Intel Outsourcing 14nm Chip Production To Apple’s Chip-maker

Intel is experiencing an inadequacy in producing 14nm chips due to the continuous “yield issues”. To support the incoming demand for the 14nm chips, Intel is planning to outsource its production to TSMC — Apple’s chipmaker.

As reported by DigiTimes, Intel is suffering from tight in-house 14nm process production capacity. The California based chip manufacturer wants to prioritize its high margin products such as processors used in servers and chipsets. The 14nm production has fallen short of the demand by 50%. Outsourcing the chip production is the only option left for Intel to fulfill the demand as there are no possibilities of building an additional 14nm process chips. This inability to meet the demand has led to the inflated pricing of certain CPUs in the market.

Intel has already partnered with TSMC for SoFIA-series handset SoC and FPGA products. TSMC also manufactures Intel’s baseband chips that are used in iPhone. With the outsourcing, Intel’s underlying problems of 14nm chipset’s supply will cease to exist by the end of 2018.

Intel has repeatedly postponed the release of its 10nm Cannon Lake Processor which was announced way back in 2016. It is the main reason why the chipmaker company is experiencing limited capacity for 14nm chips.

As per an update by Intel, the release of 10nm chips have been pushed back to the fourth quarter of 2019.

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