Intel, AMD and TSMC, maximum tension for the money of the CHIPS Act

The blood will almost certainly reach the river. The forecasts are failing and everyone retracts the sails where they can and tries to dock the ship where there is land, water and food. Like pirates on a treasure hunt, Intel, AMD, and TSMC are throwing reproaches and veiled accusations about what they consider “a fair distribution” for their public money investments within what will be the 52 billion that the Biden government has put on the table with the CHIPS Law.

As usual, the largest of them, Intel, threw the first stone to gauge the impact that public money will have on their accounts, but unlike other occasions, it has received a response from its most direct rivals, both of whom are very close. for years.

Intel, AMD and TSMC in open dispute over CHIPS money

The dispute appears to have been started by Intel, which asked several Biden administration officials how much money CHIPS was going to bring to its competitors, some of whom have the headquarters outside the American country. In addition, he added the punctuation that it is possible that the technology that is developed on American soil would end, along with American intellectual property, out in another country.

Other players in the industry joined this request from Pat Gelsinger, such as GlobalFoundries or SkyWater Technologywhich fired more questions at officials in the wake of Intel’s deployment, asking if foreEsports Extrascompanies they could continue to produce chips “in the event of a crisis in their country of origin.”

You don’t have to know how to add to understand that all the questions refer to TSMC and the conflict between Taiwan and China. The Taiwanese’s response has been at a similar level to that of their critics and they issue a warning to boaters.

Are Intel and its partners up to the task?

This is basically what TSMC wanted to call into question, since it suggested that Intel is a long shot because of the path that it still has to travel against its most direct rivals and above all, because TSMC is going to invest no less than 40 billion in Arizona to distance itself even further.

In addition, he responded to the concerns raised by saying that “preferential treatment based on the location of a company’s headquarters is not an effective or efficient use of the subsidy”. Knives are flying in the US right now, and all of a sudden, AMD appears claiming that “any installation that receives federal assistance must be operational upon completion of construction. A facility that sits idle or is held in reserve for surges in demand should immediately lose any federal funding.”

A clear blow to Intel and its new strategy for its IFS foundry services. Here Intel clearly felt attacked and in an interview in the Times responded that the build-and-run strategy is being followed to the letter in Arizona, Ohio, and New Mexico, so the plan with the new FABs is to have them running. at full capacity and “not just build structures”

If this topic is already hot enough, you have to wait until next week when the Biden administration will publish what they have called the “ground rules for CHIPS applications”. There we will know the requirements for each type of project and we can get an idea of ​​how much money each of those involved could receive.