Discussion Leading Edge Foundry Node advances (TSMC, Samsung Foundry, Intel) - [2020 - 2025]

DisEnchantment · Apr 24, 2020

TSMC's N7 EUV is now in its second year of production and N5 is contributing to revenue for TSMC this quarter. N3 is scheduled for 2022 and I believe they have a good chance to reach that target.

N7 performance is more or less understood.

This year and next year TSMC is mainly increasing capacity to meet demands.

TSMC Radically Boosts CapEx to Expand Production Capacities, To Reach $14B For 2019

www.anandtech.com

For Samsung the nodes are basically the same from 7LPP to 4 LPE, they just add incremental scaling boosters while the bulk of the tech is the same.

Samsung is already shipping 7LPP and will ship 6LPP in H2. Hopefully they fix any issues if at all.
They have two more intermediate nodes in between before going to 3GAE, most likely 5LPE will ship next year but for 4LPE it will probably be back to back with 3GAA since 3GAA is a parallel development with 7LPP enhancements.

Samsung’s Aggressive EUV Plans: 6nm Production in H2, 5nm & 4nm On Track

www.anandtech.com

Samsung's 3GAA will go for HVM in 2022 most likely, similar timeframe to TSMC's N3.
There are major differences in how the transistor will be fabricated due to the GAA but density for sure Samsung will be behind N3.
But there might be advantages for Samsung with regards to power and performance, so it may be better suited for some applications.
But for now we don't know how much of this is true and we can only rely on the marketing material.

This year there should be a lot more available wafers due to lack of demand from Smartphone vendors and increased capacity from TSMC and Samsung.
Lots of SoCs which dont need to be top end will be fabbed with N7 or 7LPP/6LPP instead of N5, so there will be lots of wafers around.

Most of the current 7nm designs are far from the advertized density from TSMC and Samsung. There is still potential for density increase compared to currently shipping products.
N5 is going to be the leading foundry node for the next couple of years.

For a lot of fabless companies out there, the processes and capacity available are quite good.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FEEL FREE TO CREATE A NEW THREAD FOR 2025+ OUTLOOK, I WILL LINK IT HERE

maddie · Feb 21, 2025

lightisgood said:
IFS done it.
i18A certainly shows off 1 year lead at GAAFET and 2 years lead at BSPDN vs. TSMC.

Why would they be so modest?

The earliest available sub-2nm advanced node manufactured in North America, offering a resilient supply alternative for customers.

mpumalanga · Feb 21, 2025

lightisgood said:
IFS done it.
i18A certainly shows off 1 year lead at GAAFET and 2 years lead at BSPDN vs. TSMC.

Is this Intel arrogance coming back ?

lightisgood · Feb 21, 2025

maddie said:
Why would they be so modest?

The earliest available sub-2nm advanced node manufactured in North America, offering a resilient supply alternative for customers.

For the moment i18A is monopolized by Intel business unit as internal customer.

maddie · Feb 21, 2025

lightisgood said:
For the moment i18A is monopolized by Intel business unit as internal customer.

"offering a resilient supply alternative for customers."

This contradicts your explanation.

ajsdkflsdjfio · Feb 21, 2025

Hitman928 said:
I'm sure Pat wasn't promising big profits for IFS right away, but there's no way the plan was to spend 10s of billions of dollars on additional capex, go into $50B of debt, mortgage half the new fab, invest in land and fab build-outs to suspend them a couple of years later, all while attracting no major wafer contracts and having to sell off profitable pieces of the company. Pat's plan failed, there's really no way around it. At some point, the board isn't going to let you keep going when the financial situation is this bad. Now, on the technology side, his plan largely succeeded, not perfectly but for the most part, but that's only half the battle he was fighting. The business side of the plan did not work out. Maybe they can pull out a win in the end, but the board seems to be done with IFS, so I don't know if it'll have much more time to try and pull out a win.

