Intel’s CEO Pat Gelsinger has revealed the firm’s intention to enter the “custom chip” business, catering to every type of client, including AMD.
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The competition in the custom chip segment is finally heating up as Intel and NVIDIA announce their intentions to jump into the business through their well-established supply chains and equipment. Speaking at IFS Direct Connect, Pat Gelsinger expressed the firm’s plans to enter the custom chip markets as well, supplying Intel’s process nodes and “sharing” every stage of manufacturing technologies, including cutting-edge packaging services. Speaking with a representative from Tom’s Hardware, here is what Pat had to say when asked about the firm’s approach with custom chips.
Well, if you go back to the picture I showed today, Paul, there are Intel products and Intel foundry, There’s a clean line between those, and as I said on the last earnings call, we’ll have a setup separate legal entity for Intel foundry this year.
We’ll start posting separate financials associated with that going forward. And the foundry team’s objective is simple: Fill. The. Fabs. Deliver to the broadest set of customers on the planet.
We hope that that includes Jensen (Nvidia), Christiano (Qualcomm), and Sundar (Google), and you heard today it includes Satya (Microsoft), and I even hope that includes Lisa (AMD) going forward. I mean, we want to be the foundry for the world, and if we’re going to be the Western foundry at scale, we can’t be discriminating about who’s participating in that.
– Intel’s CEO Pat Gelsinger
The statements made by Intel’s CEO indeed express the firm’s optimism in this segment, and we can’t argue this decision in any way since, in the era of AI advancements, the need for “client-optimized” custom chips is growing rapidly, which has created a vacuum yet to be fulfilled by companies. An advantage that Intel has here is that the firm has vast experience in developing on-spot chips when it comes to the required performance output, and with the technologies, Intel has implemented in many of its CPU lineups, Team Blue will certainly not face a problem fulfilling clientele demand.
Intel’s CEO has already expressed their openness to making chips for NVIDIA and AMD. NVIDIA has also teased a potential future deal with Intel in using Blue Team’s fabs to produce certain chips to secure more supply for the AI era.
While Intel does have some contributions in the custom chip segment, mainly dealing with networking firms such as Cisco, we have yet to see an implementation for tech firms. However, Team Blue has successfully gained interest from the industry, as they have secured a whopping $15 billion contract from Microsoft, mainly dealing with developing in-house design of AI processors and accelerators. Microsoft and Intel will leverage the 18A process, which marks the first big “win” for IFS of its cutting-edge node, along with shaking TSMC’s foundations as well, since this development is indeed massive for the semiconductor markets in terms of the competition present.
Pat Gelsinger has envisioned IFS as the world’s largest foundry, and based on how the firm is shaping up, the goal seems achievable. The big question here is how Intel manages to “sustain” itself when it gets put in the spotlight since, apart from cutting-edge processes, effectively managing supply and demand plays a crucial role, especially in the AI era.
News Source: Tom’s Hardware