TSMC - A New Line of Business

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TSMC has been able to stay ahead of Intel by developing new manufacturing technologies. Apple license basic chip designs from ARM, customize them for products like the iPhone and have those chips manufactured by TSMC. The company is also opening a new line of business that will focus on semiconductors.

Today I'm talking to Pat Gelsinger, the CEO of Intel. I’ve been excited to have this conversation for a very long time – ever since Pat took over as CEO a little over a year and a half ago. After all. Intel is a very important company with a huge series of challenges in front of it. It’s still the largest chip manufacturer by revenue, and makes more chips than any other company in the United States. In fact there are basically only three major chip manufacturers: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC, which is in Taiwan, Samsung, based in South Korea. And Intel, here in the United States.

The Intel Pat took over was struggling, and was losing ground to in a variety of markets. But in the past year and a half, Pat’s restructured the company, turned over almost all of its leadership positions, opened a new line of business that would compete with TSMC and make chips for other companies including Intel’s competitors, and generally tried to reset Intel’s famous engineering culture around engineering.

Glossary:

IFS - Intel Foundry Service.

Raptor Lake - codename for intel's Gen 13 processors that were just the day before we had our conversation.

Sapphire Rapids - the codename for Intel's 4th generation Xeon server processors.

20A and 18A - 20A is a rebranding of what was intel's 5nm process scheduled to debut in 2024 and 18A is a rebranding of Intels 5nm+ node due out in 2025.

Packaging - integrated circuit packaging is the last step of semiconductor fabrication. It's where a block of semiconductor material is put into a case. The case, is known as a "package" and that is what allows you put a circuit on a board.

Wafers - When a processor is made they make processors you make hundreds of them at once on a giant wafer.

EUV - is Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography. It's the most advanced way to make chips.

ASML - Is the company that makes the machines that lets you make chips. They are the only company that makes EUV machines.

RibbonFET - A new transistor technology that Intel developed.

ISV - Independent Software Vendors.

PDK - Process Design Kit is a set of files that have data and algorithms that explain the manufacturing parameters for a given silicon process.

EDA tools - stands for Electronic Design Automation tools. Basically software tools that are used to design and validate the semiconductor manufacturing process.

Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore - the founders of Intel.

Andy Grove - employee #3 who went on to become one of their most successful CEOs.

Links:

Moore's Law

Intel is replacing its CEO in February

Intel has to be better than ‘lifestyle company’ Apple at making CPUs, says new CEO

Apple is switching Macs to its own processors starting later this year

Apple MacBook Air with M1 review: new chip, no problem

What we know about Intel’s $20 billion bet on Ohio

Intel is building a new €17 billion semiconductor manufacturing hub in Germany

Intel delays ceremony for Ohio factory over lack of government funding

Intel needs 7,000 workers to build its $20 billion chip plant in Ohio