Question intel plus nVIdia?

Feb 4, 2009
34,506
15,731
136
While this appears to be more of a doomsday pairing it is interesting to see how companies view the current chip shortage and markets. Basically they don’t want a combination of AMD or apple combining with TSMC dominating everyone and everything.


I do wonder why intel appears to be sitting on the sidelines. Admittedly their processes are becoming dated but the market for chip be it graphics cards or mundane machine, appliance And auto chips is absolutely insane. There has to be money in them.
What are your thoughts?
 
Feb 4, 2009
34,506
15,731
136
To me, this would perfect pairing. nvidia needs chips, intel needs new customers for its foundry. Both would benefit immensely here.

Producing chips, even for appliances and auto is no small task. They are designed and qualified years in advance before product launches. Auto especially has a lot of constraints.

Intel hopes to start making chips for car companies within six to nine months - The Verge

Don’t the auto/appliance or machine producer have joint copyright of the chips as in TSMC is currently making them and they move that process to intel?
I have little knowledge of this subject and I am sure there would be some prep time on intels end it doesn’t seem like a whole new process needs to be done however I could be wrong.
 

IntelUser2000

Elite Member
Oct 14, 2003
8,686
3,785
136
I have little knowledge of this subject and I am sure there would be some prep time on intels end it doesn’t seem like a whole new process needs to be done however I could be wrong.

Their 14nm is becoming dated for modern GPUs, but their 10nm is not and certainly we'll see 7nm and future ones from them.

If you are talking about moving a complex chip like a GPU from one foundry to the other, it would be a huge task. Because the process determines the voltage, frequency, and density characteristics of the chip, and further vary depending on the type of the circuit you want to use. This why they say from inception it takes 4-6 years for a chip to be in the market. It would include the concept phase, the design phase, prototyping, and validation to make sure it works.

We don't know to what detail or depth of planning they are in, but if an Nvidia GPU using an Intel processes comes in say, 1.5 years, then we know they have been in talks for some time at least.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,226
9,990
126
Hmm, interesting. Would Intel gain any access to IP of NVidia, patents, etc.?

Imagine if this "partnership" went a bit further than just being a fab, what if Intel's iGPUs started to have "NVidia Inside"? Things could get VERY interesting.
 

UsandThem

Elite Member
May 4, 2000
16,068
7,380
146
Imagine if this "partnership" went a bit further than just being a fab, what if Intel's iGPUs started to have "NVidia Inside"? Things could get VERY interesting.
It definitely could be an interesting option if it ever came to fruition, provided the "Nvidia onboard" aspect didn't immediately cause the CPUs to quadruple in price and only be available for purchase by Ebay flippers. ;)
 
  • Like
Reactions: rommelrommel
Mar 11, 2004
23,031
5,495
146
Sorry but this reeks of trash reporting. I don't doubt such a talk might have happened, but I'm guessing it had almost nothing whatsoever to do with AMD, and I'm even doubtful about it having much to do with Apple (since I don't think Apple wants to dominate so thoroughly that it'd put Intel and Nvidia in dire straits), and is more with regards to what happens in the event of some catastrophe (like Samsung abandoning cutting edge fabs or maybe North Korea collapses causing a humanitarian crises that spills into South Korea, or China invades Taiwan).

Absolutely ridiculous framing by that person. I do like how they add in Apple like an afterthought though. "Oh or Apple" like AMD is some juggernaut that's bigger than Apple and rivaling Nvidia and Intel combined. Which, if anything, I'd guess it had more to do with them looking at what shenanigans they could combine do to AMD to put them out of business ASAP so as to make any anti-trust lawsuit moot.

Which if I'm TSMC and I'm hearing about this, I'm looking at getting with Apple and AMD and requesting an inquiry into the business practices of those two.

Also, I really wanna find out what Nvidia did that soured Apple on them such that Nvidia is apparently freaking out that Apple might decide to crush them. Whatever it was, it must involve Tim Cook because it can be explained by Jobs' grudges. Seems like they're not on TSMC's favorite list either (gee, can't imagine why with behavior like this). Which, now I'm wondering if Nvidia didn't buy ARM after freaking out about the Samsung/AMD deal?

Intel is an American company, NVIDIA is an American company, AMD is a Canadian company getting its chips made by a Taiwan company. Intel will be a large beneficiary of this new flow of cash from the US government, and if the prospect of NVIDIA making GPUs on US soil through Intel is true... then the next few years are going to be absolutely unbelievable to watch roll out in front of our eyes.

Uh...what? Did I miss AMD moving to Canada? Is this some weird nationalism? (So is Nvidia "a Britain chip designer" now?) And uh, last I checked, Intel and Nvidia both are getting chips made by "a Taiwan company" (alongside Nvidia having chips made by "a Korea company"), so...what's it say when Intel is struggling to fab even their own chips?
 
