Contract chip manufacturer United Microelectronics Corp has partnered with Intel to develop a 12-nanometer technology platform and will commence production at three Intel facilities in Arizona, USA. According to a report by Nikkei, mass production for chips destined for communication and other applications is slated to begin in 2027

During an interview at the Intel IFS Direct Connect event in February, Jason Wang, Co-President of UMC, stated that both UMC and Intel are pioneering innovative collaboration models. They aim to provide customers with foundry services with competitive pricing through vertical specialization. The two companies will leverage complementary advantages to accelerate the development timeline and expand their global presence.

The foundry market is generally divided into advanced chips and mature chips. Advanced chips, which constitute the brains of smartphones and other devices, are predominantly led by TSMC and Samsung Electronics.

In the realm of mature chips, around 10 companies from Taiwan, China, South Korea, and the United States are competing for the demands of telecommunications equipment, Vehicular communication systems, and other technology manufacturers.

Intel is changing its vertically integrated business model to compete with TSMC and Samsung in contract manufacturing demands.

In March of this year, the US government announced that Intel would receive up to USD 8.5 billion in subsidies for the development of advanced chips. By collaborating with UMC on mature chips, Intel may focus more resources on cutting-edge technologies like 1.4nm.

For UMC, partnering with Intel enables it to mass-produce chips that are more advanced than its mainstream 22nm to 28nm products. Obtaining production facilities in the United States will also help the company win North American clients, as revenue from this region currently accounts for less than 30% of its total.

TSMC is also constructing a semiconductor plant in Arizona, utilizing US assistance to produce advanced 4nm chips. In contrast, the collaboration between UMC and Intel will focus on relatively mature chips.

UMC has long been one of the pillars of the semiconductor industry in Taiwan. Established in 1980, seven years before TSMC, the company has been vying for the position of industry leader until the 2000s.

During the 2010s, UMC lagged behind TSMC in advanced chip development, as the latter made significant investments in the semiconductor market following the global financial crisis. Since then, UMC has reportedly put more emphasis on mature chips.

The company is currently at a turning point. Benefiting from the global chip shortage, its performance continued to grow from 2020 to 2022. However, as of December 2023, annual revenue declined by 20% to 222.5 billion New Taiwan dollars ($6.9 billion), marking the first decrease in four years. This is approximately one-tenth of TSMC’s revenue.

UMC’s downturn in 2023 also signifies an intensification in mature process technologies, especially as Chinese semiconductor enterprises’ mature process technologies and equipment remain unaffected by US export restrictions. In an effort to overcome US restrictions, China is heavily investing in mature process.

Per data from TrendForce, China’s share of mature chip production at 28nm and above is expected to increase from the current 31% to 39% by 2027, as production volumes grow.

Joanne Chiao stated that semiconductors for applications such as general sensors and display controllers are expected to face fierce price competition.

On the other hand, UMC continues to face competition from Taiwanese foundries. TSMC plans to produce mature chips at a new plant in Japan by the end of 2024 and at a plant in Germany by the end of 2027. With subsidies from the Japanese and German governments, TSMC will form joint ventures with buyer customers to ensure stable production capacity.

Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (PSMC) announced at the end of February its plans to assist Tata Group in building a chip plant in India. PSMC stated that it would provide intellectual property for the project without investment, aiming to generate licensing revenue.

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(Photo credit: UMC)

According to wccftech, Intel’s new GPUs will come in two models, namely Battlemage-G10 (abbreviated as BMG-G10) and Battlemage-G21 (abbreviated as BMG-G21).

These two new GPUs from Intel were revealed in an internal document. According to the document, the BMG-G10, targeted at enthusiasts, is a GPU with a TDP of less than 225W, while the BMG-G21 is designed as a mid-range performance product with a maximum TDP not exceeding 150W.

As for specific parameters and performance, the enthusiast-grade BMG-G10 is expected to be equipped with up to 64 Xe2 cores, directly competing with NVIDIA’s RTX 4070. On the other hand, the mid-range BMG-G21 aims at the RTX 4060, both continuing to utilize TSMC’s 4nm manufacturing process.

