<story><title>Intel outsources Core i3 to TSMC&apos;s 5nm process</title><url>https://www.eenewseurope.com/news/intel-TSMC-5nm</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Jonnax</author><text>&amp;quot;The Core i3 move to a 5nm process is set to be followed by mid-range and high-end CPUs being produced for Intel by TSMC on a 3nm process in 2H22.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;So Intel becoming Fabless is a matter of time?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cbozeman</author><text>Intel will never become fabless. They made the wrong bet on the type of technology to reduce transistor size and they overestimated what their engineers would be capable of creating and doing, but that won&amp;#x27;t last forever.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a &lt;i&gt;lot&lt;/i&gt; of working going on with 10nm and 7nm to fix the production problems (because a lot of work is still required). It won&amp;#x27;t happen overnight, in fact, I predicted about a year or two ago that it would be around 2023, +&amp;#x2F;- 6 months, that Intel would have its node production problems mostly ironed out.&lt;p&gt;Sadly by then, TSMC should be at 3nm, and while Intel&amp;#x27;s 10nm is easily a match for TSMC&amp;#x27;s 7nm, it won&amp;#x27;t be enough to be competitive against TSMC 5nm and 3nm. I hope that Intel has their shit together for the 7nm node, or can at least break even on it. If they can break even (cost of wafer is equal to or less than what they can sell the chips for) on 7nm, they&amp;#x27;ll be able to hang in there until they get the 5nm &amp;#x2F; 3nm nodes up and running.&lt;p&gt;If Intel drops the ball though... and they aren&amp;#x27;t able to get 10nm yields over 90% by 2023 and if they can&amp;#x27;t get 7nm yields at a reasonable point... well that&amp;#x27;s a whole different ball game for Intel. It might not be out of the question for Intel to approach the US government about either subsidies, tax breaks, custom manufacturing for military applications, etc., in order to 1) keep Intel viable until the engineering challenges are resolved and 2) prevent the offshoring of all semiconductor fabs.&lt;p&gt;Put simply, Intel staying competitive is a matter of national security for the United States.</text></comment>
<story><title>Intel outsources Core i3 to TSMC&apos;s 5nm process</title><url>https://www.eenewseurope.com/news/intel-TSMC-5nm</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Jonnax</author><text>&amp;quot;The Core i3 move to a 5nm process is set to be followed by mid-range and high-end CPUs being produced for Intel by TSMC on a 3nm process in 2H22.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;So Intel becoming Fabless is a matter of time?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bayindirh</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think so. They have a lot of things to produce in their fabs. Optane, Chipsets, NAND (if they still produce it), sensors, FPGAs, Ethernet Controllers, etc.&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;re considering it as an interim solution IMHO. To buy time for their own processes.</text></comment>