Industry Expert Blogs

It sure has been an interesting experience watching Intel enter the semiconductor foundry business! While I credit Intel for increasing the exposure of the fabless semiconductor ecosystem to the financial markets, the attention from the Intel biased press is a bit overwhelming. The TSMC and ARM bashing is reaching new levels so let’s take a look back at how this all started.

The first quote I remember on the subject was from Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang suggesting Intel go into the foundry business. "Why not be a foundry for all the mobile companies? There’s no shame in that." This is back when 40nm silicon was in short supply and Nvidia was having yield ramping problems, which he first blamed on TSMC but later shared responsibility for. Unfortunately Nvidia, Qualcom, and the rest of the mobile companies will be competing with Intel Atom based SoCs so I do not see them buying wafers from Intel anytime soon. Apple learned the hard way what happens when you buy wafers from a competitor (Samsung), right?

Click here to read more ...