The American technology company Intel last week gave information on its upcoming 14th generation Meteor Lake processors. The next-gen processor from the company is going to be launched next year but apparently, there have been some major changes to the company’s original plans. The company had previously informed that it will be using the 7nm process to fabricate the processors itself but according to a new report, Intel might actually outsource the fabrication process to TSMC.
What’s the Story?
For those unaware, TSMC is the company that works on M1 chips from Apple which makes use of the 5nm process and Intel could now actually benefit from that as well. To recall, Apple used to go for processors from Intel but was not happy with compromising the launch dates for its Mac devices based on the timeline of the launch of Intel’s processors. In fact, the performance problems related to Intel’s Skylake in 2015 actually led to Apple starting to manufacture on its own.
According to a report from 9to5Mac, Intel always neglected the expectations of the Apple Silicon and evidently had it coming for a long time. As a matter of fact, the first-gen chips featured in Apple Mac devices completely outperformed the processor from Intel and the latter actually had no reply. After this, Intel has been continuously taking digs at its rival calling Apple a lifestyle brand and even mocking the company in several ad campaigns. Intel also talked about producing ARM chips that would take over Apple Silicon.
However, even though Intel has been talking about the potential of the ARM chips it has also been pondering for quite some time over outsourcing some of its production and multiple reports suggest that it has actually been happening for a while now. Cut to last year, when Intel announced its 14th generation Meteor Lake chips which are said would be based on the 7nm process making it sound fancier than the 5nm process from TSMC.
But last week, the company announced that it is ready with the first prototype of this chip and described it as the first disaggregated product which is just another way of describing a similar system-on-a-chip design to that used in Apple’s M1 chips. However, a Digitimes report today claims that Intel is now considering plans to outsource chip fabrication to TSMC so that it can take advantage of the Taiwanese company’s 5nm process.
