Intel Tipped To Hire TSMC To Help Make Some Chips

In an unprecedented move by one of the largest chipmakers in the world, a report suggests Intel's ordered work done by TSMC. Last week's Intel earnings call (July 23, 2020) had CEO Bob Swan mention they'd "invested in contingency plans to hedge against further schedule uncertainty," and that this could mean working with "somebody else's foundry" to manufacture hardware.

Information on the TSMC order comes from The Commercial Times. They report that Intel's ordered 180,000 wafers from TSMC in order to produce their upcoming 6-nm chip. As noted by Yahoo! Finance, it's "not clear who would be manufacturing the much delayed, 7-nm chip."

A Digitimes report suggests that TSMC has effectively confirmed the order, saying "TSMC internally does not consider orders for Intel's processors as long-term ones, and therefore is unlikely to build additional production capacity for the new contract."

Meanwhile Intel announced that they'd separated their Technology, Systems Architecture, and Client Group (TCSG) into five separate groups. The five groups will be as follows: Technology Development, Manufacturing and Operations, Design Engineering, "Architecture, Software and Graphics", and Supply Chain. This change was made effective immediately – and the announcement was paired with a note about how Dr. Murthy Renduchintala would be leaving the company on August 3, 2020.

Dr. Venkata Murthy Renduchintala was the chief engineering officer and group president of TSCG. Dr. Renduchintala was appointed president of the then-newly-created TSCG group back in November of 2015. Dr. Ann Kelleher will now lead Intel technology development "focusing on 7nm and 5nm processes."

The TSCG group's five teams will report directly to the CEO from this point forward. Intel suggested that "Intel CEO Bob Swan announced changes to the company's technology organization and executive team to accelerate product leadership and improve focus and accountability in process technology execution."