Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday.
“I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei.
“It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry service provider.
Photo: Cheng Yu-chen, AFP
Chen said he has formed trusted friendships with TSMC founder Morris Chang (張忠謀) and chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) for many years.
Intel is one of TSMC’s key customers utilizing 3-nanometer process nodes, along with Nvidia Corp, Apple Inc and Advanced Micro Devices Inc, he said.
Intel has long made chips inside its factories and also outsourced production to multiple foundry partners. However, the company makes most of its own data center chips to differentiate itself from others and create partnerships more easily, it said
“I think that’s the beauty of the business," Alex Katouzian, Intel’s executive vice president and general manager for client computing and physical AI group, said of the company's foundry strategy at the news conference. “Engineering teams have the flexibility to go one versus the other whenever it’s necessary. That gives us the most amount of flexibility.”
Tan, who took the CEO job in March last year, said Intel has made significant progress in enhancing its foundry business.
The company’s advanced 18A process node has entered full production, he said.
It has also made “tremendous progress” in next-generation 14A technology, so the company “can really scale volume,” he added.
Meanwhile, Intel reported robust demand for its central processing units (CPUs), thanks to fast growth in agentic artificial intelligence (AI), Tan said.
“In the last four weeks, I have had all CEOs calling me, [saying]: ‘I need more CPU,’” he said.
Commenting on Nvidia’s return to the PC chip market, Intel said it welcomes the competition.
Nvidia on Monday announced its new RTX Spark superchip for Windows PCs. The chip, codenamed N1X, includes a CPU developed in collaboration with MediaTek Inc (聯發科), Nvidia said.
“If you take a look at what they brought to market [on Monday], I think it’s a good thing,” Katouzian said. “It shows the importance of how critical the PC is.”
“We welcome the competition, but I think we’re going to do really well,” Katouzian said, citing Intel’s scale and the trust of its customer base.
“They want us to grow with them, there’s new opportunities on the AI side,” he said, calling the company’s roadmap “super strong.”
Additional reporting by AFP
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