  • Like
Reactions: Saylick

Hitman928

Diamond Member
Apr 15, 2012
5,177
7,629
136
Sorry but this reeks of trash reporting. I don't doubt such a talk might have happened, but I'm guessing it had almost nothing whatsoever to do with AMD, and I'm even doubtful about it having much to do with Apple (since I don't think Apple wants to dominate so thoroughly that it'd put Intel and Nvidia in dire straits), and is more with regards to what happens in the event of some catastrophe (like Samsung abandoning cutting edge fabs or maybe North Korea collapses causing a humanitarian crises that spills into South Korea, or China invades Taiwan).

Absolutely ridiculous framing by that person. I do like how they add in Apple like an afterthought though. "Oh or Apple" like AMD is some juggernaut that's bigger than Apple and rivaling Nvidia and Intel combined. Which, if anything, I'd guess it had more to do with them looking at what shenanigans they could combine do to AMD to put them out of business ASAP so as to make any anti-trust lawsuit moot.

Which if I'm TSMC and I'm hearing about this, I'm looking at getting with Apple and AMD and requesting an inquiry into the business practices of those two.

Also, I really wanna find out what Nvidia did that soured Apple on them such that Nvidia is apparently freaking out that Apple might decide to crush them. Whatever it was, it must involve Tim Cook because it can be explained by Jobs' grudges. Seems like they're not on TSMC's favorite list either (gee, can't imagine why with behavior like this). Which, now I'm wondering if Nvidia didn't buy ARM after freaking out about the Samsung/AMD deal?



Uh...what? Did I miss AMD moving to Canada? Is this some weird nationalism? (So is Nvidia "a Britain chip designer" now?) And uh, last I checked, Intel and Nvidia both are getting chips made by "a Taiwan company" (alongside Nvidia having chips made by "a Korea company"), so...what's it say when Intel is struggling to fab even their own chips?

ATI was a Canadian company before being purchased by AMD (which for sure is a U.S. company). I'm guessing this led to the author's confusion about AMD being a Canadian company though even then it's hard to see how he got to that misinformation.

I also don't see how Apple could purchase TSMC. There's 0 percent chance China lets that happen. At best they could come up with some kind of joint venture based in the U.S. for fabs built in the U.S., but China would very quickly shut down any attempt at outright purchase/takeover.
 
Last edited:
Feb 4, 2009
34,506
15,731
136
Sorry but this reeks of trash reporting. I don't doubt such a talk might have happened, but I'm guessing it had almost nothing whatsoever to do with AMD, and I'm even doubtful about it having much to do with Apple (since I don't think Apple wants to dominate so thoroughly that it'd put Intel and Nvidia in dire straits), and is more with regards to what happens in the event of some catastrophe (like Samsung abandoning cutting edge fabs or maybe North Korea collapses causing a humanitarian crises that spills into South Korea, or China invades Taiwan).

Absolutely ridiculous framing by that person. I do like how they add in Apple like an afterthought though. "Oh or Apple" like AMD is some juggernaut that's bigger than Apple and rivaling Nvidia and Intel combined. Which, if anything, I'd guess it had more to do with them looking at what shenanigans they could combine do to AMD to put them out of business ASAP so as to make any anti-trust lawsuit moot.

Which if I'm TSMC and I'm hearing about this, I'm looking at getting with Apple and AMD and requesting an inquiry into the business practices of those two.

Also, I really wanna find out what Nvidia did that soured Apple on them such that Nvidia is apparently freaking out that Apple might decide to crush them. Whatever it was, it must involve Tim Cook because it can be explained by Jobs' grudges. Seems like they're not on TSMC's favorite list either (gee, can't imagine why with behavior like this). Which, now I'm wondering if Nvidia didn't buy ARM after freaking out about the Samsung/AMD deal?



Uh...what? Did I miss AMD moving to Canada? Is this some weird nationalism? (So is Nvidia "a Britain chip designer" now?) And uh, last I checked, Intel and Nvidia both are getting chips made by "a Taiwan company" (alongside Nvidia having chips made by "a Korea company"), so...what's it say when Intel is struggling to fab even their own chips?

I did find that part sort of odd.
I agree this is more of what if the chips get shut off or what if Samsung can no longer stay competitive to me.
Maybe, maybe the real outside thing Apple buys TSMC then obviously everything Apple gets prioritized in the manufacturing line.
 

Stuka87

Diamond Member
Dec 10, 2010
6,240
2,559
136
Sorry but this reeks of trash reporting. I don't doubt such a talk might have happened, but I'm guessing it had almost nothing whatsoever to do with AMD, and I'm even doubtful about it having much to do with Apple (since I don't think Apple wants to dominate so thoroughly that it'd put Intel and Nvidia in dire straits), and is more with regards to what happens in the event of some catastrophe (like Samsung abandoning cutting edge fabs or maybe North Korea collapses causing a humanitarian crises that spills into South Korea, or China invades Taiwan).

Absolutely ridiculous framing by that person. I do like how they add in Apple like an afterthought though. "Oh or Apple" like AMD is some juggernaut that's bigger than Apple and rivaling Nvidia and Intel combined. Which, if anything, I'd guess it had more to do with them looking at what shenanigans they could combine do to AMD to put them out of business ASAP so as to make any anti-trust lawsuit moot.

Which if I'm TSMC and I'm hearing about this, I'm looking at getting with Apple and AMD and requesting an inquiry into the business practices of those two.

