Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, many announce today that it has won Intel Corp’s contract to supply its mobile Internet device (MID) and the Intel Atom processor, a local media report yesterday.
This not only marks the first time that Intel, the world’s largest chipmaker, has outsourced its processor manufacturing, but also is an important contract for the Hsinchu-based TSMC for entering the contract manufacturing market for processors, the Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported yesterday.
Intel executive vice president Sean Maloney and TSMC global sales and marketing vice president Jason Chen (陳俊聖) will hold a joint press conference tonight at Intel’s executive briefing center in Santa Clara, California. TSMC chief executive Rick Tsai (蔡力行) will also attend, the report said.
Statistics provided by market research firm IC Insights Inc showed that Intel was the world’s largest semiconductor firm last year, while TSMC ranked fifth.
Intel chief executive officer Paul Otellini said last week that the company might outsource manufacturing of its Nand Flash memory chips, and a wire report said on Saturday that TSMC could be in talks with Intel over a new contract to supply Nand Flash.
The wire report, however, also said Anand Chandrasekher, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s Ultra Mobility Group, had hinted that this press conference would be related to the Atom processor.
No matter whether Intel outsources its Nand Flash or Atom processor manufacturing to TSMC, it will help boost TSMC’s capacity utilization rate, the report said.
TSMC yesterday only confirmed that the press conference would be held today, but declined to reveal further information.
A Central News Agency report said that Intel had outsourced production of its South Bridge chips to TSMC in the past, but turned to self-production in recent years, citing an industry insider.
Since the onset of the global financial crisis late last year, many integrated device manufacturers have been forced to close their plants and outsource to contract manufacturers in a bid to lower costs.
In January, Intel also announced the restructuring of its production department, as well as the closure of five manufacturing facilities in Asia and the US.
From a cost perspective, an industry insider said Intel might outsource its orders to TSMC again, the report said.
This week’s undoing of the TerraUSD algorithmic stablecoin and its sister token, Luna, has ramifications for all of crypto. First, there is the immediate impact: The rapid collapse of a once-popular pair of cryptocurrencies sent a ripple effect across the industry, contributing to plummeting coin prices that wiped hundreds of billions of market value from the digital-asset market and stoked worries over the potential fragility of digital-asset ventures. Then there are the knock-on effects. In addition to delivering punishing losses to individual users and investment firms, the spectacular failure of a market darling like Terra threatens to have a cooling effect
China’s biggest chipmaker has cut its outlook for the second quarter, joining a growing list of manufacturers warning about the fallout from lockdowns aimed at containing the country’s worst COVID-19 outbreak in two years. Semiconductor Manufacturing International Co (SMIC, 中芯) estimates a month-long lockdown in Shanghai could spur component shortages and logistics tangles, and erase about 5 percent of its output in the second quarter. “We are trying our best to mitigate the impact on product delivery,” SMIC Chairman Gao Yonggang (高永崗) told analysts on a call yesterday morning. “We are still assessing the actual impact as many suppliers restart their
DISRUPTIONS: The war in Ukraine, China’s lockdown measures, rising interest rates and inflation have thrown a wrench into business plans made years in advance Samsung Electronics Co is talking with foundry clients about charging as much as 20 percent more for making semiconductors this year, joining an industry-wide push to hike prices to cover rising costs of materials and logistics. Contract-based chip prices are likely to rise around 15 percent to 20 percent, depending upon the level of sophistication, people familiar with the matter said. Chips produced on legacy nodes would face bigger price hikes, while new pricing would be applied from the second half of this year, they said, adding that Samsung has finished negotiating with some clients and is in discussions with others. Samsung’s decision
material SHORTAGE: Even as workers are about to return, Quanta lacks operating supplies, while Pegatron reported its lowest revenues in 11 quarters, the companies said Taiwan’s major Apple Inc supplier cut its outlook for the second quarter, joining a growing list of manufacturers warning about the fallout from lockdowns aimed at containing China’s worst COVID-19 outbreak in two years. Quanta Computer Inc (廣達電腦), which assembles MacBooks, expects a 20 percent quarterly fall in notebook shipments and a squeeze on margins this quarter due to the lockdown, a company representative said on Friday during an earnings call. The impact from supply chain disruptions could last until the end of the year, she said. The company’s Shanghai factory has been operating under tight restrictions since the middle of last month,
RSS