Therefore, previous rumors suggesting that Intel had canceled the development of BMG-G10 and only retained the BMG-G21 with 40 Xe2 cores appear to be untrue. Moreover, the core count of BMG-G10 is larger than initially reported at 56 Xe2 cores, indicating it is poised to deliver even higher performance.

Recently, per a report from Reuters, Intel, Qualcomm, Google, and other major tech companies are teaming up to challenge NVIDIA’s market dominance and make inroads into the AI software sector. They are expected to look to steer developers away from NVIDIA’s CUDA software platform, a parallel computing platform tailored for GPU acceleration.

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• [News] Addressing AI PC Chip Solutions, Intel and Qualcomm Reportedly Unveil Respective Strategies
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(Photo credit: Intel)

With the rapid advancement of AI-powered PC chips, industry giants like Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm, alongside various brands, are optimistic about the inaugural year of AI PCs entering the market.

According to a report from Commercial Times, chip manufacturers are showcasing their AI PC chip solutions, with newcomer Qualcomm partnering with Google to launch Snapdragon X expected mid-year, while Intel leveraging both hardware and software resources.

Per the same report citing sources, laptop brands are beginning to plan AI PC-related products for the second half of the year. Recently, companies like Dell, Lenovo, and HP have held internal meetings with the Taiwan supply chain. In addition to contract manufacturers, IC design is also a key focus, with companies like MediaTek and Realtek being actively engaged.

Reportedly, each company currently has its own perspective on AI PC, with many opting to integrate AI accelerator chips. However, Microsoft and Intel have jointly defined AI PC as requiring NPU, CPU, and GPU, along with support for Microsoft’s Copilot. They are also incorporating a physical Copilot key directly on the keyboard and become the standard setters.

To adapt to significant changes in software and hardware, Intel is expanding its ecosystem. In addition to AI application software, they are incorporating Independent Hardware Vendors (IHVs) into their AI PC acceleration program.

This collaboration assists IHV partners in preparing, optimizing, and leveraging hardware opportunities in AI PC applications. Support is provided from the early stages of hardware solutions and platform development, offering numerous opportunities for IC design companies in Taiwan to enter Intel’s supply chain during the nascent stage of AI PC.

Reportedly, Qualcomm is rumored to maintain its partnership with Google as it ventures into the AI PC market this year with Snapdragon X Elite. Qualcomm and Google have previously collaborated closely in the realm of Android smartphones, with many devices equipped with Snapdragon chipsets already using Google software.

Intel estimates that by the end of this year, the market will introduce over 300 AI acceleration applications, further advancing its AI software framework and enhancing the developer ecosystem. Intel further predicts that by the end of 2025, there will be over 100 million PCs shipped with AI accelerators, indicating immense opportunities in the AI PC market. However, competition is fierce, and success in this market requires innovative products that are differentiated and meet user needs. With both Intel and Qualcomm unveiling unique strategies, the AI PC market is poised for significant developments.

For AI PC, TrendForce believes that due to the high costs of upgrading both software and hardware, early development will be focused on high-end business users and content creators. This targeted group has a strong demand for leveraging AI processing capabilities to improve productivity efficiency and can also benefit immediately from related applications, making them the first-generation primary users.

The emergence of AI PCs is not expected to necessarily stimulate additional PC purchase demand. Instead, most upgrades to AI PC devices will occur naturally as part of the business equipment replacement cycle projected for 2024.

Nevertheless, looking to the long term, the potential development of more diverse AI tools—along with a price reduction—may still lead to a higher adoption rate of consumer AI PCs.

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(Photo credit: Intel)

Intel, Qualcomm, Google, and other tech giants are reportedly joining forces with over a hundred startups to challenge NVIDIA’s dominance in the market, as per a report from Reuters. Reportedly, their goal is to collectively penetrate the artificial intelligence (AI) software domain, guiding developers to migrate away from NVIDIA’s CUDA software platform.

