Thursday, January 13th 2022
Intel and TSMC Strike 3nm Deal, New Hsinchu Fab to Cater to Intel
It looks like Intel and TSMC have a deal in place to manufacture 3 nm chips. The world-leading Taiwanese fab is setting up a new facility exclusively to cater to Intel, according to DigiTimes, citing industry sources. This facility will be located in the Baoshan area of Hsinchu, in northern Taiwan. The 3 nm node will enable Intel to keep its newfound cadence of launching new CPU microarchitectures with IPC increases each year. The annual IPC increase cadence in particular, would be faster than even the "Tick-Tock" cadence prior to 2015, as the company pushed IPC increases and foundry nodes each alternating year. The company faces stiff competition from AMD, which has been posting IPC increases each year since 2017, and leveraged TSMC 7 nm nodes to beat Intel in the IPC game for the first time in over 17 years.
Source:
DigiTimes
68 Comments on Intel and TSMC Strike 3nm Deal, New Hsinchu Fab to Cater to Intel
Intel should become a company like TSMC is what I’m saying. Make ALL their money fabbing other people’s chips.
I agree that AMD can't beat Intel when it comes to volume, but I appreciate that there is a company always hot on the heels of Intel so as to keep both companies on their toes. Intel have slacked too much for a decade or more before AMD hit them hard on the face with the introduction of Ryzen. Also, Intel's main competitor is no longer AMD, but ARM. ARM is the likely the one that is terrorising Intel in the data center sales, and may also hit them in the retail/consumer sales as we see more companies releasing ARM based Windows machine. Apple's success already somewhat pointed to the potential of ARM chips powering a desktop/laptop.Unfortunately, it is all about the money. If Intel is contributing materially to TSMC's revenue and profit, they will also be counted as their top customer. And since Intel is willing to throw money at TSMC with the intention to depriving competition to the fab, TSMC likely know it but is unlikely to be bothered as soon as the money keeps coming in. They will only play favouritism when fab businesses are not doing well.
That said, given that it's a leading edge node regardless, I expect that Intel's E-Cores and GPUs will be made there, while they manufacture their P-cores on an Intel fab. That way, their E-cores would be even more energy efficient while they further ramp up power to the P-cores for chasing synthetic top scores.
It is not to specifically cater to Intel because they are so nice. It's just good business. They have already allocated the capacity for new Fabs to a customer. You plan ahead, expand and what you have build already has a job to do in form of a customer that will be using it. Congratulations should go to TSMC for flawless business approach and marketing.
Intel needs to keep their foundries up to date as only having TSMC provide competitive facilities in the shadow of marxist occupied China with it's eyes on consuming anything not yielding to their fascist criminal organization only creates further pointless instability in the markets. An 8GB AMD video card says someone will get upset about me pointing out the truth.
Is Intel gonna get out of the leading edge fab business soon?
A report from DigiTimes reveals the true nature of Intel and TSMC’s relationship. Although the latter demanded an advance payment to secure the latter’s 3nm wafer supply, it has invested a great deal to increase production capacity and ensure sufficient supply for the former’s leading chip families. In fact, TSMC has converted two factories (P8/P9) at Baoshan to fulfill Intel’s 3nm wafer needs. Each of these factories will produce 20K wafers per month in the first run of production with 40K slated for the second. These fabs will reportedly manufacture an important CPU family on TSMC’s 3nm node for Intel.
As reported earlier, Intel is likely to partner with TSMC to leverage its 2nm GAA process node as well. This technology will be used to manufacture its GPUs as well as certain CPUs in 2025. The 3nm Intel CPUs and GPUs are expected to hit retail towards the end of 2023, with 2nm coming sometime in 2025.
Intel coming in and suddenly splitting the most advanced wafers with Apple sounds rather far-fetched. But, this wouldn’t be the first time a major chipmaker got priority access to advanced technology using financial means. Gaining process leadership over AMD and NVIDIA may seem like a big win for Intel, but it’s worth noting that this will ensure sufficient supply for both without straining supply lines. AMD has been using TSMC’s 7nm node since 2020, and yet despite sticking to the same process technology has managed to bring significant improvements to IPC and boost clocks.
I think Intel are paying someone else to do it till they have updated their own fabs to be able to do it themselves. And why not if you have the cash and want to make sure you don't let the competitor get ahead again.
I'm not saying it is a bad idea for the TSMC to make wafers for Intel. To know exactly how many wafers are going to be Intel's secured wafers is hard to say because we dont know the contract deals here. If Intel is doing this just to get their Fabs upgraded and running, they would have not invest in TSMC's production line literally, sponsoring their technology. Intel still can use their Fabs for producing other nodes for older CPUs. When TSMC is going to ramp up the production not all of them will go to Intel. It is still TSMC's Fab and they need to make sure whatever is in the agreement is being delivered. Just because media make it sound like that may be far fetched. It is still TSMC's Fab. I think, TSMC would have not built a Fab for Intel just to find out they would leave in a few years time to make their own chips. How I see it, TSMC is building a Fab and Intel is securing some of the wafers for future and has to pay upfront for it. Like I said before. Flawless move from TSMC's side.
About NV and AMD. We don't know what these will plan in a near future. Maybe Intel want's to compete better in the GPU market and as we know they still have some catching up to do.the market nowadays is a bit different with all the chip shortages. You should take this into account as well. The pandemic has made a huge impact in economy everywhere.
even though the Fabs were working at 100%, TSMC still managed to ramp up the production by 25% and it was not enough anyway. Chip shortages are still present and the prices are extremely high in general.
Intel has been building stuff for themselves in their fabs, with a few minor exceptions.