Intel is now a founder for all types of customers, including its direct competitors for whom the firm would be ready to produce future chips.
After signing a historic partnership to produce chips designed by Microsoft, Intel would be ready to open its foundries to its main competitors like Nvidia, AMD and even Qualcomm.
An opening which results from the major strategic turnaround initiated in 2021 when Intel announced that it wanted to burn chips for other market players, and hoped to grab market share from the Taiwanese giant TSMC.
Intel wants to open up to its direct competitors
Interviewed at the Intel IFS Direct Connect 2024 show held in San Jose this week, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger insisted on his company’s new strategic line. Following a question from a journalist from the site Tom’s Hardwarehe recalls that there are now two entities, “ Intel products and the Intel foundry “, emphasizing that there is “a clear dividing line between the two“.
The Intel foundry will be “a separate legal entity» from this year, with its own financial results, independent of the activity of the manufacturer’s in-house processors. The objective will therefore be to provide chips “to the widest range of customers on the planet“.
While all of Intel’s competitors source from TSMC, the firm hopes to offer them its own foundries:
So I want my foundry to be used by everyone. We want to help build Nvidia chips, AMD chips, TPU chips for Google, and inference chips for Amazon. We want to help them and provide them with the most powerful, best performing and most efficient technologies so they can build their systems. That’s all. Period.
The ambition here is to become “the foundry for the world» (yes, absolutely), a strategy which does not allow him to do in the “discrimination“. There is still a long way to go, but it is by signing contracts with these giants, often despite historic rivalries, that Intel can hope to shake up TSMC’s monopoly.
And acceleration seems to be in order in Intel’s plans, which intends to offer its 18A process, equivalent to an engraving fineness of 1.8 nm, from 2025 for the Clearwater Forest architecture, but also to its customers. As recalledTom’s Hardwarein his article, the manufacturer’s missteps in 2019 on 10 nm seem far away.