Intel is currently limping along on government handouts, hoping people don't notice their latest generations burn out if you leave them turned on. Taking their primary competition away would push up profit margins and push down the need to fix the engineering. If they aren't dead already, TSMC disappearing would do it.
I wonder how global foundaries is doing these days.
A specific fab had a process issue, that appears to have been rectified in April 2024. Intel 4 is not affected. Other fabs making Intel 7 Ultra is not affected. The issue only noticeably shows up in the highest-end processors, and dropping max clock multiplier by ~3% seems to fix things.
It's not a good thing, but it's not doomsday. The earliest Ryzens 1000s had issues with making incorrect calculations in certain circumstances, and look where they are now. More recently, just a year ago, certain Ryzen mobos literally fried their chips to ~1000 degrees (literally 1000 celsius).
Yes, there are reports of ~50% failure rates, etc... but if you get a shipment of a contaminated batch, it's probably gonna fail, and a single source shouldn't be used to generalise.
To be fair their "last" generation is already 2.5 or so generations old. Not necessarily a very accurate reflection of their current state, their next released will probably make or brake them.
> I wonder how global foundaries is doing these days.
I guess they are in an entirely different market than high-end Intel/TSMC/Samsung fabs?
The following in the article is pretty spot on ”Numerous industry sources say TSMC’s real strength is the ability to deliver process development kits for just about any process or package." There are countless flows and tools that need to get enabled, tested, etc. on the way to make a chip. TSMC has established a fairly good reputations delivering the required collateral. Just having a great process without proper PDKs will not get you anywhere fast
Wouldn't Intel actually become competitive? Of course without TSMC they wouldn't have had any incentives to open up their fabs...