Intel is rumored to be turning its attention towards the arch-rival AMD to get it as a foundry customer, according to a new report, and this could prove to be a massive breakthrough.
Intel Is Still in Early Talks With AMD For a Foundry Deal, Which Could Involve The Use of 18A & 14A
The momentum around Intel’s business has shifted heavily in its favour over the past few months, driven by interest from entities such as the Trump adminstration, SoftBank, and NVIDIA. American companies are exploring avenues to collaborate with Team Blue on any level, which is why both Apple and AMD are also rumored to be joining the pack. In a new report by Semafor, it is disclosed that Intel is in ‘early-stage’ talks to secure AMD as a foundry customer, which means that both parties could partner up on processes such as the 18A and the 14A. This could be a tremendous deal for the IFS, which is currently dependent on external adoption.
There are both political and business implications to a potential AMD-Intel deal, and we’ll talk about the more significant factor first. We know that President Trump has been ‘micromanaging’ Intel ever since the administration took a stake in the company, which means that they are working directly with firms to put the American chipmaker back on track. Firms like NVIDIA, Apple, and AMD know that any potential partnership with Intel could put them in a ‘position of leverage’ and in President Trump’s ‘good books’ when it comes to negotiating with the USG on any future matter.
On a product level, AMD has also collaborated with Intel in the past, most notably in 2018 with the Kaby Lake-G lineup, where Team Red introduced its Radeon RX Vega GPU chiplets onto Intel’s Kaby Lake architecture. The partnership between the two does show that there’s room for a deal ahead as well; however, it’s still uncertain how the collaboration could pan out. If we speculate on ‘reasonable’ grounds, AMD could be ready to shift some of its CPU production towards Intel, maybe the EPYC Venice CPUs on the 18A node, since we know that Team Red has used TSMC’s N2 for it.
Of course, the ‘rumors’ of investments around Intel are heavily dependent on how the 18A node turns out, since if Team Blue manages to nail the launch in terms of yield rates, PPA, and other factors, then the reluctance of Big Tech to pivot away from TSMC will reduce significantly. And since TSMC is in a tough spot ‘politically’ for now, Intel could very well see the industry spotlight for its foundry services.