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Intel turns to TSMC for help

Chip shop alliance
Mon Mar 02 2009, 08:50

CHIP MAKER INTEL is teaming up with chip foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (TSMC) to form a 'strategic partnership' the details of which will be announced today.

Media outlets are bandying about various suggestions as to what form the partnership will take. The most likely outcome is some sort of system on a chip for mobile devices, we reckon. 

Intel has been dissing our fellow Brits at ARM left, right and centre but only because its Atom can't compete with ARM in smartphones.

TSMC produces the internals for smartphones on behalf of the likes of Qualcomm so we can assume it knows a bit about the business.

All should be revealed in a few hours anyway, so we'll stop speculating now and write something else instead. µ

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Comments
Re: ugh

@ssj4Gogeta

Atom was designed for MIDs and with smartphones in mind. OEMs just happened to start using them for small/low cost notebooks as they draw too much power for smaller devices. Intel is basically trying to get x86 everywhere in a battle against ARM. Intel wants TSMC to have access to their IP so that all the other chip designers that use TSMC will have access to Atom for embedded applications.

posted by : Nate, 03 March 2009 Complain about this comment
ugh

Does forming a partnership really mean turning for help? Why don't you say TSMC are turning to Intel for help???

"Intel has been dissing our fellow Brits at ARM left, right and centre but only because its Atom can't compete with ARM in smartphones."........Because it isn't meant to. ugh, it's like saying a sports car can't compete with a bicycle in fuel efficiency. Atom was designed for netbooks, so why would you expect it to compete in the smartphone space?

posted by : ssj4Gogeta, 02 March 2009 Complain about this comment
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