Just skimming the first article, the TL;DR that I took away is that TSMC can get revenue from their old foundry nodes for much longer than Intel can. So the issue is not how fast TSMC improves, but more that Intel has to invest proportionally much more to keep up.
Note: the I/O chip on AMD Zen 2 / Zen 3 is a 14nm GloFo chip. Only the CPU-cores ("Zepplin" maybe, or whatever they call them now) are 7nm TSMC.
So AMD's strategy also leads to lower fabrication costs: because they can make a far cheaper 14nm chip to handle the slower portions of I/O (talking to RAM, or PCIe), while the expensive 7nm parts of TSMC are used only for the cores / L1 cache / L2 cache / L3 cache.
Intel has a competitor to chiplets, called EMIB, based off its Altera purchase. EMIB is pretty cool, but has only been deployed in a small number of situations so far (There was a Xeon + FPGA chip Intel made. There was the hybrid Intel+AMD chip, and finally the new big.LITTLE clone chip that Intel merged an Icelake + Atom core together). I don't know why Intel hasn't invested more heavily into EMIB, Foveros, and other advanced-packaging technologies... but Intel is clearly working on it.
Intel can do it, they just haven't decided to do so yet. They have the tech for sure.
Its simply a matter of priorities. Its not so much that Intel "isn't" investing into it, its arguable that Intel just hasn't invested "enough" into it.
AMD went all in: they literally bet their entire company on advanced-packaging, with AMD GPUs using an active interposer with HBM2, and now Zen-chips taking a chiplet strategy. And to be fair: AMD had to do something drastic to turn the tide.
We're just at a point where AMD is finally reaping the benefits of a decision they made years ago.
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If I were to take a guess: Intel was too confident that they could solve 10nm / 7nm (or more specifically: EUV and/or quad patterning), which would have negated the need for advanced packaging.
AMD on the other hand, is fabless. They based their designs off of what TSMC was already delivering to Apple. Since TSMC leapfrogged Intel in technology, AMD can now benefit from TSMC (indirectly benefiting from from Apple's investments).
Intel's failure bubbled up from the fab level: Without 10nm chips, Intel was unable to keep up with TSMC's performance, and now AMD is advancing.
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AMD's strategy just works really well for AMD. AMD is forced to keep buying chips from GloFo (which are limited to 14nm or 12nm designs). All of AMD's decisions just lined up marvelously: they fixed a lot of issues with their company by just properly making the right decisions in a lot of little, detailed ways. A happy marriage of tech + business decisions. I dunno if they can keep doing that, it almost feels lucky to me. But they're benefiting for sure.
AMD took something that seemed like a downside (the forced purchase of 12nm or 14nm chips, even when 7nm was available), and turned it into a benefit.
> They based their designs off of what TSMC was already delivering to Apple. Since TSMC leapfrogged Intel in technology, AMD can now benefit from TSMC (indirectly benefiting from from Apple's investments).
Did Apple actually buy a significant stake in TSMC or are you just referring to the fact that Apple is one of their large customers along with Qualcomm, Nvidia, Huawei (until recently) etc.?
> Did Apple actually buy a significant stake in TSMC or are you just referring to the fact that Apple is one of their large customers along with Qualcomm, Nvidia, Huawei (until recently) etc.?
I'm talking more like the later: all of these companies (Apple, Qualcomm, NVidia, etc. etc. and of course, AMD) are effectively pooling their money together to fund TSMC.
I don't mean to single Apple out as if they're the "only" ones funding TSMC's research. (And I can see how my wording earlier mistakenly can be interpreted in that manner. I was careless with my wording). Its more of a team effort (although Apple does seem to spend significant amounts of money trying to get first-dibs on the process).
For better or worse AMD has always been much more willing to quickly throw everything out to go with a completely new design paradigm. Something it was a massive bust like X2 or Bulldozer. Sometimes it's the Athlon or the Zen.
The only time Intel really did that was with the end of the P4 and frankly even then they waited as long as they could before doing it. The rest of the time it's all carefully planned stepped increase and safe design change.
Both have their advantages, but for your question it means Intel will have to take a leap they clearly don't like taking.
Historically most successful AMD designs came from the outside. 286 was Intel clone, Am386 Intel microcode copy. Am486 lagged by one year, offered lower performance and was still developed using Intel IP. K5 first 100% AMD design, slow and late, competed in the bottom low end, considered a failure. K6 100% external design by NexGen, let AMD move up to middle of the market. K7 designed by DEC Alpha team and manufactured in Motorola partnership, great success.
