Intel revealed in its third quarter 2022 earnings report that they have signed seven of the world's top 10 semiconductor design vendors. eenewseurope.com tried to analyze the "top seven customers" component and concluded that they include Qualcomm, Broadcom, Marvell and Cirrus Logic, as well as the already Nvidia, MediaTek, and Rexchip were identified.

Eenewseurope website believes that in the global Top 10 manufacturers, Qualcomm, Broadcom, Marvell and Cirrus Logic are all chip companies based in the United States, as the U.S. domestic companies, they signed a foundry cooperation with Intel is very logical. In addition, Nvidia has also expressed interest in Intel foundry before, and is now sure to join, but is currently only involved in a project operated by Intel for the Department of Defense. In addition, the Taiwanese chip factory MediaTek has confirmed the use of Intel foundry, there is a Taiwanese factory RuiYu followed MediaTek, announced the use of Intel foundry. It is reported that one of these seven customers has tested the 18A process for mass production in 2024, and completed the chip flow in the factory.

The analysis that Intel's large customers have been assembled to seven, while AMD, Wing and Weir were excluded.

The analysis points out that Wing and Weir because of the type of chip, almost unlikely to use Intel foundry. AMD's CPU, GPU, FPGA and other chip business is in direct competition with Intel, so the possibility of using Intel foundry is not very likely.

But the site also said that the actual business volume of these seven companies is limited, mostly of specialty processes with 16nm and above process, and not too many advanced process foundry.

As early as March last year, Intel's chief CEO Pat Kissinger announced the "IDM2.0" strategy, announced the development of foundry business. Since then, Intel has continued to announce new moves to prove the feasibility of their "IDM2.0". In February this year, Intel announced that it would buy the Israeli company Tower Semiconductor (Tower) for $5.4 billion, trying to make up for the drawbacks of its single business with the existing customer base of the world's top 10 foundries, Tower Semiconductor. The outside world believes that Intel is determined to develop foundry business, its logic should be running to break the business model.

source：aijiwei