I agree, I just don't agree with the idea that those 10s of billions of dollars all were wasted on empty/canceled fabs. Yes a significant amount of money was wasted on buying land, planning, and putting down investments into building new fabs, but imo most of the money went to things that ended up materializing/are still going forward. You talk about no major wafer contracts as if they were the linchpin of the foundry plan where wafer contracts were going to somehow fund all these new fabs Intel was building. That was never the case, Yes intel canceled some fabs partly due to anticipated lower demand, but also due to other major reasons namely due to the fact that intel's other businesses are hemorrhaging money putting them into a much weaker position where they cannot afford to take such huge risks as originally planned. It was always going to be a risk where down payment and heavy investments were to take place before any major wafer contracts were to take place. I mean in the first place even with wafer contracts, you would literally need years or even a decade plus of wafer contracts to pay for all the investment of a fab. There is no world where Intel would be able to secure significant (on the scale of being able to make a dent on fab/foundryR&D investments) wafer contracts before their first competitive node offering has even completed development. Yea usually large companies are given preliminary data and early samples of products, but nonetheless there is still going to be hesitance to switch over to Intel due to a myriad of reasons. Nonetheless with good technology and hopefully working towards a more approachable ecosystem, customers will come foward.

Yes Pat spent too much money on outlandish dreams of more immediate dominance, yes he failed to plug the existing holes in a lot of other key areas of Intel, and yes thus far his business plan has largely been unsuccessful. But most importantly the foundations for a competitive Intel (foundry and products) have been built, and judging whether the business side of foundry has failed overall is simply not possible. As for the future things are looking a lot better, and as I mentioned earlier, the new presidential administration seems to be a lot more supportive of giving Intel support. My only worry is that Intel may not have enough 18a/14a capacity going forward (2026-2028), and whether or not the new CEOs decide to keep foundry.

lightisgood · Feb 21, 2025

maddie said:
"offering a resilient supply alternative for customers."

This contradicts your explanation.

No.
That is implying the risk of "Chinese unification".

Hitman928 · Feb 21, 2025

ajsdkflsdjfio said:
I agree, I just don't agree with the idea that those 10s of billions of dollars all were wasted on empty/canceled fabs. Yes a significant amount of money was wasted on buying land, planning, and putting down investments into building new fabs, but imo most of the money went to things that ended up materializing/are still going forward. You talk about no major wafer contracts as if they were the linchpin of the foundry plan where wafer contracts were going to somehow fund all these new fabs Intel was building. That was never the case, Yes intel canceled some fabs partly due to anticipated lower demand, but also due to other major reasons namely due to the fact that intel's other businesses are hemorrhaging money putting them into a much weaker position where they cannot afford to take such huge risks as originally planned. It was always going to be a risk where down payment and heavy investments were to take place before any major wafer contracts were to take place. I mean in the first place even with wafer contracts, you would literally need years or even a decade plus of wafer contracts to pay for all the investment of a fab. There is no world where Intel would be able to secure significant (on the scale of being able to make a dent on fab/foundryR&D investments) wafer contracts before their first competitive node offering has even completed development. Yea usually large companies are given preliminary data and early samples of products, but nonetheless there is still going to be hesitance to switch over to Intel due to a myriad of reasons. Nonetheless with good technology and hopefully working towards a more approachable ecosystem, customers will come foward.

Yes Pat spent too much money on outlandish dreams of more immediate dominance, yes he failed to plug the existing holes in a lot of other key areas of Intel, and yes thus far his business plan has largely been unsuccessful. But most importantly the foundations for a competitive Intel (foundry and products) have been built, and judging whether the business side of foundry has failed overall is simply not possible. As for the future things are looking a lot better, and as I mentioned earlier, the new presidential administration seems to be a lot more supportive of giving Intel support. My only worry is that Intel may not have enough 18a/14a capacity going forward (2026-2028), and whether or not the new CEOs decide to keep foundry.

I don't think we're that far off on how we see things, but Intel's vision for the foundry becoming IFS 2.0 and attracting major customers was definitely a key piece of the puzzle. No, not all of the capex they spent was wasted, but they spent/borrowed 10s of billions of dollars more than they needed to for internal fab use only. They did it trying to prepare to be an external foundry with major customer orders. The approach you are describing is very reasonable, but it is definitely not the story Intel was telling in the public, representative of their actions, or what they were projecting with partners and potential customers. There were major efforts and big promises made to interested parties that fell apart after Intel failed to deliver milestones on spec and on time.

