Intel plans to expand its chip manufacturing capacity as the compnay announced plans to spend as much as $20 billion to build two chip fabs in Arizona and to open up its fabs to outside customers.
The move by CEO Pat Gelsinger on Tuesday aims to restore Intel’s reputation after manufacturing delays sent shares plunging last year. The strategy will directly challenge the two other companies in the world that can make the most advanced chips, Taiwan’s Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (TSMC) and Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.
In an interview with Reuters, Gelsinger said Intel has “fully resolved” its problems with its most recent manufacturing technology and is “all systems go” on chips for 2023. It now plans a massive manufacturing expansion.
That will include spending $20 billion on two new factories at an existing campus in Chandler, Arizona, that will create 3,000 permanent jobs. Intel will then work on future sites in the United States and in Europe, Gelsinger said.
Intel will use those factories to make its own chips but also open them to outside customers in what is called a “foundry” business model in the chip industry. Gelsinger said the new factories will focused on cutting-edge computing chip manufacturing… But even as Intel jumps into competition with TSMC and Samsung, it also plans to become a larger customer of theirs by turning to them to make subcomponents of its chips called “tiles” to make some chips more cost-effectively.
MacDailyNews Take: Currently, Intel’s “cutting-edge computing chip manufacturing” means larger, hotter, inefficient, and slower – which is why Apple is in the process of dumping them out of Macs while thoroughly embarrassing Intel in the process.
Gelsinger talks a lot. He has a big pocketbook. He’s a new CEO with a lot of big plans. We’ve seen and heard it all before.
We’ll have to see some actual “cutting-edge computing chip manufacturing” out of Intel before we believe he’s not just blowing Intel’s piggybank and even more hot air than our Intel-based MacBook Pros.