Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has got quite the travel itinerary these days. The CEO plans to visit Japan, India, and Taiwan to meet with prominent chip suppliers and customers. Though this trip to Asia seems to be more about securing more chip capacity than a casual corporate check-in.
According to Digitimes (via Seeking Alpha) made a short trip to Taiwan to meet with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) in order to secure more sub-7nm and 28nm process manufacturing capacity, which is used in chips inside pretty much everything from Apple's A12 chip on the iPhone and AMD's Ryzen and Radeon chips, to Intel's new Arc GPUs.
TSMC has reported a significant increase in the number of 7nm chip orders this year, which makes sense now that the supply chain is showing signs of slowly going back to normal. It makes sense that a huge customer like Intel is going to do everything possible to make sure that they are pushed to the front of the line, along with seeing if they can get away with grabbing as much stock as possible. However, it will have to contend with other customers of TSMC, including AMD.
Intel has been making some huge moves by announcing that it's going to build a massive chip foundry in Germany as well as factories in the United States. The goal with these multi-billion dollar facilities is for Europe and the Americas to have less reliance on chip supply from Asia and, of course, prevent chip shortages in the future.
"These engagements are vital as we and others in the industry work together to drive innovation and restore balance and resilience to the global supply chain," an Intel spokesperson told Bloomberg.
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