> there is a tradeoff between committing the capital to own a fab and achieving higher clock rates, or preserving your capital, not owning the fab, and losing the ability to produce highly tuned designs. To give a rough notion of the trade-offs, in the same process size, the speed of a process (measured in FO4 latency) can vary by a factor of 3, between the best processes at foundries like TSMC or UMC, and fabbed manufacturers like Intel or IBM.
Is this still valid? How does this play out, say for Apple's M1?
Is this still valid? How does this play out, say for Apple's M1?