I understand how you see what Pat did as laying the foundation for success in the future, but in business, when you mortgage the companies future on something, you rarely get the benefit of it working out years down the line. Maybe they find a new CEO who comes in and convinces the board that Intel can build on the foundation that was left and return to profits and leadership, but the new CEO will get the credit, not Pat (publicly at least). Pat's time ran out given the financial troubles he lead the company into, even if much of it was inherited issues from before his tenure. That's just how business works and again, that is why he was fired. Whether what he did was good/necessary or not doesn't matter to answer the question as to why he was fired.

OneEng2 · Feb 21, 2025

Doug S said:
Well I agree from the standpoint of the foundry business. Intel can't win much business no matter how good 18A is because they don't have the wpm capacity to handle that much.

But it would matter from the standpoint of Intel's x86 business, if they had a process advantage over AMD. That could make up for some of their sins as far as ridiculous power consumption, or allow them to clock higher / be faster at the same ridiculous power consumption of today.

Intel can not stop the bleeding in DC and Desktop (and Laptop to a lesser extent) without a significantly better product than Zen 5 in 2025 or 2026 .... which they won't have (not until 2027 Q1 I am guessing). Even in 2027, I would guess that much of their production would still be ARL and LNL, not PTL. CWF will not show up until 2026 ... I am guessing Q3?... but won't account for much volume until 2027 I am guessing.

Still, once 2027 comes around, Intel could definitely start getting into the green financially again. My concern would be that while one can easily see how an 18A Nova Lake and Panther Lake can cause trouble for the existing N4P Zen 5 from a performance standpoint, It will be doing so while Intel tries to pay off a crap ton of NRE spent on the 18A process. Intel will be producing a fraction of the wafers that TSMC will produce on N3X orders. This means that TSMC gets to amortize its investment in the N3 node over a much larger volume of wafers than Intel will on 18A. Then, Intel plans to move to High NA .... another big investment. I guess I am saying that I just worry that from a financial standpoint, it is hard to see how IFS is going to be able to keep up with TSMC. If you produce fewer wafers, your costs per wafer are higher. No way around it.

lightisgood said:
IFS done it.
i18A certainly shows off 1 year lead at GAAFET and 2 years lead at BSPDN vs. TSMC.

Is 18A significantly better PPA than N3P? My concern for Intel is that Samsung made it to GAA first, but that didn't turn out so well for them. If you cross the finish line with less money in your pocket and lower PPA, did you really win anything?

Having said that, these latest rumors appear to indicate that 18A will match the SRAM cell density of N2 where before, it looked like 18A would not.

As others have stated though, the real proof will be if Intel can make money on 18A, not if they can make a chip with higher performance than AMD. If Intel keeps bleeding cash, all AMD has to do is hold their financial breath long enough for Intel to quit struggling to swim. It's a losing battle.

Intel has to find a profitable way to make chips. I am pretty sure that spending 20Bn every 2 years for a new process node isn't the ticket unless Intel can start making significantly more chips for outside companies. At this time, it is hard to see how that will work out for them.

OneEng2 · Feb 21, 2025

Hitman928 said:
I don't think we're that far off on how we see things, but Intel's vision for the foundry becoming IFS 2.0 and attracting major customers was definitely a key piece of the puzzle. No, not all of the capex they spent was wasted, but they spent/borrowed 10s of billions of dollars more than they needed to for internal fab use only. They did it trying to prepare to be an external foundry with major customer orders. The approach you are describing is very reasonable, but it is definitely not the story Intel was telling in the public, representative of their actions, or what they were projecting with partners and potential customers. There were major efforts and big promises made to interested parties that fell apart after Intel failed to deliver milestones on spec and on time.

I understand how you see what Pat did as laying the foundation for success in the future, but in business, when you mortgage the companies future on something, you rarely get the benefit of it working out years down the line. Maybe they find a new CEO who comes in and convinces the board that Intel can build on the foundation that was left and return to profits and leadership, but the new CEO will get the credit, not Pat (publicly at least). Pat's time ran out given the financial troubles he lead the company into, even if much of it was inherited issues from before his tenure. That's just how business works and again, that is why he was fired. Whether what he did was good/necessary or not doesn't matter to answer the question as to why he was fired.