Also, I really wanna find out what Nvidia did that soured Apple on them such that Nvidia is apparently freaking out that Apple might decide to crush them. Whatever it was, it must involve Tim Cook because it can be explained by Jobs' grudges. Seems like they're not on TSMC's favorite list either (gee, can't imagine why with behavior like this). Which, now I'm wondering if Nvidia didn't buy ARM after freaking out about the Samsung/AMD deal?



Uh...what? Did I miss AMD moving to Canada? Is this some weird nationalism? (So is Nvidia "a Britain chip designer" now?) And uh, last I checked, Intel and Nvidia both are getting chips made by "a Taiwan company" (alongside Nvidia having chips made by "a Korea company"), so...what's it say when Intel is struggling to fab even their own chips?

OK...

First off, AMD, from a number of chips produced standpoint, is significantly larger than nVidia is. AMD is the number one 7nm customers at TSMC. They were the second largest before Apple moved to 5nm. nVidia makes a lot of money, but they don't sell nearly as many chips (GPU/CPU combined) as AMD.

As for why Apple is fed up with nVidia, its been going on for over a decade. But it started when nVidia's chips started to fail en masse, costing Apple a huge sum of money to replace almost all MBPs with an nVidia chip. All while nVidia claimed it was not their fault, even though non-apple laptops were also failing. Since then things have been rocky. nVidia's drivers were also the number one cause of hardware related kernel panics for quite some time. I am not sure if its known if nVidia just refused to put the time in, or if it was because of the closed source nature of the drivers that Apple could not fix it themselves. AMD driver source is available and Apple does tweak these for their own machines. Then there was also the issue of nVidia refusing to support the most recent versions of OpenCL, which MacOS relied on. While AMD not only did support it, they also helped develop it. AMD also has never had chips fail en masse like nVidia did. So it wasn't any ONE thing, it was a lot of things that continued to happen. I also get the idea that nVidia is not a nice company to work with. Pretty much all of their AIBs are fed up with nVidia's antics (Like nVidia trying to force them to rename all of their products), but they stick with them because they make lots of money.

ATI was always a Canadian company. AMD (an american company) purchased them in 2006.

Intel does not yet have TSMC manufacturing anything. They have simply stated that some future products will be on TSMC 7nm.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Tlh97 and Leeea

Kuiva maa

Member
May 1, 2014
181
232
116
OK...

First off, AMD, from a number of chips produced standpoint, is significantly larger than nVidia is. AMD is the number one 7nm customers at TSMC. They were the second largest before Apple moved to 5nm. nVidia makes a lot of money, but they don't sell nearly as many chips (GPU/CPU combined) as AMD.

As for why Apple is fed up with nVidia, its been going on for over a decade. But it started when nVidia's chips started to fail en masse, costing Apple a huge sum of money to replace almost all MBPs with an nVidia chip. All while nVidia claimed it was not their fault, even though non-apple laptops were also failing. Since then things have been rocky. nVidia's drivers were also the number one cause of hardware related kernel panics for quite some time. I am not sure if its known if nVidia just refused to put the time in, or if it was because of the closed source nature of the drivers that Apple could not fix it themselves. AMD driver source is available and Apple does tweak these for their own machines. Then there was also the issue of nVidia refusing to support the most recent versions of OpenCL, which MacOS relied on. While AMD not only did support it, they also helped develop it. AMD also has never had chips fail en masse like nVidia did. So it wasn't any ONE thing, it was a lot of things that continued to happen. I also get the idea that nVidia is not a nice company to work with. Pretty much all of their AIBs are fed up with nVidia's antics (Like nVidia trying to force them to rename all of their products), but they stick with them because they make lots of money.

ATI was always a Canadian company. AMD (an american company) purchased them in 2006.

Intel does not yet have TSMC manufacturing anything. They have simply stated that some future products will be on TSMC 7nm.

I would argue that the number one reason for Apple ousting nvidia from their lineup is CUDA. Apple simply does not allow anything proprietary within their ecosystem, unless they control it themselves.
 

Mopetar

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2011
7,797
5,899
136
I'm not really sure why Apple is getting brought up, particularly considering that Intel and Nvidia don't have a nice history of playing nice together either. About a decade or so ago they were both suing each other over various patents and whatnot. They eventually settled out of court after a few years of back and forth bickering, but I can't imagine they have a good relationship.

Maybe the new management at Intel is willing to put aside old grievances, but JHH has a history of causing almost everyone Nvidia has worked with to dislike having done so.
 

Dribble

Platinum Member
Aug 9, 2005
2,076
611
136
I would argue that the number one reason for Apple ousting nvidia from their lineup is CUDA. Apple simply does not allow anything proprietary within their ecosystem, unless they control it themselves.
It all boils down to making money - if Apple have proprietary stuff belonging to them they can make more money by charging for its use. They almost certainly picked AMD over Nvidia because they were cheaper.

Same with all this company X hates company Y stuff that always gets brought up. None of them hate or like each other, they are companies not people and they exist to make money. Everything is done as a response to that - if dropping one company to use another makes more money they will do that every time.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Tlh97