Analyst Gus Richard believes that Intel won’t be given preferential treatment by TSMC when the company decides to outsource the production of its mainstream CPU lineup to the Taiwanese foundry. According to Richard, Intel’s desire to outsource a small to moderate portion of its chip production to TSMC will likely cause the latter to hesitate from giving the former a higher priority than its existing customers.
As a result, Intel may be forced to be content with the second most advanced node, in this case, the 5nm process, rather than the 3nm node. The fact that TSMC is already unable to fulfill the needs of its customers further solidifies this statement.
At Intel’s quarterly earnings report, the new CEO, Pat Gelsinger said that the company will be producing most of its CPUs in-house from 2023, meaning that the tryst with TSMC is going to be a short-term affair. As such, TSMC will be looking at Intel as a second-tier customer, rather than a long-term partner like Apple or AMD.
The analyst downgraded Intel’s share price from $57 to $46, saying that he expects Big Blue to continue to be on the losing side for the next few years.
