Additionally, Intel is lobbying Congress to fund Intel fabs so that Intel can take on TSMC, and at the same time lobbying Congress NOT to give any support to TSMC fab in Arizona, even though it will be on US soil.
So after a period of truce, Intel (under Pat Galsinger) is back to being at war with TSMC.
That almost never happens simply because products are rather complex and part of a larger manufacturing and supply chain. If chips yield much better than expected there's still a necessity for other components and work to be done and shifting anything else downstream in the schedule to hit an earlier ship date. Not all of the customers would want an early delivery either as they have plans of their own that coincide with previously set delivery dates. What good is shipping a new CPU half a year early if none of the motherboard manufacturers have been able to release a product yet?
In the cases where something goes right, a company may just add in more components, etc. for downstream activities so that there's more supply at launch.
I'm not real thrilled with the idea of our tax $$$ going to Intel to finance 15 years of bad decisions and stock buybacks.
good for you... ffsThe latest leaked road map has Zen 3D for 2021:
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If the "highly improbable" does happen, then you didn't see it coming, and I did.
Stall what, for crying out loud? You're just going in a full circle here over and over again. Are you suggesting that Ms. Su tricked the whole world? How on Earth is doing what you said you would do stalling?That is all true for general case and mostly not fully applicable to the case being discussed - Zen 3D.
So just stall and miss the boat, as far as ideal window to launch? Again, the discussion is about Zen 3D, not some abstraction.
Stall what, for crying out loud? You're just going in a full circle here over and over again. Are you suggesting that Ms. Su tricked the whole world? How on Earth is doing what you said you would do stalling?
I personally feel that TSMC is the safest bet for my tax $'s....Based on track records, goal achievements, timely executions....You get the picture.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought the goal was for chip production to be on US soil.
Government incentives aside, Intel is certainly TSMCs biggest competitor, they manufacture the most high powered chips do they not? If not first then certainly second.Intel isn't TSMC's competitor at all, not until they enter the foundry market for real. Intel is already behind TSMC, and TSMC's best move to keep them there is to keep delivering new nodes on schedule - and Apple is the one primarily funding that, not AMD. Delivering a high end niche AMD product a quarter or two ahead of schedule is irrelevant in the big picture.
The US government is unlikely to allow Intel to lose this battle. They may not win, but they will never wave a white flag. They will get billions flowing from the government both in terms of purchase guarantees from the Trusted Foundry program plus giveaways like the "CHIPS Act" to help fund construction of new US based fabs. Sure TSMC is / will be getting in on that too, but as a US headquartered company Intel will always have the advantage when it comes to pork.
That is all true for general case and mostly not fully applicable to the case being discussed - Zen 3D.
So just stall and miss the boat, as far as ideal window to launch? Again, the discussion is about Zen 3D, not some abstraction.
Does it really matter either way?
If they launch a small amount of product in order to try to pre-empt whatever Intel might be doing they're just going to get flak for barely having any product available. AMD has already garnered some ill will because of low supply of their new GPUs.
Even if they wait and Intel has a slightly better CPU that can retake the performance crown, AMD will sell every Zen 3 CPU they can make.
There really is no way of determining what constitutes an ideal launch window that doesn't rely on a lot of subjectivity or even ignoring that a lot of conjecture that ultimately is unknowable. You can opine on what might be the best launch window, but other people can disagree with your reasoning or present their own arguments for why a different launch window may be superior.
I eat it all! 🤣 Though bacon is missing from that image!Yes, a very popular food item.
Just read to what I replied to. @Mopetar mentioned a hypothetical situation for a product being ready early. That it would still launch at the planned date, possibly with higher quantity.
This does not apply to Zen 3D, because it needs to launch early.
It matters so much, it is huge.
Alder Lake is a symbol as much as it is a CPU. It is a symbol of Intel comeback.
If AMD beats Alder Lake with Zen 3D, then AMD will have smooth sailing and market share gains until that next Intel comeback, Meteor Lake in 2023
If AMD misses the window, than the story is: "Intel is back"
Zen 3 was quite supply limited. It wasn't until April when you could readily buy some parts at MSRP and until June when all of the SKUs were readily available at MSRP.
