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Intel Recruits TSMC To Produce Atom CPUs
arcticstoat writes "Intel has surprised the industry by announcing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Taiwanese silicon chip maker TSMC to manufacture Atom CPUs. Although TSMC is already employed by AMD, Nvidia and VIA to make chips, it's not often you see Intel requiring the services of a third fabrication party. Under the MOU, Intel agrees to port its Atom CPU technology to TSMC, which includes Intel's processes, intellectual properties, libraries and design flows relating to the processor. This will effectively allow other customers of TSMC to easily build Atom-based products similarly to how they might use an ARM processor in their own designs. However, Intel says that it will still pick the specific market segments and products that TSMC will go after, which will include system-on-chip products, as well as netbooks, nettops and embedded platforms."
Did you read or just fire from the hip? I think you're inferring a fact not in evidence; no fab closure was mentioned in the ARSTechnica report about this. In fact, it was stressed that this was an agreement for fabbing projects in addition to what both companies had independent of each other.
Obviously you know nothing about Taiwan. This isn't China we're talking about. They do have nationalized health care, although they are plagued with the same problems such programs face in Europe everywhere else. They are required to pay some level of compensation for overtime, but it isn't extravagant. They do have guidelines for worker safety and labor laws are fairly stringent. Not quite to the extreme of the US, but it is moving in that direction.
Taiwan does have lower slightly lower corporate taxes than the US and last year I know the proposal was made to lower by 5% I believe, but I don't know if it ever went through. The US could easily address this situation, but the Obama administration seems intent on doing the opposite.
They do have unions in Taiwan although I'm not aware of one for the semiconductor industry; unions aren't necessarily a good thing anyway. I do know from personal experience that jobs in the semiconductor industry, everything from engineering on down to manufacturing, are in high demand. They pay quite well.
Wages certainly are lower in Taiwan than the US, by a good bit, but they are also significantly higher than in China. The key distinction is that quality is guaranteed and the companies are more trustworthy. It's very unlikely a Taiwanese company is going to go behind your back rip off your designs.
Companies outsource to Taiwan or Korea when they don't want quality close to what could be gotten out of Japan but without paying the excessive cost. Companies go to China when they want maximum savings even at the expense of quality.
That said, nowadays even Taiwan, Japan and Korea are outsourcing some of their manufacturing to China because even for them it's not as cost-effective as they'd like. The problem is that many people still lump Taiwan together with China so not only are they incapable of competing on price, but they're stuck with the perception of making cheap knockoffs.
Of course, the Taiwanese government bureaucracy is at fault for doing a piss poor job of marketing their own country in every way. And Taiwanese companies are a bit too reluctant to give up OEM manufacturing. They should be building their own brands on the level Korea has done over the last decade or so. Of course, Korean companies have had heavy government backing whereas Taiwanese companies have generally been left to fend for themselves.
TSMC is also known as Wafertech and has a massive fab just across the river from intel's main R&D fabs in Portland. So they are incredibly easy to access.
I'd say more, but my guild is raiding.
Wafertech is a subsidiary of TSMC, so pretty close.
Also, as to reasons Intel might want to move some production to TSMC....
Feyde is that you?
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.