Del said:Or offload the manufacturing to tsmc/chartered/etc
You make the assumption that the independent foundries are running atYKhan said:That's exactly where they are produced right now. Only Intel makes
their own chipsets, everybody else goes through one of these contract
manufacturers. When they're already being produced at
tsmc/chartered/etc. who have other customers they are committed to
already, who takes precedence? VIA & SiS because they can sell a few
thousand more cheap chipsets; or do they put off Broadcom, Altera,
Nvidia, or whoever else is also their customers?
Yousuf Khan
Del said:You make the assumption that the independent foundries are running at
full capacity. I would guess that is not true.
Yousuf Khan said:It's not my guess, it's the premise that these articles are about.
That's exactly where they are produced right now. Only Intel makes
their own chipsets, everybody else goes through one of these contract
manufacturers. When they're already being produced at
tsmc/chartered/etc. who have other customers they are committed to
already, who takes precedence? VIA & SiS because they can sell a few
thousand more cheap chipsets; or do they put off Broadcom, Altera,
Nvidia, or whoever else is also their customers?
Tony said:While we may see some short-term supply problems, the laws of supply
and demand will tend to correct things fairly quickly. TSMC,
Chartered, UMC, et al. are in the process of building more capacity
all the time. SiS doesn't even have to worry about this because,
unless something has changed recently, they still have their own fab.
Simply put, there is a LOT of semiconductor fab space out there. At
any given time there are dozens of companies going through upswings or
downswings in demand. It may take a few months for companies like VIA
to get a bit of extra fab space, but not much more. Fortunately it's
not like Intel will immediately run out of chipsets on one given day,
there will be LOTS of inventory floating through the channels for a
few months.
Yeah, actually something did change, and not so recently, UMC now owns
SIS. According to SIS they have obtained guarantees from their UMC
parent for additional fab space if necessary. Not sure how much
flexibility UMC has in moving aside their other existing customers --
can't see UMC playing too much favourites with their subsidiary vs.
their customers, otherwise it would become a public relations nightmare
with their paying customers.
Another issue is that neither SiS nor VIA seem to have their
competitive integrated graphics chipsets ready to go yet. For SiS, it
is the SIS662 chipset, which it only expects will be ready to sample in
Q1 2006. Meanwhile, VIA's P4M890 integrated graphics chipset may be
ready for Q4 2005.
They've both been concentrating on AMD chipsets for
the last little while, so it seems they had deemphasized their Intel
products since they were expecting to be just niche players in Intel
territory before they found out about these Intel plans.
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20050809A6027.html
Tony said:Even if Intel were to stop producing low-end chipsets tomorrow it
would still give them lots of time to ramp up production. Besides
they would probably start by replacing the old i845GV and i865GV
chipsets that are still being sold in pretty large quantities. They
don't necessarily need the latest and greatest. For example, VIA's
P4M800 Pro should be more than sufficient to fit the bill for any
low-end chipsets that HPaq or Dell might want.
Hang on a second... This article says absolutely nothing about low-end
chipsets, it says that Intel is getting rid of two of their
"mainstream" (ie middle of the road) chipsets, the i915GL and i915PL.
They will still have their i865GV, i910GL and i915GV, all of which
come BELLOW the pecking order of the two chipsets that they are
discontinuing! Hell, the i915PL doesn't even come with integrated
graphics!
What Intel is doing is getting rid of most of their non-DDR2 chipsets.
The only difference between the i915G and the i915GL is that the 'GL'
model lacks DDR2 support. Given that these two chipsets almost
certainly use the exact same piece of silicon (with DDR2 support
purposely disabled in the 'GL' model), it probably only makes sense to
discontinue the lower-end model and just sell the i915G for the same
price now that these chipsets have been upstaged by the i945 series.
Same story goes for the i915P vs. i915PL.
This is QUITE a different story than what you first posted.
08/09/2005
Dow Jones News Services
(Copyright © 2005 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)
TAIPEI (Dow Jones)--Intel Corp. (INTC) has placed an order with Taiwan's Silicon Integrated Systems Corp. (2363.TW) to help ease a chip shortage, the Commercial Times reports, without citing sources.
Silicon Integrated may sell chips to Intel as early as October, the report says. The chips would be used in Intel's personal computer motherboards.