That is my view as well. Intel's current path could potentially lead to a financial turn around in 2027 time frame, but I find it difficult to believe they have that much financial time left in their egg timer.

Additionally, Intel's ONLY path to profitability using the "we have the best foundry process" strategy is to bring on massive amounts of external customers to help pay off the exponentially increasing costs of maintaining that strategy. This isn't just about having the best performing chip in the industry, this is much more about being able to be a support partner to MANY other companies that makes THEM the best performing chip in the industry.

At least at this time, that is very far from how Intel operates.

maddie · Feb 21, 2025

lightisgood said:
No.
That is implying the risk of "Chinese unification".

Having capacity on offer contradicts "Internal demand monopolizing all capacity".

lightisgood · Feb 21, 2025

maddie said:
Having capacity on offer contradicts "Internal demand monopolizing all capacity".

No.
If we access IFS to buy i18A wafer now.
We should get it in 2027~ because of spenting time on the design of chip.

Hitman928 · Feb 21, 2025

lightisgood said:
No.
If we access IFS to buy i18A wafer now.
We should get it in 2027~ because of spenting time on the design of chip.

That’s not what they’re advertising,

ajsdkflsdjfio · Feb 21, 2025

OneEng2 said:
As others have stated though, the real proof will be if Intel can make money on 18A, not if they can make a chip with higher performance than AMD. If Intel keeps bleeding cash, all AMD has to do is hold their financial breath long enough for Intel to quit struggling to swim. It's a losing battle.

Intel has to find a profitable way to make chips. I am pretty sure that spending 20Bn every 2 years for a new process node isn't the ticket unless Intel can start making significantly more chips for outside companies. At this time, it is hard to see how that will work out for them.

That is my view as well. Intel's current path could potentially lead to a financial turn around in 2027 time frame, but I find it difficult to believe they have that much financial time left in their egg timer.

I don't really see how Intel would be bleeding nearly much cash unless the board who just fired Pat spend just as much as he spent except this time with much less of a need to play catchup with TSMC. Also I really don't know how you draw the conclusion intel is treading water, soon to be drowning, especially with the new presidential administration. A president obsessed with made in America isn't going to let the biggest American semiconductor foundry fail.

I think people look at the stock prices or the 18B net income loss in 2024 and assume Intel is over. That is far from the case, even during the spending spree from 2021-2023 Intel still made billions of dollars a year in profit with 2024 being the only year where they reported a loss. Additionally most of the 18B loss was caused by restructuring/impairment charges during Q3 which alone caused Intel to report a 16.6B loss for that quarter. If you remove this from the equation, Intel's revenue and costs for 2024 were almost identical to 2023 which was in the black. Regarding Intel's future trajectory, if Intel does even a little better in 2025 than they did in 2024 or spend more wisely, they are far from the impending doom people think is so close. Obviously making only a couple billion dollars of revenue a year is a poor showing for such a large company, but it certainly doesn't spell doom and certainly doesn't point to intel having some sort of bomb timer on their business. AMD can't just wait 2-5 years with losing chips (in your theoretical scenario) and poof Intel will be gone.

Hitman928 · Feb 21, 2025

ajsdkflsdjfio said:
I don't really see how Intel would be bleeding nearly much cash unless the board fired Pat just do spend as much as he spent except this time with much less of a need to play catchup with TSMC. Also I really don't know how you draw the conclusion intel is treading water, soon to be drowning, especially with the new presidential administration. A president obsessed with made in America isn't going to let the biggest American semiconductor foundry fail.

