Intel has reportedly outsourced some of its CPU production to TSMC
At this point, it is painfully obvious that Intel's manufacturing troubles are far from over. An insider report from last year told us about sub-par 10nm yields and 7nm delays. Rumour had it that TSMC was expected to pick up Intel's slack starting in H2 2021 by manufacturing some Intel Core i3 SKUs on its 5nm node. A new report from Digitimes states that Intel and TSMC have already started working together.
The information comes from a former industry insider and Twitter user Retired Engineer, who was gracious enough to translate the aforementioned Digitimes article to English. It states that a good chunk of future Intel chips will use TSMC's 3nm process node. Production is expected to kick off in H2 2022, around the time TSMC's 3nm node is likely to be ready. However, Intel plans on making some of its CPUs in-house, too. It'll be interesting to see how this two-pronged approach works out for Intel. The primary aim of outsourcing some of its production to TSMC is to free up resources to ramp up its manufacturing prowess.
Intel and TSMC's partnership is expected to persist far beyond 2022. TSMC is reportedly working with Intel and Apple to hasten 2nm R&D efforts. Intel's continued collaboration with TSMC will undoubtedly ruffle some feathers at AMD. After all, it has been relying on TSMC for all of its 7nm needs. Given the sheer magnitude of the claim, we should take it with a grain of salt and wait for more information to emerge later in the year.
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