United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) will make the chips that Intel has ordered, the report says. UMC owns a controlling stake in Silicon Integrated.
Intel, which is phasing out some of its older chips, has ordered chips from Silicon Integrated to stem the shortfall, the report says.
Newspaper Web site: http://www.chinatimes.com
-By Alan Patterson, Dow Jones Newswires; 8862-2502-2557; (e-mail address removed)
-Edited by Sharon Buan
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
It's only these builders that'll care.
There is such a demand they are having a hard time keeping up, so theyNo, as I said, it's not baseless, Intel is definitely saying they are
having trouble producing enough chipsets themselves. That's completely
established. The only rumour here is what Intel is going to do to
alleviate the situation, and in this rumour they're going to alleviate
the situation by cutting their less profitable chipsets. HOw's that for
a "grounded" rumour?
I have to agree that builders are not likely to use cheap parts, so
this isn't likely to affect them.
There is such a demand they are having a hard time keeping up, so they
are going to leave the market? That doesn't sound like sound business
practice to me.
Logically, they should stay in the business because
there is high demand.
No. Staying in the low-profit chipset business means diverting
some of their limited fab capacity away from the manufacture of
more profitable chipsets. It would be extremely stupid for them
to do that.
If they think demand will stay high for a long time,
they can build more fab capacity but that takes several years:
until then they have no choice but to use their limited fab
capacity in the most profitable way they can.
There is such a demand they are having a hard time keeping up, so they
are going to leave the market? That doesn't sound like sound business
practice to me. Logically, they should stay in the business because
there is high demand.
Rob, I'm under the impression that chipsets are built on fabs that are
no longer usable for front-line CPU manufacture. Such as .13u or .18u
now. Intel doesn't build chipset fabs, they wait for existing CPU
fabs to become obsolescent. As you say, making cheap chipsets
apparently is not their best use for their existing .13 -.18u fabs.
No way is Intel (or anybody else) going to start construction on
additional .13u fabs at this time.
Felger said:Rob, I'm under the impression that chipsets are built on fabs that are
no longer usable for front-line CPU manufacture. Such as .13u or .18u
now. Intel doesn't build chipset fabs, they wait for existing CPU
fabs to become obsolescent. As you say, making cheap chipsets
apparently is not their best use for their existing .13 -.18u fabs.
No way is Intel (or anybody else) going to start construction on
additional .13u fabs at this time.
Yousuf Khan said:These are mainly support chips for their CPUs. There is high demand for
their CPUs (obviously), and therefore there is high demand for their
chipsets. But chipsets are low profit. Also if they try to maintain their
stranglehold control over their chipset market, it's going to mean there's
less chipsets available and it will reduce the demand of their CPUs
(nobody buys a CPU without having some kind of a chipset).
Anyways, the deed is already done. Intel has already contacted SIS and UMC
to produce more of their chipsets for Intel's processors. Intel is likely
going to be out of the low-end chipset business soon.
Rob said:And, as Keith said (even if not in exactly these words) chipsets these
days are getting to the point where they need fabs that are not that far
behind the CPU fabs.
Which sort of makes the decision by AMD to move the memory controller
into the CPU more prescient.
Now the chipset can putter around
controlling hard disks, serving USB, passing PCI-E around, etc. without
having to worry about keeping up with the memory demands of the CPU.
Which sort of makes the decision by AMD to move the memory controller
into the CPU more prescient. Now the chipset can putter around
controlling hard disks, serving USB, passing PCI-E around, etc. without
having to worry about keeping up with the memory demands of the CPU.
By exiting the entry level segment Intel is reducing itself as a
threat to Taiwan chipset makers, and providing them more opportunities
to expand their market presence on the Intel platform. To prevent AMD
from gaining more share, Intel is opening the door for chipset vendors
to increase their chipset production, as well as their market focus, on
the Pentium 4 platform.
Yousuf Khan said:Here's an update to this story. It looks like according this story,
Intel may be trying to prevent the chipset makers from becoming too
dependent on business from AMD.
By exiting the entry level segment Intel is reducing itself as a
threat to Taiwan chipset makers, and providing them more opportunities
to expand their market presence on the Intel platform. To prevent AMD
from gaining more share, Intel is opening the door for chipset vendors
to increase their chipset production, as well as their market focus, on
the Pentium 4 platform.
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