TSMC Could Get to Produce Intel’s 14nm Chips

• Intel is planning to outsource some of its 14nm chip production to TSMC.
• These include the current 8th generation Coffee Lake CPUs and their corresponding 300-series chipsets.
• This is likely to reduce the load on Intel's foundries for this year and the next.

Intel is planning to outsource production of its 14nm chips to TSMC according to a report by Digitimes. This includes the 8th generation 'Coffee Lake' series of processors along with the 300-series chipsets. This information seems unconvincing at first as Intel has its own foundry and outsourcing the fabrication means revelation of design and other trade secrets. But a deeper look implies that all is not well at Intel's camp.

Intel's struggles with 10nm have been widely known. Competitors such as AMD are on track to launch 7nm Ryzen 3 processors next year. On the ARM side, Qualcomm, Samsung, Huawei, and Apple will be launching their respective 7m SoCs by this year-end. Although Intel did show off a 10nm wafer during its Technology and Manufacturing Day celebrations in China last year, it said that currently, the yields on 10nm are low, which is why it is continuing to push 14nm well into next year as well. The upcoming 'Coffee Lake-S Refresh' also will be based on a 14nm process.

Since 14nm will continue to play a major part for Intel going into 2019, its foundries will not be able to keep up with the demand. Therefore, Digitimes notes that some of the 14nm production will be offloaded to TSMC on a different node. The move is in resonance with the current shortage of H310 chipsets and the on and off the availability of various 8th generation Core processors. Apparently, the prices of the non-K CPUs have also shot up considerably.

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