Intel Foundry Services Onboards a Fabless Customer, Deal Expected to Fetch over $4 Billion

[btarunr]

Intel Foundry Services, the semiconductor foundry business of Intel, has onboarded an undisclosed fabless customer, the company disclosed in its Q4-2022 Financial Results presentation. This signals that the company wants to serve the semiconductor manufacturing industry beyond its own products, and scale up to demands, just like TSMC, UMC, Samsung Foundry, or other such semiconductor foundries do. The customer is looking to build chips on the Intel 3 foundry-node, which is rumored to offer performance/Watt and transistor-density figures comparable to TSMC 4N (4 nm EUV). Intel will extensively use Tower Semiconductor's silicon fabrication IP in the deal. Throughout its manufacturing lifecycle (from risk production to mass-production and completion), the deal is expected by Intel to generate over $4 billion in revenue for the company.



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[Daven]

Let me get this straight. Intel just released its financials which shows it made just under $1 billion in foundry sales over the entire year. As a comparison, TSMC is on track to exceed $100 billion in foundry sales.

Now after one of its worst quarters ever, Intel all of a sudden has a ‘secret’ foundry customer that will increase sales by a factor of four. Come on media, you need to start calling Intel out on this crap. This is kindergarten level maturity:

“Nah nah I have a secret and you can’t know it.”

All of these codenames and now secret customers is the most shameful way to try and stop investors from fleeing. THEY NEED TO BE CALLED OUT!

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

Let me get this straight. Intel just released its financials which shows it made just under $1 billion in foundry sales over the entire year. As a comparison, TSMC is on track to exceed $100 billion in foundry sales.

Now after one of its worst quarters ever, Intel all of a sudden has a ‘secret’ foundry customer that will increase sales by a factor of four. Come on media, you need to start calling Intel out on this crap. This is kindergarten level maturity:

“Nah nah I have a secret and you can’t know it.”

All of these codenames and now secret customers is the most shameful way to try and stop investors from fleeing. THEY NEED TO BE CALLED OUT!

Do you have any evidence to back up your claims?

 

[Nater]

Do you have any evidence to back up your claims?

Does Intel?

 

[windwhirl]

Let me get this straight. Intel just released its financials which shows it made just under $1 billion in foundry sales over the entire year. As a comparison, TSMC is on track to exceed $100 billion in foundry sales.

Now after one of its worst quarters ever, Intel all of a sudden has a ‘secret’ foundry customer that will increase sales by a factor of four. Come on media, you need to start calling Intel out on this crap. This is kindergarten level maturity:

“Nah nah I have a secret and you can’t know it.”

All of these codenames and now secret customers is the most shameful way to try and stop investors from fleeing. THEY NEED TO BE CALLED OUT!

You do realize Intel just got started with offering foundry services to other companies right? of course it's gonna take a while for it to take off. After all, fab nodes are not necessarily compatible with each other even when it's just a shrink, much less when you change of fab company entirely.

As to why it's secret... My guess would be that the deal is not fully fleshed out yet for whatever reason, or maybe the deal is for a government organization that requires a certain level of secrecy.

Does Intel?

Well, if they don't... they might find themselves under investigation.

 

[bonehead123]

the deal is expected by Intel to generation over $4 billion in revenue for the company

In other words, patsy boy gets to buy yet anutha learjet/beachouse/yacht etc, but he won't be able to tell anyone

............................................................................................................................................................

 

[W1zzard]

Let me get this straight. Intel just released its financials which shows it made just under $1 billion in foundry sales over the entire year. As a comparison, TSMC is on track to exceed $100 billion in foundry sales.

Now after one of its worst quarters ever, Intel all of a sudden has a ‘secret’ foundry customer that will increase sales by a factor of four. Come on media, you need to start calling Intel out on this crap. This is kindergarten level maturity:

“Nah nah I have a secret and you can’t know it.”