I think people look at the stock prices or the 18B net income loss in 2024 and assume Intel is over. That is far from the case, even during the spending spree from 2021-2023 Intel still made billions of dollars a year in profit with 2024 being the only year where they reported a loss. Additionally most of the 18B loss was caused by restructuring/impairment charges during Q3 which alone caused that quarter to have a 16.6B loss. If you remove this from the equation when evaluating Intel's trajectory, Intel's revenue and costs were almost identical to 2023 which was in the black. So if intel does even a little better in 2025 than they did in 2024, they are far from the impending doom everything thinks is so close. Obviously making only a couple billion dollars of revenue a year is a poor showing for such a large company, but it certainly doesn't spell doom and certainly doesn't point to intel having some sort of bomb timer on their business.

Intel has lost money every year starting in 2022, meaning, looking beyond profit margins, they spent more than they made in each year from 2022 on. It is expected that 2025 will be the same.

ajsdkflsdjfio · Feb 21, 2025

Hitman928 said:
Intel has lost money every year starting in 2022, meaning, looking beyond profit margins, they spent more than they made in each year from 2022 on. It is expected that 2025 will be the same.

I'm assuming you're talking about free cash flow but in that case like I said, intel will not be losing nearly as much money unless the new management decides to spend as much as Pat without such a large technology deficit and when supposedly that was the reason they fired him. From their own statements they expect a 10 billion reduction in expenditures during 2025, ofc that's to be taken with a grain of salt but I wouldn't say a large cutting of costs during 2025 is off the table, in addition there is 5.66 billion left of the CHIPS act fund left to be dispersed. It's pretty likely 2025 will be a lot better on Intel's balance sheet and afterwards 2026 the first full year where investments start to pay off with 18A ramp and products like Clearwater forest, Jaguar shores, Nova lake bolstering H2. Unless Intel products continues to fail with a working foundry and a management more dedicated to revitalizing the products.

OneEng2 · Feb 22, 2025

ajsdkflsdjfio said:
I don't really see how Intel would be bleeding nearly much cash unless the board who just fired Pat spend just as much as he spent except this time with much less of a need to play catchup with TSMC. Also I really don't know how you draw the conclusion intel is treading water, soon to be drowning, especially with the new presidential administration. A president obsessed with made in America isn't going to let the biggest American semiconductor foundry fail.

I think people look at the stock prices or the 18B net income loss in 2024 and assume Intel is over. That is far from the case, even during the spending spree from 2021-2023 Intel still made billions of dollars a year in profit with 2024 being the only year where they reported a loss. Additionally most of the 18B loss was caused by restructuring/impairment charges during Q3 which alone caused Intel to report a 16.6B loss for that quarter. If you remove this from the equation, Intel's revenue and costs for 2024 were almost identical to 2023 which was in the black. Regarding Intel's future trajectory, if Intel does even a little better in 2025 than they did in 2024 or spend more wisely, they are far from the impending doom people think is so close. Obviously making only a couple billion dollars of revenue a year is a poor showing for such a large company, but it certainly doesn't spell doom and certainly doesn't point to intel having some sort of bomb timer on their business. AMD can't just wait 2-5 years with losing chips (in your theoretical scenario) and poof Intel will be gone.

Ok, I'll bite.

When wii Intel nne to start dumping money into High NA for 14A in order to maintain or surpass TSMC capability?

It isn't Intel's current financial bottom line, or even their current level of CPU competitivness that concerns me. It is the strategy of market dominance through process advantage.

Due to physics, economics, and market changes, I am dubious on Intel's strategy.

I, like others here, am also concerned about Intel's actual execution. There have been FAR to many over promised fantasies spun by Intel over the last decade for me to take anything presented by Intel at face value any longer.

Don't get me wrong, I am pulling for them. As the biggest US chip company, I wish them all the success in the world. As an executive and planner in a company, I see a difficult strategy to.execute profitability.

Hitman928 · Feb 22, 2025

ajsdkflsdjfio said:
I'm assuming you're talking about free cash flow but in that case like I said, intel will not be losing nearly as much money unless the new management decides to spend as much as Pat without such a large technology deficit and when supposedly that was the reason they fired him. From their own statements they expect a 10 billion reduction in expenditures during 2025, ofc that's to be taken with a grain of salt but I wouldn't say a large cutting of costs during 2025 is off the table, in addition there is 5.66 billion left of the CHIPS act fund left to be dispersed. It's pretty likely 2025 will be a lot better on Intel's balance sheet and afterwards 2026 the first full year where investments start to pay off with 18A ramp and products like Clearwater forest, Jaguar shores, Nova lake bolstering H2. Unless Intel products continues to fail with a working foundry and a management more dedicated to revitalizing the products.