And Zen 3 launch was a tremendous success. Look at the current box CPU sales - ~80% market share for AMD.
If you win the mind share, market share will come.
Launching Zen 3D within a month of Alder Lake would be fine, launching in 2022 would mean AMD blew a PR opportunity.
Or, you can just go by Zen 3 launch. It was a huge success, despite supply being nowhere near the demand.
Supply of parts on the date of the launch will not be what determines long term success of Zen 3D. It will be Zen 3D performance.
It matters so much, it is huge.
Alder Lake is a symbol as much as it is a CPU. It is a symbol of Intel comeback.
If AMD beats Alder Lake with Zen 3D, then AMD will have smooth sailing and market share gains until that next Intel comeback, Meteor Lake in 2023
If AMD misses the window, than the story is: "Intel is back"
Zen 3 was quite supply limited. It wasn't until April when you could readily buy some parts at MSRP and until June when all of the SKUs were readily available at MSRP.
And Zen 3 launch was a tremendous success. Look at the current box CPU sales - ~80% market share for AMD.
If you win the mind share, market share will come.
Launching Zen 3D within a month of Alder Lake would be fine, launching in 2022 would mean AMD blew a PR opportunity.
Or, you can just go by Zen 3 launch. It was a huge success, despite supply being nowhere near the demand.
Supply of parts on the date of the launch will not be what determines long term success of Zen 3D. It will be Zen 3D performance.
Alder Lake won’t see the light of day until the end of the year. Intel will make an announcement soon, but actual retail availability is still pretty far out. Likely December. Oh and only for a small amount of desktop SKUs.
Even if Intel beat AMD to market (I don’t think they will), the follow up AMD announcement will make Intel look really bad as AMD just made Alder Lake obsolete by tweaking a year old architecture. Assuming the refresh beats Alder Lake of course.
AMD may even give us a small preview of Zen 4 if we are lucky.
We should not have subsidized them 15 years ago either. They chose to squander their resources and talent not to mention hubris for short term stock gains. Rewarding that kind of selfishness is the exact wrong thing to do.Politicians react slowly, and aren't forced into action until it is too late and everyone panics.
Had there been subsidies to keep fabs in the US 15 years ago, we might have had the same cumulative dollar support we're talking about now but we'd have a more competitive domestic foundry market - maybe not for the bleeding edge, but certainly for one or two nodes behind which is what the US government is mostly concerned about for security and supply chain reasons.
That said there is something to say about funding into technology and production for resources or equipment you find important but typically can't be priced competitively in the current market. People complained about the bailing out the automotive market, but one of the important parts of that was that their death would have also destroyed all of their vendors that include companies that contribute to defense hardware production. I don't know if managed correctly if silicon chip production in the US can be competitive to keep up and or keep up enough for federal electronic hardware.We should not have subsidized them 15 years ago either. They chose to squander their resources and talent not to mention hubris for short term stock gains. Rewarding that kind of selfishness is the exact wrong thing to do.
AMD doesn't have to beat Intel in every metric to 'win mindshare' or win the market. Box sales were overwhelmingly in AMD's favor as soon as they launched Zen 2, even though Coffee Lake CPUs were faster in single threaded scenarios and gaming. They've more or less maintained retail sales dominance since. What Zen 3 allowed them to do is increase the prices of their products while still selling everything they could make. If Alder Lake ends up besting Zen 3 in gaming or other cases, AMD just has to adjust prices a bit down and we're back to Zen 2 vs. Coffee Lake, where AMD was doing very well. They'll get a little lower margins than pre-Alder Lake, but their increasing server revenue should take care of that just fine.
Give all that you posted, would it be fair to summarize that AMD releasing a Halo part that beats Alder Lake will allow AMD to maintain higher prices across the board?
Probably not. Zen 3 is already a known commodity. If Zen3d has decent volume and can beat ALD, then they could raise ASP a little bit, but AMD cares more about gross margins so I don't know if doing a lot of volume of these SKUs would be worth it to them given their increase cost, especially anything higher than 1 stack.
