14 DAY TRIAL // Intel is not one of the companies that are eager to outsource their own computer chips, but there are a few rare times when the processor giant is forced to do just this, recent rumors suggesting that Intel has requested TSMC to build a part of the chipsets that are going to be used together with Ivy Bridge processors.
The report claims that Intel plans to outsource the production of its 7-series "Panther Point" chipsets to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacture Company (TSMC) starting in late 2011.
According to sources cited by DigiTimes, the move will “help Intel save production costs” and free its manufacturing facilities for building other products in order to “tackle [the] price competition brought on by AMD's Fusion APUs.”
Although the move seems fairly bizarre for Intel, as one of the company's strategies is to build everything in-house, in the last 10 years the chip giant twice outsourced its chipset production TSMC.
In addition, Intel already struck a deal with TSMC, allowing the latter to build SoC chips based on Atom processor cores.
More importantly, recent Intel chipsets are nothing more than a platform controller hub, most of the logic and functionality previously found inside the northbridge being moved inside the CPU.
This means that, by outsourcing only the motherboard chipset, Intel doesn't risk a great deal in terms of industrial espionage as its competitors (namely AMD) can't find out too much information by taking a look at this chip alone.
Ivy Bridge processors will be made using the 22nm process technology, these new CPUs are going to be based on an enhanced version of Sandy Bridge.
Scheduled to be released in 2012, Ivy Bridge production will start in Q4 2011, early reports suggesting that these new processors could feature as much as 1GB of on-board graphics memory. (via X-bit Labs)