Intel + Apple locked TSMC's first 3nm process

On the evening of January 13, the news that Intel's cooperation with TSMC has been more or less confirmed, although it is a bit ironic but very true.

It was previously reported that Intel will use TSMC's 3nm process to manufacture its third-generation Arc graphics and a small number of CPUs, while the first and second-generation Arc GPUs will use 6nm and 4nm nodes, including some small chips in the Xe-HPC "Ponte Vecchio" series. Intel's CEO recently visited Taiwan and appears to have reached some other agreement on future cooperation.

According to Digitimes, sources say TSMC plans to produce 3nm chips for Intel at its new production site in northern Taiwan. The production site is located in Baoshan District ,Hsinchu City (P8/P9). The source said Intel wants TSMC to use the 3nm manufacturing process to produce CPU and GPU components for it. These plants will produce 20,000 wafers per month in the first round of production and 40,000 in the second round.

Industry insiders say TSMC is changing its plans to accommodate Intel's plans, and the cooperation between the two sides is deeper than expected and is of a long-term nature. According to sources, CPU and GPU outsourcing agreements have been identified into the 2nm GAA era in 2025, while the range of product and process technologies continues to expand.

In today's earnings call, TSMC CEO Wei Zhejia said that the 3nm process development progress is in line with expectations and will be mass-produced in the second half of this year.

Wei Zhejia pointed out that the 3-nanometer process will be mainly used in the field of high-efficiency computing and smart phones, and it is expected that 3-nanometer will be another large-scale generation process after 5-nanometer. Wei Zhejia said that in response to the strong demand for special processes such as image sensors and non-volatile memory, TSMC will expand its 28nm process production capacity in Chinese mainland, Japan and Taiwan.

The industry believes that Intel hopes to reduce the technology gap with competitors by working with TSMC. At present, Apple, Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm and other competitors have used TSMC foundry products, and the performance of Apple chips has even surpassed the Intel X86 chip in some areas.

In addition, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger also visited Taiwan last month and held talks with TSMC executives. Although the two sides did not announce the results of the negotiations, people familiar with the matter said that Intel insisted that TSMC allocate a separate production line for it.

Last month, Digitimes also reported that Intel will become the first 3nm customer of TSMC to go hand in hand with Apple, ahead of amD and other senior customers. Therefore, this year's production capacity can only be divided between these two, and Qualcomm, MediaTek, Broadcom, NVIDIA and AMD will not start to enter the 3nm generation until 2024 at the earliest.

It is worth mentioning that in August last year, it was reported that Intel would be half a step ahead of Apple and take the lead in using TSMC's 3nm process to produce GPUs and server CPUs. The news said at the time that mass production would take place in July 2022, which also meant that Intel was expected to become the first customer of TSMC's 3nm process.

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