I agree that they will be spending less in 2025 and now with Pat gone, it will probably be even less than before. In 2026, they will probably reduce spending even further. At some point, though, they'll need to start dumping a ton of money into fab capacity again if they want to be the #2 foundry in the world by 2030 as they've claimed. I don't think they're getting back to previous market share levels to get that money from their own products anymore so they'll need significant success in getting external customers a long the way. Hopefully they can do it. It would be tragic to see Intel broken up and sold for parts.

jpiniero · Feb 22, 2025

BK had it right - the best plan would be to fill the fabs with their own products (and enter new markets), rather than try to sell the IFS idea to "Investors".

But that ship has sailed. They're not going to be able to sell Raptor Lake forever.

OneEng2 · Feb 22, 2025

jpiniero said:
BK had it right - the best plan would be to fill the fabs with their own products (and enter new markets), rather than try to sell the IFS idea to "Investors".

But that ship has sailed. They're not going to be able to sell Raptor Lake forever.

I don't think they can get to a competitive quantity of scale with only their internal products. That is the fundamental issue IMO.

jpiniero · Feb 22, 2025

OneEng2 said:
I don't think they can get to a competitive quantity of scale with only their internal products. That is the fundamental issue IMO.

They could if they had their 90% Server market share back. Maybe make some lousy (but cheap) dGPUs, maybe do an ARM SoC for phones... not sell their FPGA business....

ajsdkflsdjfio · Feb 22, 2025

OneEng2 said:
When wii Intel nne to start dumping money into High NA for 14A in order to maintain or surpass TSMC capability?

It isn't Intel's current financial bottom line, or even their current level of CPU competitivness that concerns me. It is the strategy of market dominance through process advantage.

Due to physics, economics, and market changes, I am dubious on Intel's strategy.

I don't think it's inherently an Issue that Intel is unable to rival the capacities of TSMC in the next 5 years or become the No.2 foundry by 2030 in volume. All Intel needs to do is be able to begin to turn a profit on their foundry business in the next few years and stop the bleeding market share in their products, although this is still a significant ask for Intel. Yes they need to reinvest into technologies to make sure they don't fall behind TSMC, but innovation/advancements aren't directly tied to the amount of money you dump into something. If that were the case, Nvidia and AMD would not be in the position they are in now as they were once in the shadow of Intel yet were able to compete for decades and eventually surpass Intel. Intel does need more money to "keep up" but their investments in the past 4 years have brought their technology up to snuff and built much needed capacity going forwards.

Worries about high-NA capacity are important, but the thing is TSMC themselves don't expect to use it in actuality until around 2030+, and regardless it probably won't be as widely used in as many fabrication steps as EUV is being used today, at least not for the first one or two high-NA EUV nodes. For reference, TSMC has around 200 EUV machines which they acquired gradually over the past 3-4 years. I doubt that in a couple years, when TSMC actually begins using high-NA in their nodes, that they will require more than a few dozen high-NA machines for mass production of whatever node they are producing at that time period. Intel already has purchased 6 of ASML's high-NA EUV machines in 2024, more than TSMC, so not only are they not behind but they also have plenty of time before high-NA capacity actually becomes a factor. This is important time for Intel to get their financials in order and reap some of the benefits of their heavy investments from 2021-2024.

As for the physics and state of the market, I think there are actually many factors that benefit Intel's strategy. For example, the AI boom doesn't only far reaching consequences on AI chip designers, but also semiconductor manufacturers. TSMC prices have skyrocketed in addition to probable tariffs going forwards, allowing more headroom for Intel to price their own offerings and also more draw for TSMC alternatives especially with Samsung Foundry performing so poorly. Also although semiconductor manufacturing is getting more expensive essentially limiting the leading edge endeavors to only but a couple major players, the slowing pace of innovations and the diminishing returns of advancements means that Intel doesn't need to as rapidly innovate to keep pace with TSMC nor are they absolutely required to have the bleeding edge node. TSMC 3nm has been out for a while, yet the majority of capacity and revenue has still been in the their 5nm class nodes with 15% vs 35% revenue percentage respectively.

oak8292 · Feb 22, 2025

ajsdkflsdjfio said:
Intel already has purchased 6 of ASML's high-NA EUV machines in 2024, more than TSMC, so not only are they not behind but they also have plenty of time before high-NA capacity actually becomes a factor.

