Collaboration between Intel, Samsung and TSMC?

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 choose to produce its GPUs? Samsung or TSMC? Or perhaps both?

Who will produce Intel's Xe-HPG GPUs?

The announcement was made by Intel in August 2020 during Architecture Day: Intel will turn to a third-party manufacturer for the production of its GPUs for its Xe-HPG graphics cards. This would also be the case for the CPUs of some of its supercomputers. No agreement has been signed. Nevertheless, at the SAFE (Samsung Advanced Foundry Ecosystem) event, Raja Koduri, Chief Architect and General Manager of Intel's Architecture, Graphics and Software Division, was a notable presence. This suggests that Intel is quite close to Samsung, and the scales may tip in favor of this Korean giant for this project. This event seems to confirm the rumors that followed a tweet posted by Raja Koduri last year. In it, he posted a photo near Samsung's factory in South Korea.

No final decision on collaboration has been made

Bob Swan, Intel's CEO, maintains that no decision has yet been made. The company will make its decisions in early 2021. However, the Intel CEO stated that a potential collaboration with TSMC is being explored. Will Intel actually work with TSMC, or is this a strategy to leverage competition between TSMC and Samsung to its own advantage?

Intel is looking for a partner capable of maintaining sufficient production capacity. While TSMC does produce GPUs using the 7-nanometer , which appeals to Intel given that Samsung typically manufactures GPUs using the 8-nanometer process, the Taiwanese company is already heavily burdened with its production partnerships with AMD, Nvidia, Apple, and many other companies.

In terms of price, Samsung remains less expensive than TSMC for GPU manufacturing. Furthermore, the effectiveness of Samsung products is well-established, as evidenced by Nvidia's Ampere GPUs. This puts Samsung in a fairly strong position. However, following the comments of Intel's CEO, it's entirely possible that the company might choose to work with both companies. In this scenario, Samsung could produce the consumer-grade products requiring high-volume production, while TSMC would handle the production of more specialized and high-performance chips. Only time will tell.