Intel could soon spend over 9 billion on chip outsourcing from TSMC

Rumor mill: Intel has been outsourcing its Arc GPU manufacturing to TSMC since 2022. According to current speculations from a outstanding funding financial institution, Intel may considerably improve its reliance on the Taiwanese foundry over the following few years.

Goldman Sachs analysts, quoted by the Taiwanese media outlet Commercial Times, counsel that Intel is prone to broaden product outsourcing to TSMC in 2024 and 2025. The “total addressable market” for Intel’s outsourcing orders is projected to be $18.6 billion in 2024 and $19.4 billion in 2025, the analysts said. It’s possible that TSMC will obtain manufacturing orders from Intel amounting to $5.6 billion within the subsequent yr and $9.7 billion in 2025.

Goldman Sachs’ assumptions appear to be primarily based on the challenges Intel has confronted with smaller and extra superior manufacturing processes for the reason that 10-nanometer node. Moreover, the US chipmaker just lately selected to determine a “foundry-like” relationship between its manufacturing teams and its inside product enterprise models, as famous by the analysts.

Opinion: Is Intel turning a nook?

Semiconductor business analyst Andrew Lu believes this relationship will evolve additional. Intel’s chip manufacturing arm instantly competes with TSMC, whereas its design division is working arduous to take care of its footing within the more and more aggressive semiconductor sector. Intel chip designers seem desirous to domesticate a better collaboration with the Taiwanese foundry.

Lu even speculates a couple of potential separation inside Intel’s competing enterprise arms, predicting that the Santa Clara-based chip maker may break up into two distinct firms within the coming years. Intel is more and more adopting a chiplet design for its upcoming CPUs, with some chiplet elements anticipated to be outsourced to exterior foundries by the tip of 2023.

Setting speculations apart, it is seemingly that each one of TSMC’s manufacturing capacities for 2024 and 2025 are already reserved. If Intel plans to outsource a good portion of its semiconductor merchandise to the Taiwanese agency, contracts would have been finalized by now.

Assuming the figures supplied by Goldman Sachs analysts – $5.6 billion and $9.7 billion – are correct, Intel’s orders could signify roughly 6.4% and 9.4% of TSMC’s total revenues for 2024 and 2025, respectively. Yet, regardless of the numerous sums concerned, neither Intel nor TSMC have publicly confirmed or refuted these claims.