Where do you get that Intel has purchased 6 high NA EUV machines in 2024? ASML is only producing development machines, 5000s and doesn’t expect to ship a production 5200 until sometime in 2026. At least that is what ASML said in January 2025 during the quarterly report out. I think Intel has two 5000s.

You probably need to dig into some financial statements for Intel, the 2024 Annual Report is out. They are still spending money and have obligations to their SCIPs (loan sharks) in 2025.

TSMC prices have ‘skyrocketed’ partly because of their position in the industry but also because costs have sky rocketed and it is a very capital intensive business. Return on equity is an important metric in this business. TSMC has been spending $30 billion per year for the last three years. TSMC ROE is 30 which is about where they have been and where Intel was four years ago.

Intel has $50 billion in assets under construction that they have not started depreciating according to their annual report. How this depreciation hits on revenue will determine earnings for a number of years. They need a lot of revenue.

jdubs03 · Feb 22, 2025

oak8292 said:
Where do you get that Intel has purchased 6 high NA EUV machines in 2024? ASML is only producing development machines, 5000s and doesn’t expect to ship a production 5200 until sometime in 2026. At least that is what ASML said in January 2025 during the quarterly report out. I think Intel has two 5000s.

You probably need to dig into some financial statements for Intel, the 2024 Annual Report is out. They are still spending money and have obligations to their SCIPs (loan sharks) in 2025.

TSMC prices have ‘skyrocketed’ partly because of their position in the industry but also because costs have sky rocketed and it is a very capital intensive business. Return on equity is an important metric in this business. TSMC has been spending $30 billion per year for the last three years. TSMC ROE is 30 which is about where they have been and where Intel was four years ago.

Intel has $50 billion in assets under construction that they have not started depreciating according to their annual report. How this depreciation hits on revenue will determine earnings for a number of years. They need a lot of revenue.

From a cursory glance, Intel received 1 EXE5200 almost a year ago. I didn’t see anything beyond that.

oak8292 · Feb 22, 2025

jdubs03 said:
From a cursory glance, Intel received 1 EXE5200 almost a year ago. I didn’t see anything beyond that.

I believe that was a EXE5000 for development work. There isn’t a process of record yet and the first EXE5200 a production machine probably won’t ship until 2026. Post a link if this wrong because my understanding is coming from what ASML is saying in quarterly reports.

jdubs03 · Feb 22, 2025

oak8292 said:
I believe that was a EXE5000 for development work. There isn’t a process of record yet and the first EXE5200 a production machine probably won’t ship until 2026. Post a link if this wrong because my understanding is coming from what ASML is saying in quarterly reports.

Hm there seems to be some saying 5000, and others saying 5200. But Intel’s own YouTube says it was a 5000.
They did have the first purchase order of a 5200 in early 2022, and there is word it’ll be delivered this year.

[News] ASML to Ship First Second-Gen High-NA EUV Machine in the Coming Months, Aiming for 2026 Production | TrendForce News

Though Intel plans to lower its 2025 capex to USD 20 billion from USD 24 billion in 2024, the semiconductor giant has been gearing up to receive its n...

www.trendforce.com

Discussion Leading Edge Foundry Node advances (TSMC, Samsung Foundry, Intel) - [2020 - 2025]

Golden Member

Diamond Member

Junior Member

Senior member

Diamond Member

Member

Senior member

Diamond Member

Senior member

Senior member

Diamond Member

Senior member

Diamond Member

Member

Diamond Member

Member

Senior member

Diamond Member

Lifer

Senior member

Lifer

Member

Member

Golden Member

Member

Golden Member