According to the information provided by semiconductor analyst Andrew Lu, Intel placed a $4 billion chip order from TSMC for 2024. In fact, this figure will reach 10 billion dollars in 2025. It is claimed that the Lunar Lake processor cores to be released next year will be the first Intel processors produced in an external foundry. According to Lu, Intel will become more dependent on TSMC in the future.Could be TSMC’s second largest customer
Apple’s M3 and A17 processors are produced with TSMC’s 3nm manufacturing process. Therefore, Apple is TSMC’s largest customer. According to the analyst’s claim, Intel will surpass AMD and become TSMC’s second largest customer in the 3nm process. By the end of 2024, Intel will supply 15 thousand 3nm wafers per month from TSMC. In 2025, the number will increase to 30 thousand.
It seems that there are some economic and financial gains for the company in Intel’s work with TSMC. First of all, we can list the increase in production capacity. Although Intel has a very large production capacity, its inability to reach sufficient production volume, especially in high-end chips, may have led to such a trend. Intel has long had some low-value parts of its CPUs and GPUs produced in external foundries.
Arc Alchemist GPUs are manufactured by TSMC
Intel is having TSMC manufacture its new Arc Alchemist GPUs. Meteor Lake processors also include CPU sections produced with TSMC’s 5nm and 6nm nodes. It is said that Intel’s upcoming Battlemage and Celestial GPUs and some parts of its future processors will also be produced at TSMC.
Intel has been outsourcing some of its production to external foundries for years, and the benefits of this outweigh the negatives. Additionally, the company is in a better place technologically than it was when it struggled to bring 10nm chips to market. If Intel had allowed TSMC to produce its CPUs at that time, perhaps it would not have lost so much market share to AMD.
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