Intel going fabless is like Boeing ordering aircraft from Airbus. Desperate but temporary. Intel can't cut their core business because everything is build around it. They can fall but they can't quit.

"TSMC internally does not consider orders for Intel's processors as long-term ones, and therefore is unlikely to build additional production capacity for the new contract if it comes, according to industry sources." https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20200728PD201.html

To work for TSMC it would have to be a long term commitment. But Intel has the cash to pay for it and given recent events it would boost investor confidence if Intel could say (e.g.) 30% of our CPUs in future will be made by TSMC.

>Intel going fabless is like Boeing ordering aircraft from Airbus. Desperate but temporary. Intel can't cut their core business because everything is build around it. They can fall but they can't quit.

I think it's more like both Boeing (Intel) and Airbus (AMD) buying ordering their planes from say Samsung - a company that is a relatively neutral third party, that has busines from many sources and might simply not prioritize your order due to other more lucrative ones.

Except for the Sandy Bridge era. AMD was definitely not ahead for a while there.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/the-sandy-bridge-review-...

It seems like you misunderstand the argument.

It's not about absolute performance of the processor. CPU performance is always combination of microarchitecture and process.

Traditionally Intel had better processors with worse microarchitecture due to better process technology.

Intel had undeniably better microarchitecture between the launch of Conroe up to at least the launch of Zen2 (and arguably still has better microarchitecture for some tasks, just not across the board like they used to).

Not just process - Bulldozer first-gen was a 32nm chip and couldn't keep up with Nehalem (45nm) let alone Sandy Bridge (32nm). AMD was significantly worse microarchitecturally for pretty much a decade.

They were ahead with Athlon 64, starting to fall back to equal with X2, Phenom they were moderately behind, bulldozer was a dumpster fire, Zen1 was a dumpster fire, Zen+ was moderately behind, Zen2 back to on par in general performance and better in core count/server chips.

> But Intel has rarely been the best in microarchitecture.

When is the last time Intel was behind in microarchitecture? Ice Lake beats Zen 2, then you follow all the way back through Bulldozer, where AMD was utterly outclassed, then what? K10 vs. Sandy Bridge?

Zen 2 is basically a copy of Skylake, made 5 years late, that only got to compete with Skylake because Intel froze in time.

>When is the last time Intel was behind in microarchitecture? Ice Lake beats Zen 2

I'm not sure whether you can make that conclusion just because the two products have similar performance. zen 2 has better IPC, which is a better indicator of microarchitecture than raw performance. In the case of Intel, the only reason they're still ahead is because of the high clocks from a very refined 14nm process.

>Zen 2 is basically a copy of Skylake

Source for this?

> zen 2 has better IPC

Ice Lake has better IPC. The only issue with Ice Lake is that it's on a broken 10nm process, which primarily means that clocks are terrible.

> Source for this?

https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/microarchitectures/skylak...

https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/amd/microarchitectures/zen_2

Both have a 224 entry ROB, 92 vs. 97 entry scheduler, 180 entry PRF, 168 vs. 160 FP PRF, same number of integer ALUs, similar load/store width, 72 in-flight loads, 56 vs. 48 in-flight stores, etc. Consequently they perform within margins of each other. They're about as minimally different as competitors' products can be.

Contrast to something like Arm's or Apple's cores, which are qualitatively different products, both to each other and to any of Intel or AMD's chips.

>Ice Lake has better IPC.

my apologies, got the lake names mixed up.

>Both have a 224 entry ROB, 92 vs. 97 entry scheduler, 180 entry PRF, 168 vs. 160 FP PRF, same number of integer ALUs, similar load/store width, 72 in-flight loads, 56 vs. 48 in-flight stores, etc.

They have similar metrics, that doesn't mean they're copies of each other. The underlying designs are most certainly different (eg. chiplet vs monolithic). The reason they have similar in those metrics is probably due to convergent design, ie. these combination of functional units provide the best performance to transistor ratio. You see this in nature too. eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_evolution#Opposable..., which look similar at a high level, but are actually different in implementation.

AMD's previous design was its own thing. Arm's and Apple's designs are their own things. There's still flexibility in how to build a core. Skylake is clearly not even the optimal target; Apple's approach easily outclasses it, for instance. And yet AMD did none of that; they build a core that is practically just Skylake, with no real innovation I can spot anywhere.

There's nothing wrong with this as a strategy. AMD's own designs were performing pretty badly and Skylake was a straightforward, reliable target that would lead them back to competitiveness. Their uncore is plenty innovative, given their willingness to compete on scale.

But a rose is a rose is a rose. Zen 2 is arguably more similar to Skylake than Ice Lake is to Skylake.

'Rarely' is probably overdoing it but Intel has had significant architecture mis-steps. It's been able to come back so strongly in part because of it's manufacturing leadership. Once that is gone though it will be much harder.

AMD came back from Bulldozer.

Not impossible, just much harder. Plus AMD has access to TSMC 7nm.