If any of these are true and we assume a company really placed the wrong bet on Intel, then the only conclusion I can come too, as I have previously thought; Intel lied, they lied to everyone, investors, partners, and shareholders about their 10nm progress. They let their pride swallow them.
And then may be everything else made sense. BK's departure, rumours of Apple ditching both Intel x86 and Modem.
Once you caught someone lying, and it does damage to your interest, it will take a long time and hard work to earn the trust back. Something that is hard to quantified in numbers for analyst.
I still have faith in Intel fixing 10nm, this is speaking as someone who has been labelled as TSMC cheer leader for the past few years. Whether they could fix it in time is a different story though.
[1] https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1332527&page_num...
I know Charlie has an record of breaking all sort of secrets from Intel ( and Nvidia ). But are there really 100 people paying for this?
Seems like something hedge funds/private equity would pay for. The biggest edge those companies have over retail investors is access to knowledge that's not considered MNPI but is also context the general public doesn't really have, through news sources like this and also (perhaps most importantly) expert network companies.
Sidenote: if you could improve compliance or cheapen the cost of it for such firms, you could make oodles of money. Compliance is a massive, expensive risk center that the industry hates managing.
For investors $1000/year is a bargain.
My money is on Motorola, even though it's just under $20B. Other options don't look as reasonable. Maybe HP?
Consider, an expert becomes an expert through their passion and dedication to a topic. If you eliminate emotion from your resources, you eliminate many knowledgeable people.
The fact that the article teases an industry going through change makes me think it's probably a company that produces things for 5G. My money would be on Nokia.
They certainly can go to TMSC or GF with their designs but it will take time (months or years) to validate the designs, and money to make it happen. And this doesn't even take into account Fab capacities. TMSC and GF might be committed to other firms and not have capacity for this new work.
The 5G rollout has already started and vendors should have been shipping their products by now. Not having anything for the first wave means you're going to lose most of the market.
He is very much pro AMD, ATI and Anti Intel, Nvidia.
Although he has a comparatively accurate track record for both Intel and Nvidia leaks.
He also tends to be over dramatic in writing, that is even before the paywall and subscription model. So his style were not the results of trying to sell you $1000/Year subscription. But as long as your know his perspective and history, then his article are much easier to read.
I read an interview with GlobalFoundries which talked about different process node characteristics. [1]
Who would really benefit from the 10nm process? Mobile SoCs, basebands/modems and AI chips. There has to be a high performance and low power requirement to justify being an early adopter of a new process.
Or intel aggressively misled fab customers about the progress of their 10nm efforts.
[1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/12438/the-future-of-silicon-a...
Maxim
Skyworks
NXP
Analog Devices
Microchip
The problem is none of these companies require latest node for their product portfolio, and even if they do the product is likely not be substantial of their revenue, i.e it won't bring the company down as the article has suggested.
Motorola has already changed hands once, as has Nokia
A failed chip project will not sink them.
"ARM, challenging Samsung, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and GlobalFoundries in the mobile SoC fab space."
Edit: Now I remember, it was the story about Intel Pentium 4 scaling problems. He broke the story about Intel will never reach whatever silly Ghz they initially promised. And Intel were not happy. ( That was nearly 20 years ago... I am getting old)
> ReefShark packs more functionality into 50 percent smaller hardware compared to products that use discrete components > ReefShark chipset decreases mMIMO antenna size by half >ReefShark cuts energy use by 85 percent, increasing deployment options >Boosts the intelligence and performance of MIMO antennas
So density and power. This chipset would be around for a long time, it makes sense to be on the latest process.
When a chip design is stable enough for manufacturing them. But chips usually have post si bugs and so the tape out is usually a back and forth process depending on how complex thechip is and how competent the design team was.
tldr this article is basically saying the 10nm is so screwed up they can't just adjust a few things, they need to fix a lot and the more changes you start having to make the more verification that needs to be done before things are signed off and ready for tapeout.
I suppose the worst case would be an expensive R&D initiative (with ARM paying Intel for prototypes) about how to make ARM cores with Intel's 10nm process, with no usable result. Not likely to sink ARM.
ARM doesn't sell silicon, they license IP. However might be they're licensing IP blocks. Essentially a tested CPU layout you can more or less paste into a design. Think Lego's.
> The push for speed could keep Qualcomm ahead of Intel, its rival in handset baseband chips. Intel announced in November plans to support CDMA and gigabit speeds in its 2018 cellular modems and up to 1.6-Gbit/s downlinks in 2019.
Ericsson were having a hard time competing, if Nokia screwed up may be a M&A with Ericsson makes sense.
Godsh this really is a big story if this turn out to be true.
Edit: Having some more thoughts, the delay still doesn't make Nokia bankrupt, because the initial 5G roll out are small in numbers. Compared to 3G / 4G recurring infrastructure and patents revenue. So I guess it is going to make an impact on Nokia, but nothing as bad as Charles has wrote. He is likely right that his sources suggest Nokia has nothing to deliver or sell in terms of 5G, but again if you know anything about business I doubt this will bring Nokia down.