Rumor has it that AMD and Intel's production division - Intel Foundry - may become partners.
Please note that everything that follows has not yet been confirmed by the main companies involved, nor cross-checked by various sources. It is therefore a rumour to be treated with the necessary hindsight. Nevertheless, this rumour is extremely interesting and intriguing at a time when Intel is going through a major crisis which it has been struggling to overcome for several years now.
Chip design in Intel's R&D departments is no longer as buoyant as it was in the early 2010s. However, even if AMD is currently leading the way, the Arrow Lake generation isn't all bad, and the forthcoming arrival of Nova Lake chips should give Intel another boost. No, the American company's biggest problem is clearly its production arm, the Intel Foundry division, which is in charge of chip production and is in serious difficulty with the evolution of its etching process: today, all hopes are pinned on the Intel 14A to be able to stand up to the sector's number one, Taiwan's TSMC.
Component production at Intel Foundry © Intel
A production arm in difficulty, whose relative technological backwardness is struggling to convince potential customers, who are the only ones able to turn the company around thanks to their orders. This is where the rumour announced by Semafor is crucial: according to Rohan Goswami - business reporter for Semafor - AMD and Intel have begun talks with a view to the latter taking over part of the former's chip production. AMD is currently almost entirely dependent on TSMC for the production of its processors. The problem is that TSMC has limited capacity, and AMD is at the mercy of the slightest problem encountered by its supplier. In fact, by signing with Intel - which is far from being done - AMD could have several sources of supply, but the question obviously arises as to Intel's capacities.
As we've just explained, Intel Foundry is struggling with the evolution of its etching processes, so it's hard to see how it would be in a position to produce AMD's latest chips, which currently depend on TSMC's N3 process and, in future, its N2 evolution. The solution is actually quite simple, and has already been suggested by several analysts: Intel Foundry would take care of less technically demanding chips, but still very important for AMD.
