Intel Corp (INTC)

[Unkwn]

A somewaht interesting comment on the Seeking-Alpha announcement on Intels foundry plans;

I cannot comment having recently taken enhanced early retirement after 32 years at Intel in TMG; FSM is part of TMG that runs the factories (Fab Sort Manufacturing. Your last sentence nails it.
Intel is very smart and has been collecting benchmark data from TSMC for 15+ years on tool utilization, uptime, yield, WIP turns, as well as labor costs. We are very familiar with TSMC operations as they manufacture several product lines for Intel.

The recent layoffs and restructuring at Intel were part of repositioning Intel for ARM manufacturing in the future. Those of us who ran the factories since 6" days were allowed to exit graciously before the heat was turned up. If you visit a TSMC factory in Taiwan you will understand immediately that a "western style" of management and work-life balance just won't cut it.

We have work to do to catch up to TSMC on wafer cost but Intel is in it to win it and I know they will make the necessary adjustments to the culture to get the results on wafer/unit cost to make us competitive in ARM manufacturing.

I'll be cheering for Intel from the sidelines. I am just happy not to be in the way of what is coming.

This kind of proves that Intel has a wafer cost disadvantage. This guy for sure didn't have insight into the books, so it's likely just internal rumors, but nevertheless, good to know. I highly doubt that costs for personnel are what drives wafer/chip costs.

Intel's main advantage and business case in the foundry landscape stays what it has always been: Their core business with PC processors and especially data center processors pay for the high fix costs of its fabs. Everything that comes in addition, foundry, mobile, IoT, whatever, is giving them some extra cash flow. This is the big difference to TSMC, which doesn't have such a high margin core business.