In March, Intel announced it would outsource manufacturing of some Atom processors to TSMC, the world's leading foundry. The move could not have been caused by lack of fab capacity, or by the superiority of TSMC's fabs. Intel has the most advanced fabs in the world, is ahead of every other player in process transitions, and at the moment probably has plenty of capacity. The transition was probably about margins, and definitely about customization. Intel with low-margin products like Atom, the risk of a capacity excess due to swings in demand increases, and this r
isk is compounded by the massive costs of new fab investments. Moreover, TSMC, used to the hustle-bustle of custom orders for custom players and with lots of SoC experience, could customize silicon more for different players more easily than Intel. Santa Clara is hesitant to produce custom models for even the largest customers; Apple's finagling of special-model Core 2 Duo chips for the iMac was quite a coup, and even now these are open to everyone. Now, more details have emerged, as the Taiwan Economic News reports that TSMC will manufacture not only Moorestown's southbridge, but the Atom-based SoC, as well, during this quarter. With both components of the platform on TSMC's process, and subject to customization, Intel's device-manufacturing partners, which so far include LG and Nokia, will be able to order Langwell-derived southbridges customized for the needs of their devices, on TSMC's 65nm process. Presumably, TSMC's SoC expertise has been useful in enabling this. It's also possible that Intel is trying to allay concerns about single-sourcing from handheld vendors, who can point out the massive number of vendors hawking chips in the competitor ARM family. Putting TSMC in charge of some Atom manufacturing is one way to avoid some of those problems on a contract basis, without the renegacy risk of a licensing agreement similar to the one that gave AMD an x86 franchise.
isk is compounded by the massive costs of new fab investments. Moreover, TSMC, used to the hustle-bustle of custom orders for custom players and with lots of SoC experience, could customize silicon more for different players more easily than Intel. Santa Clara is hesitant to produce custom models for even the largest customers; Apple's finagling of special-model Core 2 Duo chips for the iMac was quite a coup, and even now these are open to everyone. Now, more details have emerged, as the Taiwan Economic News reports that TSMC will manufacture not only Moorestown's southbridge, but the Atom-based SoC, as well, during this quarter. With both components of the platform on TSMC's process, and subject to customization, Intel's device-manufacturing partners, which so far include LG and Nokia, will be able to order Langwell-derived southbridges customized for the needs of their devices, on TSMC's 65nm process. Presumably, TSMC's SoC expertise has been useful in enabling this. It's also possible that Intel is trying to allay concerns about single-sourcing from handheld vendors, who can point out the massive number of vendors hawking chips in the competitor ARM family. Putting TSMC in charge of some Atom manufacturing is one way to avoid some of those problems on a contract basis, without the renegacy risk of a licensing agreement similar to the one that gave AMD an x86 franchise.For further details visit as : http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2009/07/pure-play-riding-high-as-intel-tsmc-gf-stmicro-make-love.ars
