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Re:Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel by bloomer on Monday December 10, 2018 @10:52PM (#18653221)
It turns out that the effect is typically exactly the opposite. Design and process are already coupled where a given process will have design rules that must be adhered to to achieve a successfully manufacturable design. Intel only has to support their own designs so can have very strict design rules. Fabs like TSMC have to be more lenient in what they allow from their customers so have looser design rules that result in a less optimized process to achieve the same yield.
Re:Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel by dnautics on Tuesday December 11, 2018 @05:04AM (#18654265)
The speculation is exactly that what you describe is indeed a short term gain, but that the pressure of having to accommodate looser design rules nets a stronger process discipline which pays off in the long term as feature size shrinkage gets closer to physical limits.