Intel would have asked TSMC to manufacture the Ponte Vecchio GPUs

Robert Sole 28 July 2020

0 570 1 minute of reading

These days Intel is on everyone's lips for the large number of problems that the company has. Last week, before announcing financial results, they announced a delay of at least 6 months with their 7nm lithograph. New rumors suggest that the Intel Ponte Vecchio GPUs would be manufactured by TSMC under the 6nm lithography.

When Intel announced a delay in its 7nm lithography, an interesting phenomenon was unleashed. The shares of the company, after going public, fell dramatically. At the same time, AMD's were up 15% and TSMC's were up 10%. We do not know if after this leak TSMC shares will rise, but it is quite possible.

Sales

Intel® Core™ i5-10400, desktop processor, 6 cores, up to 4,3 GHz, LGA1200 (Intel® 400 series chipset), 65 W

Intel i5-10400, 350 MHz, PCG 2015C, 100 °C, 37.5 x 37.5 mm

Intel Ponte Vecchio GPU will be produced by TSMC

Currently the 10nm node is better than TSMC's 7nm node according to the million transistors per square millimeter test. TSMC's 6nm node is an upgraded version of 7nm node and is quite similar to Intel's 10nm node. TSMC's 6nm lithography also has the advantage of having a lower cost than Intel's 10nm node for the same density.

But although Ponte Vecchio will be produced by TSMC, it will not be the solution that is most in demand from the Taiwanese foundry. According to DigiTimes, the greatest demand will be for processors and would be in the second half of 2022. Interestingly, Intel's 6-month delay with 7nm puts them by the end of 2022.

Another important factor is that the demand for GPU will depend directly on the demand for chips from AMD and NVIDIA. TSMC would consider Intel a temporary customer and would not be willing to lose its best customers. This could end up causing Intel to discard dedicated graphics for the time being, and Xe being an iGPU architecture.

China Time reports that Intel has requested TSMC to manufacture 180.000 wafers destined for Ponte Vecchio at the 6nm node. This would result in Intel and AMD now competing for TSMC's wafer production as well. At the same time, it would encourage NVIDIA to move the production of its GPUs to Samsung, the only foundry capable of meeting its demand.