Back in July of last year, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger made some big promises about expanding Intel’s third party chip manufacturing capabilities with Intel Foundry Services (IFS), Intel’s contract chip production division. The latest to voice interest in using Intel’s foundries though happens to be one of the biggest names in the scene, NVIDIA.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang was recently asked about potentially linking up with Intel, and he responded by stating that it’s actually Intel who are interested in getting NVIDIA to use their foundries. And Huang says that they’re also exploring the potential here, though he did add that any deal between the two giants will need a long time as it includes needing to integrate their supply chains.
His Intel counterpart Gelsinger meanwhile did confirm that Intel and NVIDIA were still in discussion with one another about the latter using Intel Foundry Services. Gelsinger also said that he’s pretty stoked that there’s major interest in IFS, but notes that for the time being, there’s no particular timeline when it comes to working with NVIDIA. That didn’t stop the speculation of course, and following Huang’s comments about using Intel’s foundry to make their chips, Intel’s shares began to rise steeply.
Currently, the majority of NVIDIA’s silicon is being made by the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC). These chips then get sent out to NVIDIA’s hardware partners who add on their own cooler solutions for graphics cards and the like. However, with TSMC and just about every other major silicon manufacturer already working at their limit, it makes sense that Huang is looking at other potential partners to help spread the load. Furthermore, it would be quite a win-win, with Gelsinger still trying to land more big names for IFS, having already secured Amazon and Qualcomm as IFS customers.
It would certainly be a curious partnership, considering that Intel are about to launch their own lineup of graphics cards very soon. That being said, Huang himself isn’t worried about working with a competitor like Intel, with him simply saying that Intel has known their secrets for years now.
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