Microsemiwhich offers a broad range of chips for communications, defense, aerospace and industrial marketsbecomes Intel's fifth publicly disclosed foundry customer, joining network processor provider Netronome and FPGA vendors Altera, Achronix and Tabula.
Intel reportedly has several more undisclosed foundry customers. Unconfirmed reports have said Intel could be making 22-nm ASICs for Cisco. Others said the PC chip giant may be working on a deal to make mobile processors for Apple, which is trying to reduce its foundry dependence on archrival Samsung.
Does anyone have an idea how many wafers/month these companies will use?
This isn't much of a surprise as was reported on other sites that Intel is serious about this particular venture & I wouldn't be surprised if they make 22nm parts even for ARM chipmakers as they shift towards 14nm themselves.
...This is why US will never break up Intel too, the government knows it needs to secure its sole access to Intel's process technology and in ways that prevents any other country from doing the same.
Standard gov/defense/national security situation.
This is why US will never break up Intel too, the government knows it needs to secure its sole access to Intel's process technology and in ways that prevents any other country from doing the same.
An idea that I always find amusing - what would happen to TSMC if Intel actually did open up its fabs to both the ARM and GPU companies for a node or two? Granted such would affect Samsung and GLF to some extent as well, but I don't imagine it would be as much. Whereas if TSMC suddenly didn't have customers happily paying a heavy premium to be on their leading edge process... how exactly would they finance both R&D and deployment of the next node? Because if they couldn't keep up their current pace and began to slip... well that'd be mission accomplished for Intel's foundry excursion! Just ensure that the manufacturing contracts have to be re-negotiated yearly and then start charging exorbitant prices per wafer once there's effectively nowhere else for the ARM and GPU companies to go.
You're giving the government way too much credit.
They can't even defend the secrets for one of the biggest defense programs of all, the F-35 JSF.
Wouldn't happen and for a bunch of reasons that probably only make sense to a fabless customer. Intel is not exactly known for their customer-centric mindset (and we aren't the customer, the OEMs are)
Being a foundry involves more than just opening the fab and telling people "have at it". It is very much a partnership with about 1/2 degree of business separation.
TSMC gets this, Intel has absolutely no idea what it takes because they aren't a real foundry nor are they a customer of a real foundry.
Saying Intel could do away with TSMC just because Intel has superior process tech, albeit very narrowly defined in component breadth, is like saying NASA could put Boeing to pasture just because NASA had the shuttle program.
The skillsets are just not that transferable as one would like to make it seem when one is writing a nice story for headline grabs.
NASA would suck at building the next 787 Dreamliner, and Intel would suck at trying to be the next TSMC for all the reasons that being TSMC is not simply a matter of having a fab with leading edge process tech inside.
You are giving the government way to little credit if you think the smokescreen that is the F-35 JSF is "the prize"