This almost ensures profitability, because with only 2 competing high end foundries, TSMC and Samsung/Intel, it’s easier to silently “agree” on price levels than if they were 3.
Still 2 competitors is way better than a TSMC monopoly. So i hope it works out for them to be competitive with TSMC.
PS:
The Tapeout for the latest Apple Chip was about $1 billion, that price tag is so steep that very few can afford to keep up.
https://wccftech.com/dimensity-9400-premium-causing-flagships-to-be-priced-7-5-percent-higher/the tape-out costs alone for Apple’s M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max were estimated to be $1 billion.
Just for scale, if you make $50k per year, it will take 20,000 years to make a billion!
That’s one way to kill off the remaining American foundry business, since if US can’t compete now and Korean and Chinese workers are as good, then there is no reason to shift production off in the long term.
I don’t see how this would seriously impact for instance Global Foundries? Lots of things aren’t bleeding edge.
AFAIK Global Foundries survive on niche productions and on being a trusted partner. Despite not being nearly as well known as TSMC Intel and Samsung. Global foundries is the #3 biggest foundry in the world by revenue.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GlobalFoundries
As of 2023, GlobalFoundries is the third-largest semiconductor foundry by revenue.
Did Intel ever get its foundry business off the ground? I remember some announcements in the last year or two, and then some rumors of yields not being good enough for the customers to move forward, and now some rumors of Intel thinking of spinning off the business. This partnership might be a watered down version of those plans.
