Intel will work with a third-party company to produce its Xe-HPG GPUs . We know that the two giants in this market are Samsung and TSMC. Which company will Intel turn to to produce its GPUs? Samsung or TSMC? And why not both ?
Who will produce Intel's Xe-HPG GPUs?
The announcement was made by Intel last August 2020 during Architecture Day: Intel will turn to a third-party manufacturer for the production of its GPUs intended for its Xe-HPG graphics cards. This would also be the case for the CPUs of its certain supercomputers. No agreement has been signed. However, during the SAFE (Samsung Advanced Foundry Ecosystem) event, Raja Koduri, Chief Architect and General Manager of Intel's Architecture, Graphics and Software Division, shone with his presence. Which leads us to believe that Intel is quite close to Samsung and the balance may tip towards this Korean giant for this project. This event seems to confirm the rumors which followed the publication of a tweet made by Raja Koduri last year. Raja Koduri posted a photo near the Samsung factory in South Korea.
No final collaboration decision taken
Bob Swan, CEO of Intel, for his part says that no decision in this direction has yet been taken. The Company will make its decisions at the beginning of 2021. The CEO of Intel nevertheless affirmed that an avenue of collaboration with TSMC is being studied. Will Intel therefore work with TSMC or is this a strategy to bring competition between TSMC and Samsung into the profile of its Company?
Intel is looking for a partner who would be able to maintain sufficient production capacity. Certainly, TSMC produces GPUs following 7 nanometer . Which pleases Intel given that Samsung generally builds GPUs at 8 nanometers. But the Taiwanese company is already quite overloaded with its production partnerships with AMD, Nvidia, Apple and many other companies.
In terms of price, Samsung remains cheaper in GPU manufacturing compared to TSMC. The effectiveness of Samsung products no longer needs to be proven, to name only the Nvidia Ampere GPUs. Which puts Samsung in a pretty good position. It would nevertheless be entirely possible following the words of the CEO of Intel that the latter chooses to work with the two companies. With this in mind, Samsung will be able to produce public ranges requiring large-scale production and TSMC would take care of the production of more specific and efficient chips. Only the future will tell us.
