>How times have changed! I still vividly remember Intel being a full node ahead of everyone else with their release of 22nm node. For example, see this article from 2012:
Vividly remember, I was reading this and assuming it is going to be way back.... 22nm and 2012 really wasn't that long ago :D
Intel has had the processing node leads on CPU since the 90s. I vividly remember Pentium were always at least one year ahead of AMD. That was the Pentium, Pentium MMX .... Not quite sure if it was the case in 386 / 486 era.
I remember 180nm was already in AMD Athlon era, so it was likely in 2xx nm or 3xx nm.
AMD was actually briefly ahead twice before, once in early Athlon times and a few years later with the first AMD64 ("x86-64" or as Intel called it "EM64T") CPU with on-die memory controller.
Those were microarchitectural advantages. I don't think AMD was ahead on manufacturing process shrinks. A quick check shows that the P3 and Athlon went from 250nm to 180nm at the same time.
I don't know whether the Intel foundry accepts outside customers and to what extent the outside customers have influence on Intel, but TSMC benefits from being single mindedly focused on chip fabrication and has the support of a wide array of customers, financially and technically. Apple, Nvida, AMD, Qualcom, Micron, most of the phone manufacturers, and any other chip consumers all give orders to TSMC. All these pour money, design and production requirement into TSMC. TSMC simply is more focused with the resource they have, while Intel is being distracted with other things.
Sure TSMC is more focused but Intel has dramatically greater resources. Their R&D budget is ~5x TSMC's and ~10x AMD's. You have to be pretty badly distracted to fail to produce superior products with such an enormous budget advantage.
Intel technically accepts outside fab contracts but they haven't had any customers since they bought out Altera, their previous only customer.
Intel's budget is not just for chip fabrication, they have a very wide array of product areas. Chip foundry is very cost intensive, in the range of 10's billions. I'm not surprised TSMC spends way more on fabrication than Intel does.
According to the numbers of the post above, if they allocate more than 20% of their R&D budget to process improvements and more than 10% to their architecture improvements, they match or exceed their two rivals, leaving 70% to be allocated to other tracks, which I find rather excessive all things considered.
I remember a comment I made a long time ago, in the beginning of the Browser Wars: Microsoft had more people assigned to design their icons than NetScape had employees. NetScape's fate was sealed from the get go and their resilience was commendable.
And yet, in the end, Microsoft still lost that war.
I think the key difference here is also competition. If Intel's foundry can't get 10nm right then Intel is SoL until that's resolved. Whereas AMD was able to ditch GF for TSMC as soon as it became clear that TSMC had the superior process.
How times have changed! I still vividly remember Intel being a full node ahead of everyone else with their release of 22nm node. For example, see this article from 2012: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/127987-deliberate-exce...
This too shall pass.