All of these codenames and now secret customers is the most shameful way to try and stop investors from fleeing. THEY NEED TO BE CALLED OUT!

https://imgur.com/G0CJVUM

These people have probably seen the evidence, or they'll sue Intel in the ground for making up things

 

[Daven]

https://imgur.com/G0CJVUM

These people have probably seen the evidence, or they'll sue Intel in the ground for making up things

It might not be as bad as Musk level tweet trouble but Intel can really be stretching the truth here by a lot. For sure everything they said yesterday is trying to ease investor hesitancy. In the case of a ‘secret’ customer, this can be no more than a big name that we all recognize running test silicon at Intel fabs with only the potential to make $4 billion in the best case max order amount should the customer choose to move forward.

Otherwise why not wait and disclose everything once a deal is signed. Intel is really pushing the boundaries of acceptable investor guidance. Many everyday people are already skeptical about putting their hard earned money into the last frontier of investment strategies, i.e. stocks. Intel’s behavior here is a big reason why that is.

Everyone needs to stop going out on a limb for this kind of behavior. If this doesn’t go through or is a fabrication, worst case for Intel is a fine and Pat gets let go with a huge golden parachute. Worst case for many others is a loss of their entire life savings. We need to make it so that such ambiguity is not allowed to be public until a firm sales agreement is signed and in place.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
It do smell like happy new year pumping up after bad reports
.

 

[Durhamranger]

Does Intel?

Fair Play

 

[thesmokingman]

Fair Play

Talking about how excellent you are going to be passes for fact today on Wallstreet. Look at GM, according to the White House and Wallstreet media, they are leading the EV revolution.

 

[Squared]

So who is this unnamed customer? Most potential customers have to choose between TSMC, Samsung, and Intel so these companies don't have a lot of options.

AMD has been a TSMC customer for a while now and an Intel competitor for a long time, and most of AMD's products now rely on TSMC's multi-chip technologies. But if it is AMD, it'd explain why the customer was unnamed.

Apple requires an enormous number of chips; Intel would be a risky bet this early on, and Apple doesn't directly compete with Intel and wouldn't seem to have a reason to hide their involvement in this. However Apple does have a reason to be unnamed: Apple has mostly stopped buying chips from Intel in favor of "Apple Silicon". People reading the headlines might not understand if they hear that Apple is buying chips from Intel foundry services.

MediaTek could be an option, but MediaTek and Intel don't really compete so it wouldn't hurt MediaTek to announce this, so why would they be unnamed?. Moreover $4 billion is around a quarter of MediaTek's annual revenue.

Nvidia has shopped around a little more than AMD and even talked about Intel opening up its foundry back in the 22nm days, when Intel was ahead of even TSMC. And in March Nvidia talked about considering Intel. Intel and Nvidia are less direct competitors than AMD and Intel, so this seems like a likely match, however Nvidia's openness about the idea doesn't fit with a customer than wants to be unnamed for now.

Qualcomm is already slated to use the Intel 20A node, so Qualcomm isn't shy about using Intel foundries.

Samsung foundries aren't as good as TSMC's, but they're good enough that it seems unlikely that Samsung's own chips would be manufactured elsewhere.

SiFive is too small a customer to be responsible.

So, my guesses on the likelihoods of these:
AMD 30%
Apple 10%
Nvidia 25%
MediaTek 20%
Qualcomm 5%
Samsung 0%
Some company I'm less familiar with 10%

 

[trsttte]

Regardless of previous relation or product competition, any option will want to keep the deal secret as it likely involves breaking up with their current supplier, not a new 4 billion worth product line.

There aren't that many options for that volume, besides the ones you mention maybe Tesla could be a possibility.

 

[R-T-B]

Does Intel?

I dunno, does Intel work at Intel or something?

 

[watzupken]

Generate 4 billion bucks revenue does not mean that Intel will earn 4 billion in profit. I suspect to attract chip companies to use their foundry, Intel had to try and undercut the likes of Samsung and TSMC. After all, why would chip companies want Intel who is also a direct competitor to manufacture their chips? For them to take the risk, Intel have to demonstrate that their fab is as good as competition, and/or, cheaper.

