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GlobalFoundries to Acquire MIPS

(mips.com)
224 points mshockwave | 20 comments | 08 Jul 25 16:57 UTC | HN request time: 0.98s | source | bottom
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somanyphotons ◴[08 Jul 25 17:38 UTC] No.44502235[source]▶
Suddenly another company that has (old?) fabs and a cpu design team in-house

This could be interesting to see how much they try to loss-lead to get market share in the low-end

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kragen ◴[08 Jul 25 17:51 UTC] No.44502358[source]▶
GF's fabs aren't that old. They were neck-and-neck with TSMC until 02018, when they could do 12nm: https://web.archive.org/web/20190107061855/https://www.v3.co...
replies(2): >>44502554 #>>44506840 #
kasabali ◴[08 Jul 25 18:13 UTC] No.44502554[source]▶
Imagine canning your 7nm process last minute only few years before the chip shortage.

Must be the most moronic decision ever.

and it's not like 20/20 hindsight either, because every hardware enthusiast knew at the time Intel was having troubles and was worried TSMC (and Samsung at the time) were going to be the only fabs producing leading edge lithographies.

replies(6): >>44502753 #>>44503357 #>>44503544 #>>44503709 #>>44505232 #>>44505248 #
1. MangoCoffee ◴[08 Jul 25 19:45 UTC] No.44503357[source]▶
>Imagine canning your 7nm process last minute only few years before the chip shortage.

https://www.eetimes.com/samsung-globalfoundries-prep-14nm-pr...

"Samsung expects to be in production late this year with a 14 nm FinFET process it has developed. GlobalFoundries has licensed the process and will have it in production early next year."

GlobalFoundries licensed 14nm from Samsung. How do you know GlobalFoundries is capable of 7nm?

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2. kragen ◴[08 Jul 25 19:46 UTC] No.44503365[source]▶
This was from 02014, btw.
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3. MangoCoffee ◴[08 Jul 25 19:49 UTC] No.44503395[source]▶
that's my point. how does OP know GlobalFoundries is capable of 7nm if they can't even do 14nm. do you have any insider info that you can share?
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4. d332 ◴[08 Jul 25 19:53 UTC] No.44503425[source]▶
btw, what's with the leading zero here?
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5. WithinReason ◴[08 Jul 25 19:56 UTC] No.44503458{3}[source]▶
It's there to provoke your question
replies(2): >>44504232 #>>44504242 #
6. ajb ◴[08 Jul 25 20:01 UTC] No.44503520{3}[source]▶
It's a meme that's supposed to get people to think in >4-digit timescales, apparently. Always makes me think of octal TBH
7. kragen ◴[08 Jul 25 20:13 UTC] No.44503643{3}[source]▶
I agree, and I wrote a longer comment agreeing with your point at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44503245.
8. kasabali ◴[08 Jul 25 20:24 UTC] No.44503754[source]▶
I know that, but I've brought it up anyway. It's irrelevant who they've licenced it from because they executed it god damn well.
9. ◴[08 Jul 25 20:41 UTC] No.44503886{3}[source]▶
10. badc0ffee ◴[08 Jul 25 21:22 UTC] No.44504172{3}[source]▶
He's talking about AD 1036. Try to keep up
11. tonyedgecombe ◴[08 Jul 25 21:30 UTC] No.44504232{4}[source]▶
Best to just downvote it then.
12. gruturo ◴[08 Jul 25 21:32 UTC] No.44504242{4}[source]▶
Indeed. Consider it trolling, ignore it. It's just stupid.
13. AnimalMuppet ◴[08 Jul 25 21:55 UTC] No.44504415{3}[source]▶
It's "Long Now" stuff, which really should be called "Medium Now" because they're only using one leading zero.

kragen thinks making most of his readers glitch for a second every time they read one of his dates is worth it on order to advertise for the Long Now. Really unfortunate choice, since he often has decent information to share.

14. kasabali ◴[08 Jul 25 22:21 UTC] No.44504566{3}[source]▶
No I don't have insider info. Neither do you. What an ridiculous nit to pick.
replies(1): >>44504919 #
15. jonas21 ◴[08 Jul 25 23:23 UTC] No.44504919{4}[source]▶
You're the one claiming it's the "most moronic decision ever".

The burden of proof is on you to support your claim that they could have executed a 7nm process profitably, as opposed to them looking at the data and coming to a rational conclusion that they couldn't.

replies(2): >>44505128 #>>44507217 #
16. ◴[08 Jul 25 23:55 UTC] No.44505076{3}[source]▶
17. kragen ◴[09 Jul 25 00:04 UTC] No.44505128{5}[source]▶
Right, it seems like kasabali is making claims that are considerably more absolute than they would be able to justify without insider info.
18. mjevans ◴[09 Jul 25 02:36 UTC] No.44505871{3}[source]▶
I think they've over-corrected from the two digits are enough truncation that was common in computers between the 1950s and ~2000. It started to become less common then, but the phase out is arguably still going or stalled until things just die.

However OCTAL (leading zero) prefixing of a text mode number fails on a number of points:

* It's still a fixed register size (5 characters), which will overflow on the year 100000 AD.

* It's confusing, everyone else.

* It's not technically correct. (human behavior)

Truncating to two year digits was confusing because ambiguity. There is no ambiguity if a number encoded in decimal uses precisely the number of characters it needs. That's how normal humans normally write numbers.

19. rusticpenn ◴[09 Jul 25 07:18 UTC] No.44507137{3}[source]▶
They signed a contract with IBM to manufacture their chips at 7nm (and reneged).
20. kasabali ◴[09 Jul 25 07:33 UTC] No.44507217{5}[source]▶
> The burden of proof is on you to support your claim that they could have executed a 7nm process profitably

Why the fuck I'd have to prove that given that GloFo themselves claimed that they pulled out of it because it'd be unprofitable? Some people in this subthread are very eager to put words into my mouth.