AMD received funding through the DARPA's Fast Forward initiatives and the return has been phenomenal. Intel and others did as well, though I think Intel's (known) projects all ended up being canned.That said there is something to say about funding into technology and production for resources or equipment you find important but typically can't be priced competitively in the current market. People complained about the bailing out the automotive market, but one of the important parts of that was that their death would have also destroyed all of their vendors that include companies that contribute to defense hardware production. I don't know if managed correctly if silicon chip production in the US can be competitive to keep up and or keep up enough for federal electronic hardware.
Either way the point still stands, Doug is right if they actually cared, caring just now is pretty useless.
I think Lisa Su is smarter than that. She cares about Margin Dollars as primary, Gross Margin Rate as secondary. It's just the Wall Street analysts who think they sound smart when they keep asking about Gross Margin.
It may take some silicon cost to get to a product that can then harvest the greatest Margin Dollars. AMD threw nearly 1000 mm2 of silicon at every server CPU to claim performance dominance in server market. And that dominance is now delivering monetary rewards.
There is no reason not to follow the same formula in the client space.
You're trying to split hairs but essentially arguing the same thing. Gross margin as reported to share holders favors products with higher margin dollars. This is why they design for Epyc so much, because it adds to their gross margins far more than anything else they sale by having the largest margin dollars per SKU. I'd be very surprised if AMD considers 4 cache stack Zen3d worth while after stack yields are taken into account, they can only charge so much for these SKUs in the consumer space. For 4 stack cache Epyc, they will be able to charge very large prices as they will pay for themselves many times over for those customers who need them as part of their own production.
I think a lot of people are unaware of discounting that takes place on server end, especially with the highest volume cloud providers. AMD may be selling Epyc parts at 50% or even 80% off. These near 1000 mm2 server parts probably sell the greatest volume in $1,000-$2000 range after discounts.
Now, when Intel is desperate, Intel would throw more silicon at the problem to save its server market share but can't, because of Intel's inferior architecture. That's after years of Intel's gross margin addiction that resulted in Intel blowing it's lead in both design and fabrication.
"Saving money", chasing hypothetical Gross Margin while losing leadership position in market place is why AMD is in the lead, and Intel is chasing it.
So, the last thing AMD is thinking right now: "Let's do what Intel would do".
The worst position to be in is to not have a design where throwing silicon at the problem will do you any good.
2nd worst, is to have a way to throw silicon at the problem, but you don't, thinking Gross Margins. Because someone else will and will eat your lunch.
If Intel could stack today, Intel would be stacking kitchen sinks 8 high (learning from the folly past mis-management)
We should not have subsidized them 15 years ago either. They chose to squander their resources and talent not to mention hubris for short term stock gains. Rewarding that kind of selfishness is the exact wrong thing to do.
Hyperscalers do get substantial discounts (highly doubtful it is even close to 80% for Zen2/3 today), but they are also still a smaller part of the TAM and this also doesn't apply to SKUs like a (rumored) 4 stack Epyc which will carry a large premium that, again, the people who need it will be willing to pay.
No one's arguing to chase GM at all costs, but throwing silicon at the problem disregarding the cost of the silicon is equally foolish and has rarely made a successful company. Even the 1000 mm2 you have mentioned is void of context as 40% of that size is on an old and much cheaper process and the rest is split into high yielding chiplets, so AMD can afford to throw much more silicon into a product than Intel in this context.
Whatever the yields for stacking 4 hi are, the premiums will be absorbed by the Epyc customers who need it. I'm not confident the same can be said in the consumer market.
If Intel really just wanted to throw silicon at the problem, they would have released 8C Ice Lake or 8C Tiger Lake much earlier. They didn't because it was too costly given their yields at the time.
They easily could have, but would have taken a major hit in costs. Likewise, AMD could easily buy up TSMC risk production and be way ahead of Intel with an even bigger process lead than they've enjoyed the last couple of years, but again, they didn't because the cost would have been too high.
There needs to be a proper balance and understanding of how much your customer is willing to pay.
Going for an epeen win, price be darned is a strategy I really don't think AMD is going to play into. The only way I see AMD going this route is if ADL absolutely destroys Zen 3 and Zen 4 is at least a year or more away after ADL and ADL is available with decent volume.
If that's the case, then maybe they start offering a lot more cache to try and stay competitive and not be crushed in sales, but I really doubt this will be the case.