For decades, Intel has combined the development and manufacture of the fastest processors under one roof. But in recent years it has been shown: If Intel stumbles in the technical development of production, the chip giant will stumble for the new product presentations – delays in the 10 and 7 nm production were and are the result.

Intel has been leaving some chips for a long time at contract manufacturers (and here especially TSMC). These are mostly chips whose companies were bought and whose production was already designed for TSMC, or to support in the event of bottlenecks. For example, some chipsets have already been manufactured outside of the company because they wanted to use their own production lines for other purposes.

Intel has already officially confirmed that already in 2021 some chips are manufactured by contract manufacturers that were originally intended to remain completely in-house. In the chiplet design of the Xe-HPC accelerator, this includes the Xe-Link and I / O tiles, but also the gaming GPU based on the Xe-HPG architecture. From 2023 Intel plans to be so far with its own 7 nm production that external production may no longer be necessary.

Bloomberg now reports on talks from Intel, which are said to have started negotiations with Samsung and TSMC. As I said: Intel is already in active cooperation with TSMC and is already having some chips manufactured there. Apparently it should be about concrete plans for a significantly larger volume. In addition, the negotiations should relate to products that will be available from the end 2021 or at all 2023 should be available – significantly later than the Ponte Vecchio solution just mentioned. This roughly coincides with Intel’s own assessment 2022 either to be fully on schedule again with 7 nm or even in a larger volume on one external manufacturing.

On the TSMC side, Intel should be interested in manufacturing in 4 nm. End 2022 is where mass production begins. Talks with Samsung are still at an early stage, according to Bloomberg. To announce the quarterly results on 21. January Intel is supposed to announce the first details.