Technology giant Intel said on Monday (July 26) that its factories will start making Qualcomm chips and have drawn up a roadmap to expand its latest contract manufacturing business. the hope is to catch up with competitors such as TSMC and Samsung Electronics by 2025.
Intel added that Amazon would also become a new customer in its contract chip business. Intel has been a leader in chip technology for decades, but it seems that Intel has lost that lead-the manufacturing services of TSMC and Samsung Electronics have helped AMD and Nvidia produce chips that perform better than Intel.
Intel said on Monday that it expected to regain its lead by 2025. "We are showing investors the details of the business to give them the confidence to hold our shares," said Pat Gelsinger, Intel's chief executive.
Intel also said it would change the naming scheme for its chipmaking technology, using the "Intel 7" naming method, in line with TSMC and Samsung's technical naming.
Over time, the names used by chipmakers have become industry-specific terms, said Dan Hutcheson, chief executive of VLSIresearch, an independent semiconductor forecasting company. 'This gives people the wrong impression that Intel is less competitive,'he said.
Intel's first major customers will be Qualcomm and Amazon. Starting in 2024, Qualcomm will begin to use Intel 20A process to produce chips, which account for relatively low energy consumption. Amazon will also use Intel's packaging technology on its cloud computing platform AWS. Analysts say Intel has done well in this packaging technology.
"We have had a lot of time of communication and technical contact with these two customers and many other customers," Gelsinger said.
The biggest question now is whether Intel can deliver on its delayed technology commitments under years of leadership of Brian Krzanich, the former chief executive. A few years ago, Intel's seemingly unshakeable position in the processor market led to Intel's "arrogance" and made the company miss out on many major opportunities.
David Kanter, an analyst at Real World Technologies, says Intel is more cautious than it used to be.
"in the next few years, Intel will definitely catch up with TSMC and take the lead in some areas." "Intel does have people who spend all their time on how to deploy new materials and technologies to improve their performance," Kanter said.
