Intel Corp has talked with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and Samsung Electronics Co about the Asian companies making some of its best chips, but the Silicon Valley pioneer is still holding out hope for last-minute improvements in its own production capabilities.
After successive delays in its chip fabrication processes, Santa Clara, California-based Intel has yet to make a decision less than two weeks ahead of a scheduled announcement of its plans, people familiar with the deliberations said.
Any components that Intel might source from Taiwan would not come to market until 2023 at the earliest and would be based on established manufacturing processes already in use by other TSMC customers, said the people, asking not to be identified because the plans are private.
Photo: Ashley Pon, Bloomberg
Talks with Samsung, whose foundry capabilities trail TSMC’s, are at a more preliminary stage, the people said.
TSMC and Samsung representatives declined to comment, while an Intel spokesperson referred to previous comments by CEO Bob Swan, who has promised investors he would set out his plans for outsourcing and putting Intel’s production technology back on track when the company reports earnings on Thursday next week.
TSMC, the largest maker of semiconductors for other companies, is preparing to offer Intel chips manufactured using a 4-nanometer process, with initial testing using an older 5-nanometer process, the people said.
The company has said it would make test production of 4-nanometer chips available in the fourth quarter of this year and volume shipments the following year.
TSMC expects to have a new facility in Hsinchu County’s Baoshan Township (寶山) operational by the end of this year, which can be converted to production for Intel if required, one of the people said.
TSMC executives previously said the Baoshan unit would house a research center with 8,000 engineers.
Intel’s strategic shifts are happening at a time of booming demand, as well as technological change in the chip industry.
The traditional method of improving performance by shrinking and cramming more transistors into each package is being supplanted by more sophisticated techniques that include stacking processor and memory components into single chips and the introduction of more tailored designs for tasks like artificial intelligence.
Separately, United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) on Saturday had power-supply disruptions at two plants in Hsinchu that temporarily affected production, UMC chief financial officer Liu Chi-tung (劉啟東) said.
“The company will discuss with customers, and try its best to make up for lost production,” Liu said by telephone. “No major financial impact is expected.”
The overall impact of the incident was “quite minor,” Liu said.
Power was being gradually restored, he said.
DAMAGE REPORT: Global central banks are assessing war-driven inflation risks as the law of unintended consequences careens around the world, spiking oil prices Central banks from Washington to London and from Jakarta to Taipei are about to make their first assessments of economic damage after more than two weeks of conflict between the US and Iran. Decisions this week encompassing every member of the G7 and eight of the world’s 10 most-traded currency jurisdictions are likely to confirm to investors that the specter of a new inflation shock is already worrying enough to prompt heightened caution. The US Federal Reserve is widely expected to do exactly what everyone anticipated weeks ahead of its March 17-18 policy gathering: hold rates steady. The narrative surrounding that
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) share of the global foundry market rose to almost 70 percent last year amid booming demand for artificial intelligence (AI), market information advisory firm TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said on Thursday. The contract chipmaker posted US$122.54 billion in revenue, up 36.1 percent from a year earlier, accounting for 69.9 percent of the global market, TrendForce said. Its share was up from 64.4 percent in 2024, it said. TSMC’s closest rival, Samsung Electronics, was a distant second, posting US$12.63 billion in sales, down 3.9 percent from a year earlier, for a 7.2 percent share of the global market. In the
At a massive shipyard in North Vancouver, Canadian workers grind metal beams for a powerful new icebreaker crucial to cementing the country’s presence in the increasingly contested arctic. Icebreakers are specialized, expensive vessels able to navigate in the frozen far north. And “this is the crown jewel,” said Eddie Schehr, vice president of production at the Seaspan shipyard. For Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who heads to Norway next Friday to observe arctic defense drills involving troops from 14 NATO states, Canada’s extreme north has emerged as a strategic priority. “Canada is and forever will be an Arctic nation,” he said ahead of
Chinese entrepreneur Frank Gao used to spend long hours running his social media accounts but now outsources the chore to artificial intelligence (AI) agent tool OpenClaw, which is taking China by storm despite official warnings over cybersecurity. OpenClaw, created in November by an Austrian coder, differs from bots such as ChatGPT because it can execute real-life tasks such as sending e-mails, organizing files or even booking flight tickets. “Since January, I’ve spent hours on the lobster every day,” Gao said in an interview, referring to OpenClaw’s red crustacean mascot. “We’re family.” After downloading OpenClaw, users connect it to artificial intelligence models of their
RSS