Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger is planning a trip next week to Taiwan to meet with TSMC leadership. The focus of the talks is said to revolve around the importance of a strong partnership with the Taiwanese company. This will be his first trip to Asia representing Intel as its CEO.
As the world continues to cope with the pandemic and disrupted supply chains, Intel must maintain its supplies to compete with AMD and NVIDIA, which also use processes from TSMC. With the forthcoming launch of the Arc Alchemist graphics cards in Q1 2022, the role of TSMC will be pivotal in ensuring Intel’s ability to get cards to PC enthusiasts and establish its presence in the graphics card market.
As far as the meeting with TSMC goes, Bloomberg speculates that Gelsinger will be discussing current and future partnerships, as well as the kind of production volumes Intel is going to need. As we know, Intel is making its GPUs at TSMC, as well as some other products, but with the current supply constraints on bleeding edge nodes, Intel is going to have to do some tough negotiating, as all of its competitors are vying for the same nodes at TSMC.
Source: Bloomberg (via TechPowerUp)