Intel Likely Signed A New Foundry Customer

It is from SemiAccurate, so could be semi-true.

Intel Likely Signed A New Foundry Customer
Direct Connect 2025: Potentially huge but it comes with caveats
May 12, 2025 by Charlie Demerjian
Intel LogoThere are a lot of rumors going around about Intel Foundry customers, now SemiAccurate can confirm another one. One thing to consider here is that there are a lot of caveats surrounding these wins so pay close attention.

A year ago, SemiAccurate said Nvidia was an Intel customer and we heard some details. We were wrong about the chip but right about the customer. Unfortunately we didn’t see what Paul at Tom’s Hardware wrote earlier, the initial chip seems to be part of the US Government RAMP-C and similar programs, basically a test chip.

At their recent Direct Connect foundry conference, Intel put up slides with the program partners but for unknown reasons refuses to provide them. That said Nvidia and Broadcom were on the list among many others. Those explain the comments from Broadcom last summer, and may explain the Nvidia rumors but we think there is more depth to the green whispers. Similarly Microsoft has been publicly named by Intel as a customer and Chosun recently said there was, “a large-scale semiconductor foundry contract” between the two.

On top of this, there are a lot of contracts between Intel Foundry and customers, Amazon chief among them, for advanced packaging. Don’t discount this, especially with Nvidia strongly rumored to be on board too. Advanced Packaging is the future, TSMC is basically capacity bound there, and Intel has a staggering amount of capacity about to come on line. Given the sheer size of the buildings under construction at their Malaysia campus, Intel is about to change the game here.

So what’s new, and what are those caveats? Here is where things get interesting but in a non-technical way.

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11 replies (most recent on top)

By the way Dave has tried to deny it, one has to wonder just how big the contract is, or if it involves more than Microsoft.

Rumors have been that Nvidia was likely to sign on and that multiple companies have been testing packaging solutions.

Wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the denial posting about this is from HR.

Dave should put out a new statement to deny that he was denying that Microsoft had inked a major deal with IFS and that NVDA is about to do the same.

Time to increase the level of implausible deniability bloviation!

Bloviate Harder!

Dave has confirmed that a major customer has signed on to 18A, by denying it.

thou protesteth too much

Intel will manufacture chips for TSMC and Global Foundry and SMIC.

Intel is a dinosaur. Not T-rex, but more like Nqwebasaurus.

Intel's advanced packaging is not advanced at all, quite low-end. If you visit its shop floor, it is all manual. A bunch of people are hired to push carts from tool to tool. The ATTD is very slow in development, nearly none is many years.

This will delay until next year and cancel within one year because of labor shortage due to layoffs.

It's McDonalds

Yep. "There are a lot of rumors going around" That Intel. Full of sh-t and wont stop talking. I'll believe it when I see a singed contract.

For many products nowadays, the packaging is about half the cost.

Lots of focus on using up all that excess fab capacity but Intel continues to add back end capacity, and that is because customers have been lining up for that capability.

In addition, IFS is likely to sell off or find JV partners for the non-EUV fabs, and unlikely to bring any new shells up to prod until there is contracted demand which supports it, so the fab capacity will be made to improve over time.

I don’t believe OP knows what a foundry is

Thread regarding Intel Corp. layoffs

Intel Likely Signed A New Foundry Customer

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