Intel Names New CEO and Rumor Claims TSMC Will Manufacture CPUs This Year

[Guest_Jim_*]

It is hardly news that Intel has been struggling in recent times, as its 10 nm manufacturing process has been slow to come out, AMD has successfully brought significant pressure in the CPU market, and Apple decided to develop its own M1 silicon for its devices. This week the company announced a significant change that could help it continue through these challenges and a rumor has come out that may also help, but the announcement first.

On February 15 Bob Swan will be stepping down as CEO of Intel with Pat Gelsinger taking on the position. Swan has been in this position since January 2019, and while two years is not a very long time, he succeeded in growing the company's revenue streams despite the issues with 10 nm and such. Still, as the Anandtech article points out this change will bring an engineer to the head of the company again, and one with significant experience, including at Intel.

Pat Gelsinger has been the CEO of VMWare since 2012 and was able to make the company into a global leader for cloud infrastructure, enterprise mobility, and cyber security. Prior to this position he was a COO at EMC where he oversaw operations concerning storage, data computing, backup, and RSA security. It is before EMC that was at Intel for 30 years, as Intel is also where his career started. During that time he worked on USB and Wi-Fi that have both become ubiquitous standards today and was the architect for the original 80486 processor. He also led 14 microprocessor programs and was key to the Core and Xeon families of processors, so it is hardly surprising he became Intel's first CTO.

Under Swan's leadership, Intel has had the goal of becoming a multi-architecture company so it can enter into new and fast growing markets. One clear example of this is the work on X^e graphics as GPUs and other specialized accelerator are fast becoming the desired hardware for data centers and supercomputers. As the Anandtech article points out, with Gelsinger we will see the futures of 10 nm, Intel 7 nm, Alder Lake and the future Lakes processors, Sapphire Rapids, discrete graphics, Ponte Vecchio, networking, packaging, Internet-of-Things, infrastructure, artificial intelligence, and 5G compute. It would not surprise me if there is more that can be added to that list either as Intel is involved in a great many areas.

With Swan continuing as CEO until February 15, that means he will be the one on the January 21 earnings call when Intel will report its Q4 and full 2020 earnings. There will also be an update on the progress for Intel's 7 nm processing node. Due to the struggles with getting 10 nm ready for mass production, Intel has had to face questions of if it will turn to third party fabricators, such as TSMC which is producing AMD's 7 nm parts. Already Intel has outsourced the production of some of its non-CPU parts, but according to TrendForce, it may allow CPUs to be manufactured by TSMC later this year.

More specifically, the rumor claims mass production of Core i3 CPUs would begin at TSMC in the second half of this year on its 5 nm node, but in the second half of 2022 mid-range and even high-end CPUs would be mass produced on TSMC's 3 nm node. If proven true, this would be very significant news as Intel has not wanted to outsource its CPU manufacturing, but with TSMC successfully getting ahead of it in process technology, some have speculate it would eventually happen.

As it happens, Anandtech had an interview with Bob Swan recently and during it he mentioned Intel would have certain requirements before outsourcing CPU manufacture. These include preferential treatment for the necessary volumes and the integration of related design tools. Licensing the technology from a third party is also an option that would be considered, but we will possibly learn more on that from the earnings call next week.

Source: Intel (Pat Gelsinger CEO Appointment), Anandtech (Pat Gelsinger CEO Appointment), and Trendforce (TSMC Possibly Producing Intel CPUs)

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