NVIDIA’s CUDA is a parallel computing platform and programming model designed specifically to accelerate GPU computing. It allows GPU users to fully leverage their chip’s computational power in AI and other applications. As per a previous report from TrendForce, since 2006, NVIDIA has introduced the CUDA architecture, nearly ubiquitous in educational institutions. Thus, almost all AI engineers encounter CUDA during their academic tenure.

However, tech giants are now reportedly aiming to disrupt the current status quo. According to a report from Reuters on March 25th, Intel, Qualcomm, and Google are teaming up to challenge NVIDIA’s dominant position. They plan to provide alternative solutions for developers to reduce dependence on NVIDIA, encourage application migration to other platforms, and thereby break NVIDIA’s software monopoly and weaken its market influence.

The same report from Reuters further indicated that several tech companies have formed the “UXL Foundation,” named after the concept of “Unified Acceleration” (UXL), which aims to harness the power of acceleration computing using any hardware.

The project plans to leverage Intel’s oneAPI technology to develop software and tools supporting multiple AI accelerator chips. The goal is to reduce the technical barriers developers face when dealing with different hardware platforms, streamline the development process, enhance efficiency, and accelerate innovation and application of AI technology.

Vinesh Sukumar, Head of AI and Machine Learning Platform at Qualcomm, stated, “We’re actually showing developers how you migrate out from an NVIDIA platform.”

Bill Magro, Head of High-Performance Computing at Google, expressed, “It’s about specifically – in the context of machine learning frameworks – how do we create an open ecosystem, and promote productivity and choice in hardware.” The foundation is said to aim to finalize technical specifications in the first half of this year and strives to refine technical details by the end of the year.

However, CUDA software has established a solid foundation in the AI field, making it unlikely to be shaken overnight. Jay Goldberg, CEO of financial and strategic advisory firm D2D Advisory, believes that CUDA’s importance lies not only in its software capabilities but also in its 15-year history of usage. A vast amount of code has been built around it, deeply ingraining CUDA in numerous AI and high-performance computing projects. Changing this status quo would require overcoming significant inertia and dependency.

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(Photo credit: NVIDIA)

Benefited from frequent orders from its top three clients, Apple, Intel, and AMD, strong momentum has reportedly been driven for TSMC’s 3-nanometer orders, as per a report from Economic Daily News. Anticipated to see sequential growth throughout the year, these orders are expected to remain robust until the end of the year, positioning TSMC as a leader in the semiconductor industry’s recovery.

TSMC has a longstanding policy of not commenting on customer order dynamics. However, it is cited in the report that in the fourth quarter of last year, 3-nanometer orders accounted for approximately 15% of its revenue. With the adoption of 3-nanometer production by major clients this year, revenue from 3-nanometer orders is expected to surpass 20%, becoming the second-largest revenue contributor, following only the 5-nanometer process.

Looking at the orders placed by the top three clients for the 3-nanometer process, Apple is set to introduce the A18 series processor in its iPhone 16 lineup this year. Additionally, the latest self-developed M4 chip for laptops will also be produced by TSMC using the 3-nanometer process, starting in the second quarter.

On the Intel side, the Lunar Lake central processor, graphics processor, and high-speed IO chip are all confirmed to begin mass production at TSMC in the second quarter. This marks Intel’s first instance of outsourcing its entire mainstream consumer platform chip series to TSMC, making it a significant new source of orders for TSMC’s 3-nanometer process this year.

AMD, on the other hand, is poised to unveil its new Zen 5 architecture platform under the code name “Nirvana” this year, expected to significantly enhance AI applications. Following its customary practice, AMD will utilize TSMC’s wafer foundry services, with production set to commence on the 3-nanometer process and an expected launch in the latter half of the year.

TSMC, reportedly, is expanding its production capacity for the 3nm family and advanced packaging this year to meet the large orders from major clients such as Apple, NVIDIA, and AMD in the coming years.

As per TrendForce’s data, the 3nm process alone contributed 6% to TSMC’s Q3 revenue, with advanced processes (≤7nm) accounting for nearly 60% of its total revenue.

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(Photo credit: TSMC)