Intel 'Did Not Know How To Be a Foundry,' Tim Cook Told TSMC Chief (tomshardware.com) 40
TSMC founder Morris Chang says Apple CEO Tim Cook rejected Intel as a chip manufacturer in 2011 because the company lacked foundry expertise, despite being Apple's main supplier for Mac processors at the time. During a pause in TSMC-Apple talks to evaluate Intel's proposal, Cook told Chang that "Intel just does not know how to be a foundry," leading Apple to eventually choose TSMC as its exclusive chip supplier, the TSMC founder revealed in an interview.
Context for the headline FTA (Score:5, Insightful)
"The implication was that Intel lacked the customer-centric mindset required for a foundry business. Unlike TSMC, which tailors its process technologies to meet customer needs, Intel was used to designing and producing its own chips and struggled to adapt to servicing external clients. By contrast, Apple valued TSMC's ability to listen and respond to specific demands, something Intel historically did not do."
Intel can make chips. They just weren't into customizing (i.e. optimizing) them for their customers. And it sounds like they took the Henry Ford and their Model T tact when it came to marketing: "You can have the chip in any color, as long as it's black." TSMC said, "Sure - we can do whatever you want."
Who wouldn't pick TSMC in that case?
Re:Context for the headline FTA (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Context for the headline FTA (Score:4, Insightful)
And it's really tragic, and an example of how our short-term, all profit to investors thinking has actually hurt our competitiveness as a country. Intel had some tier talent and processes, but was being managed by complete idiots who said.yes to shareholders when they should have said no.
We have to stop believing that shareholders know anything at all. If shareholders knew how to run the business, they would take their money and run a business. They don't, they want to invest and earn some dollars, leaving it to professsionals to run the business. They need to be more selective about who is on the board and what their conflicts of interest may be, and make sure the board is making good choices about CEOs, but that's it. Getting all pissy because every last drop of dollar isn't returned to the top is how you shoot yourself in the foot.
Re:Context for the headline FTA (Score:5, Insightful)
And it's really tragic, and an example of how our short-term, all profit to investors thinking has actually hurt our competitiveness as a country. Intel had some tier talent and processes, but was being managed by complete idiots who said.yes to shareholders when they should have said no.
We have to stop believing that shareholders know anything at all. If shareholders knew how to run the business, they would take their money and run a business. They don't, they want to invest and earn some dollars, leaving it to professsionals to run the business. They need to be more selective about who is on the board and what their conflicts of interest may be, and make sure the board is making good choices about CEOs, but that's it. Getting all pissy because every last drop of dollar isn't returned to the top is how you shoot yourself in the foot.
You're asking to refine not just Intel but our entire business and economy, top to bottom. Wall Street runs on pure speculative fantasy, and shareholders run on that same speculative fantasy. That fantasy is projected onto businesses, and those businesses better conform to that fantasy or they're going to start ripping out C-Suites and replacing them with yes men that *WILL* force the company to conform with the fantasy whether it's good for business or not. This rot has been forming for decades, and we're seeing the full fruition of it now. CEOs rarely have full control of companies anymore, certainly not publicly traded companies. It's the investors, who take their cues from either the VCs or the Wall Street crystal ball brigade who control companies on this scale. It's blowing up radically. Boeing and Intel and two of the ones that get talked about here often, but it's not limited to those two.
We have a society focused on short term profit above *EVERYTHING* else. You aren't going to root that out in any fashion that would be quick enough to save our business realm, nor our overall economy. We'll crash everything into a proverbial mountain before we give up that fantasy of ever-increasing profits quarter by quarter.
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This rot has been forming for decades
Further to your point, one might even say centuries, given that (fun fact) the first stock exchange dates back to 1611.
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The existence of stock exchanges per se is not the problem, though effective regulation of stock exchanges has always been a problem. Industrial development, even before the First Industrial Revolution, depended on being able to raise capital through exchanges. But they have the ability to sink national economies if the stock market is left to run itself.
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We have a society focused on short term profit above *EVERYTHING* else. You aren't going to root that out in any fashion that would be quick enough to save our business realm
The thing you can do is save your individual companies from it by organizing in such a way that the investors DONT have the power to rip out your C-suite, especially by the time you go public. Put restrictions on your board and your shareholders in your charter. Put restrictions on your board and your shareholders in your ByLaw
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This requires smart long-term planning from founders, but management can protect themself fully if they're willing to forego certain investors who may be picky about such protections.
There's even a jelly/jam company I read about where it takes ~5 years for shares to earn a new owner full voting rights. So "mayfly" investors never get a vote.
This means that the investors with voting rights are long term holders, and generally in it for the long term, meaning that decisions affecting profitability are forecast over years, not quarters.
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Last I heard about it, that kind of share voting restrictions weren't allowed for new stock issues.
There's no reason a new stock issue could not have the same restrictions other than some investors might find it unacceptable, and some stock exchanges such as the NYSE don't like them and may decline to offer to list the stock on their exchange in response.
don't remember if it was even applied for new buyers of existing Smuckers shares, or even completely stopped for existing owners, but it was in the courts.
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Those offering the money set the rules. That doesn't seem unreasonable. What's the alternative? Governments stepping in and micromanaging even more than they do already?
