Intel Corp. has spoken to him Taiwan Semiconductor and manufacturing company Samsung Electronics Co. about the Asian companies making some of their favorite snacks, but the Silicon Valley pioneer is still holding out hope for last-minute improvements in his own production capabilities.
After persistent delays in its chip manufacturing processes, California-based Santa Clara, Intel, has yet to make a final decision less than two weeks ahead of a scheduled release of its plans, according to people who familiar with the conversations. Any parts that Intel could find from Taiwan would not come to market until 2023 at the earliest and would be based on established manufacturing processes used by other TSMC customers, the people said, requesting not marked by the fact that the plans are private.
Negotiations with Samsung, which has furnace capabilities detecting TSMC’s, are at an earlier stage, the people said. Representatives of TSMC and Samsung declined to comment. An Intel spokesman referred to previous comments by Bob Swan, the company’s chief executive. Intel shares rebounded some losses from earlier on Friday, leaving the stock down 0.5% in afternoon trading in New York.
Swan has promised investors it will unveil its plans for outsourcing and get Intel’s production technology back on track when the company reporting on Jan’s earnings. 21. The world’s most renowned chip maker has historically led the industry in advanced manufacturing methods, essential for maintaining the increased performance speed in modern semiconductors. But the company suffered years of delays that put it behind competitors who design their own sculptors and contract TSMC to carry out the manufacturing.
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Under the direction of Jim Keller, Intel designers moved to a more methodical approach to the creation of microprocessors. This gives more flexibility for making chips indoors or outdoors at work. But Keller left Intel last year, and so did competitors Micro Inc. Advanced Tools Inc. and Apple Inc., has gone ahead with their own capable design and more advanced TSMC production technology. That has put Intel under intense competitive pressure and forced it to make last – minute changes to product roadmaps, complicating its decisions, the people said.
“We have another good line of products in 2022, and I am increasingly confident in the guidance that our 2023 results will provide on Intel 7-nanometer or external furnace processors, or a combination of both,” Swan he said on a conference call in October. Semiconductor manufacturing processes are measured in nanometers, with more small transistors microscopically distributed on silicon chips with each new feather.
At subsequent investor conferences, Swan explained that his decision-making time is driven by the need for chip-making equipment to ensure he has enough factory capacity or enough heads to give his partners-up to make a similar preparation. Being able to deliver positive results to customers on time, at the right cost, will determine what exterior Intel will use, he said.
TSMC, the largest manufacturer of semiconductors for other companies, is preparing to offer Intel chips made with a 4-nanometer process, with an initial test using an older 5-nanometer process, according to the people. The company has he said he will make test production of 4-nanometer chips in the fourth quarter of 2021 and size loads next year.
A Taiwanese company expects a new facility in Baoshan to be operational before the end of this year, which can be converted to production for Intel if needed, one of the people said. Former TSMC executives the new Baoshan unit said it would have a research center with 8,000 engineers.
Venture investor Dan Loeb has also voiced shareholder dissatisfaction with what is seen as Intel’s technological stagnation, urging the company to be aggressive strategic changes.
While Intel has outperformed chip production at its lowest level in the past, it has kept manufacturing the best semiconductors in-house, considering it a competitive strength. Historically, their engineers have tailored the design to the company’s manufacturing processes, moving to the production of previously unbelievable flagship products.
As a supplier of 80% of PC and server processors worldwide, Intel makes hundreds of millions of chips each year. That scale says that any provider needs to create new capacity to replace Intel.
In July, the company said its 7-nanometer production would arrive a year later than previously expected. That came after a three-year delay in the introduction of the previous 10-nanometer generation, which is no longer reaching mainstream use. These holdups have allowed TSMC and Samsung to bid for better technology for the first time, with TSMC already rolling out 5-nanometer-sized silicon for Apple and others. That timeline suggests that other customers could move to better TSMC production before Intel does.
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Intel ‘s strategic shifts are happening at a time strong demand as well as technological change in the chip industry. The traditional method of improving performance by shrinking and shifting more transistors into each package is being replaced by more sophisticated methods that incorporate a stacker processor and memory components. -introduce single chips and introduce a design more suitable for tasks such as artificial intelligence.
AMD and others have reduced the risk of manufacturing advances to some extent without proceeding at the expected pace with the separation of their designs, allowing the assembly of various parts of the processor in standards. Intel has said that it is also moving towards that modular approach.
– Supported by Sohee Kim