Intel announced on Monday that will start manufacturing MediaTek chips. The deal, which will serve to further cement the Santa Clara-based company’s strategy to take on rivals such as TSMC and Samsung Electronics, aims to develop a “more balanced and resilient supply chain for MediaTek,” according to a press release.
There aren’t many details about the deal, but Reuters notes that MediaTek will use Intel’s platform to produce 16 nanometer chips for smart devices. In other words, we are facing a production process that is far from the most advanced technologies of today that already handle between 5 and 3 nanometers.
We don’t know how long this deal will last, but we do know that the first chip deliveries will start within the next 18-24 months, so we’ll have to wait a bit to see the first results of this partnership in action.
Intel wants to be the protagonist again
The announcement is part of Intel’s efforts to regain leadership in semiconductor manufacturing by 2025. After suffering delays with its 7-nanometer chips and losing a major customer in Apple, Intel has changed its CEO and announced a major shift in its strategy: it would no longer only manufacture chips for itself, but also for third parties through its Intel Foundry Services (IFS) division.
Under this new vision, Intel attracted the attention of Qualcomm, which became its first customer, and later Amazon, which plans to use the chips resulting from the partnership in its data centers. Now it is the turn of the Taiwanese company MediaTek, which provides chips for network devices, smartphones, televisions and more.
MediaTek, like others like AMD, Apple, Broadcom and Nvidia, designs chips but doesn’t make them. Thus, throughout its history has been one of TSCM’s biggest customersespecially for its communications platforms and SoCs (System on Chip) with integrated 5G technology, but now it is adopting a “multi-vendor strategy”, which is where Intel comes into play.
With the passage of time we will see if the strategy of the new CEO of Intel, Pat Gelsinger, manages to attract other high-level companies and begins to give good results. For now, the company is promoting its plans with the construction of new factories in Arizona and Ohio, in the United States, and in Magdeburg, about 150 km from Berlin, in Germany.
Pictures | Intel
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