Foundry companies mention TSMC
Intel’s CEO Pat Gelsinger said there is a possibility that the chip production could be left to an external foundry. The foundry company name referred to TSMC.
According to Bloomberg on the 15th, Intel’s new CEO, Pat Gelsinger, said, “We are considering whether to leave the traditional method and leave production to an outsourcing company such as TSMC.”
Intel is a comprehensive semiconductor company (IDM) that designs and manufactures its own chips. There was no need to entrust production to the foundry. It is known that outsourcing production has rarely been used in the history of over 50 years.
The reason why CEO Pat Gelsinger commented on outsourcing is that Intel is having a hard time introducing a microfabrication under 7nm. TSMC and Samsung Electronics are the only companies in the world that can produce 10nm or less chips. AMD, which is competing with Intel in the central processing unit (CPU) market, produces 7nm or less products through TSMC.
At the end of last year, the US activist hedge fund demanded structural reform from Intel, claiming that the semiconductor production division was pushed back to Samsung Electronics and TSMC. They ordered to hire investment advisors to shake off the production sector and explore strategic alternatives. It was read as a meaning to give up the IDM status and focus only on semiconductor design like Qualcomm, AMD, and Nvidia.
Intel seems to have placed more weight on TSMC than Samsung Electronics for foundry production. Recently, Bloomberg reported that “TSMC is preparing 4nm·5nm lines to win orders from Intel,” and “Samsung Electronics is in the process of negotiations at an early stage compared to TSMC.” Market research firm Trend Force also gave the same forecast through data released on the 13th. According to the data, Intel plans to entrust the production of the next-generation’Core i3 CPU’ to TSMC’s 5-nano process in the second half of this year. It is predicted that in the second half of 2022, production of mid-range and high-end CPUs will be entrusted to TSMC’s 3-nano process. It is known that Intel has already entrusted 15-20% of the production of chips other than CPU to TSMC and UMC.
Industry sources predict that Intel will choose TSMC over Samsung Electronics for security reasons. This is because Samsung Electronics is an IDM that even designs semiconductors, while TSMC is a pure foundry that only makes consignment production. It is known that the security impact was greatly influenced by Apple entrusting production to TSMC, not Samsung Electronics.
It is unlikely that it will receive orders directly from Intel, but Samsung Electronics can also indirectly benefit. This is because the quantity TSMC cannot digest can be entrusted to the Samsung Electronics foundry. In the second half of last year, Samsung Electronics also received orders for semiconductor production from big companies such as IBM, Nvidia, and Qualcomm.
Copyright © The Elec, the electronic component specialty media Unauthorized reproduction and redistribution prohibited