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Peter's avatar

IBM as the secret customer for Intel's 18 A node makes a lot of sense. In addition to your point about IBM getting sick of Samsung's EUV nodes not delivering the promised performance, there is also this: Intel got a chunk of money from the Feds specifically to serve as a "Secure Enclave". From what I understand, it's a further step from what used to be called "Trusted Foundry". IBM's Telums for its mainframes and Power CPUs for servers and workstations are heavily used by various governmental agencies and departments, not least the DoD. And even though South Korea is a close ally, it's still a lot easier to have a close eye on labs and fabs that are located stateside, never mind developing sensitive tech for the military.

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Jakfut's avatar

Legacy fab can buy equipment that the advanced fab can not? I don't think you need to be an expert on loopholes to see that this was going to be exploited one way or another.

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