Pascal for anyone to see that 4 cores weren't enough and the next year Intel had 6 in the mainstream.
I've got a 13600k in the living room so my daughter sees 14 cores all of the time, but doesn't want them. I'm not going to get mad at her for being frugal, but she is part of the 4 cores forever problem. It doesn't help that I handed her down the 32GB of 2400c10 DDR3 I had with it.

If she had some FX 8350 or something I'm sure she would be fine with an upgrade.

 

[Loadedaxe]

Remember guys that Intel is the same company that insisted on 4 cores CPU forever while they had the technology to give us more cores , until AMD did ! they never "cared" to bring something new into the market instead of money to their pockets using 20 years old technology again and again and again.

That was the main Reason Steve Jobs left intel and started RD Apple own Chip.

This might seem a bit misleading, but I get it, it’s the common perception.
Apple has been developing ARM technology for a while. While not exact, somewhere around 1999-2000, with Intel CPUs merely serving as a stepping stone in their long-term strategy.
Apple first developed an ARM-based CPU in the early 90s with the ARM6-based Apple Newton. The Newton, Apple's early attempt at a personal digital assistant known as the PDA, used the ARM 610 processor.

However, Apple's first in-house designed ARM CPU came much later, with the Apple A4 chip in 2010. The A4 powered the first-generation iPad and later the iPhone 4. This marked Apple's move towards custom silicon, eventually leading to the M-series chips used in Macs today.

As far as Intel innovating in the consumer market? They didn't need to.

Intel was absolutely crushing it in the mid-2000s. After the rough days of the Pentium 4 NetBurst disaster, they came back strong with Core 2 Duo in the mid 2000s, which wiped the floor with AMD’s Athlon 64 X2. Then came the Core i7, which cemented their dominance for nearly a decade.

AMD tried to fight back with Bulldozer, but that was a disaster, high core counts but terrible single-threaded performance and power efficiency. Intel kept rolling with Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, and Haswell, all of which were major hits. During this time, AMD was mostly competing on price rather than performance.

It wasn’t until Ryzen dropped in 2017 that AMD finally turned the tables. Since then, Intel has had to play catch-up, leading to the hybrid core design they have today.

So, here’s a small lesson. AMD played a role in the ‘stuck on 4 cores’ era as well. If you keep an open mind and stay unbiased, this should put things into perspective.

 

[Loadedaxe]

Tim Cook... ? My guy looks like a mummy. Steve Jobs was running Apple in 2007, tim cook didnt even work at apple. Also, Apple approached Intel, not the other way around. Times change. I think TSMC days are numbered, china will invade Taiwan any day now. What's more funny is how they're "certain" they can blow up the Taiwan fabs if China invades. Wow, great plan!

lol, Tim Cook has been at Apple since the early days.

1998 I believe. He learned everything he knows from Steve Jobs.
You should read the book Tim Cook - The Genius Who Took Apple to the Next Level.
It is very interesting if your a tech junkie.

 

[d0x360]

Obviously Intel was too expensive, otherwise Apple would be manufacturing its phones in the U.S.

It's not the cost of chips that keeps things like phones from being made in the USA, it's labor.

In China foxconn could basically enslave their workers and did, hence the suicide nets. The reason they have recently moved manufacturing OUT of China is because costs have gone up over the years (cost is more than labor, it also includes IP theft for example) and the benefits of the cheap labor have been offset enough to make the move to other places in Asia... Less adversarial places.

I do wonder what the price difference would be if they were made in USA today. It's been years since I've seen an accurate analysis but at this point the economic benefit to the entire country is probably worth paying a bit more for the devices

*Edit, Chatgpt said if just assembly moves to USA then price increase per phone is about $50 for apple & Samsung flagships.

Once all new USA fabs add complete and assuming all chips & complex hardware like logic boards etc are also made here then price would go up about $200 per phone but the benefits to the economy and peoples disposable income would easily offset that and make it a net benefit

Let's go!