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Those offering the money set the rules. That doesn't seem unreasonable. What's the alternative? Governments stepping in and micromanaging even more than they do already?
Not governments. Domain knowledge holders should have *some* say in how a company is run. Money = authority is a really shitty way to run a company, as we've seen countless examples of.
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There needs to be a balance between the two.
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Yes, but often Domain Authorities are just as dimwitted in running a company-- they understand the concept of the business, but are terrible at running it. There needs to be a balance between the two.
That's why I said *some*. Currently it appears that domain expertise is roundly and soundly ignored at larger companies, and that's how you end up with Boeing and Intel. Like you say, there needs to be a balance. And no, throwing both business expertise and domain knowledge expertise out and having either MBAs or the money men call all the shots is not *BALANCE*.
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First of all, I agree with you completely. Secondly, there is only one thing I am aware of that grows relentlessly over time -- its called cancer. And the effects on the patient over time are not good. And the high priests of this IMHO are the MBAs who have claimed one did not need to know anything about a business to run it profitably. Even if making this quarters numbers destroys the business. Looking around, this short term transactional view is probably why we are where we are. Sad.
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The problem with the shareholder system is that shareholders come and go... Most have no interest in the long term viability of the company, and just want short term gains.
This can often mean things like massively cutting costs by firing most of the staff - increases profit in the short term so the shareholders take their money and run. After that the service quality collapses and the products stagnate so business rapidly goes down the pan, but by the time that happens those who set the company on this traj
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Ah yes, the current shareholders are greedy bastards and the new shareholders (i.e. the people who agree to buy their shares) are dumb fucks.
Wait, but the greedy bastards generally buy more shares when they sell the first shares... does that mean they turn into dumb fucks? Where do new greedy bastards come from?
This theory of yours seems to have some problems.
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This feels symptomatic of many US businesses. They'd rather lobby the government than embrace necessary change. This leads the country as a whole to place where businesses are protected by the government, but are incapable of competing effectively beyond internationally. There are exceptions, but shareholders have been making businesses chase the wrong priorities.
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Intel can make chips. They just weren't into customizing (i.e. optimizing) them for their customers.
There's more to this story than that. Intel has been cooking up custom processors for AWS for at least a decade.
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I'm not familiar with their AWS products, how did they differ from their legacy products?
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AWS - asking for custom variants of Intel designs. Designed by Intel for their foundry process.
Apple - asking for fabrication of their own designs
Custom (Score:2)
Are these custom Xeon or completely new CPUs? Because Apple's building in-house designed ARM CPUs.
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Apple was also building their own ARM CPUs in order to dump Intel x86 CPUs. Possibly might have had something to do with it. Maybe.
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Re:Context for the headline FTA (Score:4, Insightful)
This was still a company that very much believed in x86 CPUs in every product category and considered the idea of using anything else insulting. To some degree they had played dirty to get to their lofty position, but this was also around the time they had released their Sandy Bridge (2000-series branding) processors which were phenomenal for the time both for their great performance uplifts as well as their overclocking potential with some able to get their chip up to 5 GHz which was obscene for the time. It was basically a CPU that performed like an Athlon but clocked like a Pentium 4.
It's not surprising that they acted like cocky bastards who would blow off Apple. After all they had the best CPUs on the best process node and here's a company wanting to use their wafers to make puny ARM SoCs. How laughable it must have seemed, but pride cometh before a fall.
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AMD had not yet released their Zen CPUs and instead had a massive misfire with their Bulldozer line of CPUs
Yeah, such a misfire, 90% of the performance for 50% of the price.
FX-8350 was the best value CPU of its generation, period. Oh noes, it couldn't get me into the 98th percentile of frame rates. Guess what, I didn't buy the expensive GPU to go with it either. It was a perfect match for all the console ports which themselves were running on consoles with... a similar processor.
This was still a company that very much believed in x86 CPUs in every product category and considered the idea of using anything else insulting.
Yes, to the point that they tried to make a GPU out of 486 cores. Jesus christ, what fucking idiots.
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When I retired mine I sold it to a friend who is now using it as his home server. It's got 32GB onboard so he also runs VMs on it. He bought it mostly because the board I had featured a crapload of SATA and he's got lots of SATA HDDs. So not only was it a great deal, and did all that I asked of it, but I got some of my investment back at the end.
Re: Context for the headline FTA (Score:2)
I owned several Bulldozer 8 core CPUs. 8150, I believe. They dissipated a lot of heat. Even in a large Silverstone HTPC case, there was just no way to keep the CPU from overheating. I had to admit defeat and move the motherboard and CPU to a large tower case in my office rather than theater.
Re: Context for the headline FTA (Score:2)
I used a normal Nzxt source 220 case and an air cooler with my 8350 with zero heat problems.
Perhaps you should learn how to apply thermal compound.
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And it sounds like they took the Henry Ford and their Model T tact
It's taking the tack, as in, angle related to the wind.
Next week on Slashdot, rein vs reign.
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They need to do the research (Score:3)
And unlock the Foundry in Factorio Space Age
And Besieged Apple (Score:2)
is so good at being a computer company?!!