Replies to post #109811 on Intel Corp (INTC)

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He also forecast that Intel, with its deep pockets, would become one of an increasingly smaller group of leading-edge chip manufacturers as the sector moves toward larger and costlier factories.
With the industry preparing to increase the size of the silicon wafers it uses, letting manufacturers fit more chips on each, future leading-edge factories will cost over $10 billion each to build, compared with about $5 billion now, Otellini added.

It's interesting that this came up. This board has been forecasting for a while that Intel may be the last-man-standing when it comes to their process technological lead. Thinking about it from the cost standpoint is also interesting.

We've been hearing some companies already start to complain about the growing cost of foundry wafers, such as this statement from Broadcom:

28nm is the first process shrink which doesn't deliver a cheaper chip, says Scott McGregor, CEO of Broadcom. According to McGregor, not only is 28nm more expensive than 40nm now, as might be expected at the start of a node, but that, on Broadcom's current projections, 28nm will never be cheaper than 40nm across the whole lifetime of the node.
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Intel's competitors will be crying uncle before they even get to a 22nm-equivalent node, let alone when Intel moves to 14nm.