 

[kondamin]

Probably Amazon's Graviton, or a cpu for one of google's infrastructure servers.
I doubt microsoft but who knows they to have a big chunk of Azure running on ARM from Ampere Altra

I can't remember anyone else that has a large enough use case that would require a $4 billion order.
There were rumors of dell trying their own thing, but that's gone no where AFAIK

I think Amazon is the most likely candidate

 

[RandallFlagg]

Probably Amazon's Graviton, or a cpu for one of google's infrastructure servers.
I doubt microsoft but who knows they to have a big chunk of Azure running on ARM from Ampere Altra

I can't remember anyone else that has a large enough use case that would require a $4 billion order.
There were rumors of dell trying their own thing, but that's gone no where AFAIK

I think Amazon is the most likely candidate

Amazon and Qualcomm are already known to have contracts for Intel's fabs, as well as MediaTek.

It should be someone else if they are 'new'. It could even be AMD. My bet would be either AMD or Nvidia, but there are lots of other potential customers.

I think only Intel 16 is in production - that is, Intel's 22nm fab + FinFet optimized for foundry duty. It has similar density to what TSMC/Samsung etc. call 16nm, hence the name. So any revenue for shipping IFS chips is from this node.

The next IFS fab is Intel 3 - a low power, IFS friendly version of Intel 4. Intel 3 won't be until 2024 I believe though, a little after they are shipping Intel x86 chips on Intel 4. That would be when we might see something interesting coming off Intel's IFS fabs in the consumer CPU / SoC / GPU market

 

[kondamin]

Amazon and Qualcomm are already known to have contracts for Intel's fabs, as well as MediaTek.

It should be someone else if they are 'new'. It could even be AMD. My bet would be either AMD or Nvidia, but there are lots of other potential customers.

I think only Intel 16 is in production - that is, Intel's 22nm fab + FinFet optimized for foundry duty. It has similar density to what TSMC/Samsung etc. call 16nm, hence the name. So any revenue for shipping IFS chips is from this node.

The next IFS fab is Intel 3 - a low power, IFS friendly version of Intel 4. Intel 3 won't be until 2024 I believe though, a little after they are shipping Intel x86 chips on Intel 4. That would be when we might see something interesting coming off Intel's IFS fabs in the consumer CPU / SoC / GPU market

Ah, interesting.
hmm say huawei

 

[Redwoodz]

Ah, interesting.
hmm say huawei

Would I be surprised it's China? No

The real story here is someone banking on a "future" Intel Node. Since when did investors start trusting Intel Node predictions?

 

[Nater]

Nintendo? Just had that thought. Doubt it, but they're due for new gear.

 

[kondamin]

Nintendo? Just had that thought. Doubt it, but they're due for new gear.

Nintendo doesn't make their own chips, they have always used something that was on the market.
The switch uses nvidia's Tegra X,
the 64 trough wii u were ibm soc's
snes was a nec chip

I don't know what nintendo will be using for their next console, I kinda doubt they will opt for nvidia this time considering they demand $200 for their bottom tier Orin Soc

 

[windwhirl]

Nintendo doesn't make their own chips, they have always used something that was on the market.
The switch uses nvidia's Tegra X,
the 64 trough wii u were ibm soc's
snes was a nec chip

I don't know what nintendo will be using for their next console, I kinda doubt they will opt for nvidia this time considering they demand $200 for their bottom tier Orin Soc

They might be working on the Switch successor, but it's pretty hard for me to relate that to Intel's secret customer. I guess I could see it if we had more information about who's placing the orders, but until then, it could be anyone for any reason.

‘Switch Pro’ Reportedly Cancelled As Nintendo Shifts Focus To Next-Gen Console

No rumoured Switch Pro it seems.

sea.ign.com

 

[RandallFlagg]

I looked this up a bit and it appears it is a cloud / edge provider and the contract is for Intel 3 node. It is supposed to be a $4B contract.

So this is either rehashing the vague Amazon announcement from last year, or it is talking about Google. It could very well be a next gen version of Google's Argos VCU. Google also hired a Uri Frank from Intel to help them make their own SoC back in early 2021. There's not a lot of information about what exactly they mean by SoC though - i.e. what exactly is integrated into it, given that it is for data center not phone.