Intel Foundry Services will be behind the majority of Datacenter

While Intel’s financial results were not good, at least in the future this will change for its division. Intel Foundry Services. In essence, Intel revealed that its service as a chipmaker to the rest of the company is booming. To the point that thanks to its Intel 3 manufacturing process, most chip makers for Data Centers, they have chosen you to bring their products to life.

Specifically, during the call with investors, it was indicated that Intel Foundry Services won an order from a major “Cloud, edge and data center solution provider“. This will make use of its manufacturing process Intel 3. Although this is an important victory for IFS, on the other hand they have problems. Specifically, the Chinese antitrust agency has suspended its review of the Tower Semiconductor transaction.

Intel Foundry Services portfolio for Datacenter continues to grow

Although he did not reveal who his new client is, it must be remembered that Intel already had very juicy agreements. Among them are MediaTek, Qualcommand it must be remembered that even Intel offered to AMD to make some CPUs and GPUs”Faster“.

“I am very pleased that we have been able to add a leading provider of cloud, edge and data center solutions as a leading edge customer for Intel 3,” said Pat Gelsinger, Intel CEO. “Including previous clients like MediaTek, we now have a lifetime deal value of more than $4 billion for IFS.”

This is an achievement for Intel, and it is that its manufacturing processes Intel 7 (10nm Enhanced SuperFin), Intel 4 (7nm with EUV) and Intel 3 (7nm+ with EUV), they were always designed with their own CPUs in mind. So to be able to take advantage of the Intel Process 3, which will go into mass production next year, for an IFS customer, is quite a milestone for the manufacturer.

On the other hand, it is possible that Intel will produce a semi-custom version of their Xeon processor for an important client. It is expected that this client can be Microsoft for its cloud platform, Microsoft Azure.

“We also have an active portfolio of engagements with 7 of the 10 largest foundry customers. This, together with a constant growth of the portfolio to include 43 leads and test chips from ecosystem partners. In addition, we continue to make progress with Intel 18A, and have already shared the engineering release of PDK 0.5 (Process DesEsports ExtrasKit) with our major customers. We hope to have the final production version in the coming weeks.

Of course, there are problems with the acquisition of Tower Semiconductor

As we mentioned at the beginning, Intel has encountered an obstacle when it comes to formalizing the acquisition agreement of Tower Semiconductor. As reported by Seeking Alpha, the Chinese State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) has suspended the deadline in its review of the transaction.

It is believed that Intel will not invest in its Chinese operations. This is due to US authorities ban investment in China to businesses that receive money or other benefits from the CHIPS fund. Meanwhile, if the deal is not approved by SAMR, Intel will have to write off the acquisition.

Intel needs Tower to gain experienced foundry executive team and a huge customer base. In fact, the previous head of IFS already resigned in November, when Intel planned to close the deal in the first quarter of 2023. Now that the deal cannot be closed, IFS is operating without a boss, which is not particularly good for business. Nevertheless, Intel remains optimistic about the purchase of Tower.

“We are working hard to complete the Tower acquisition, which will further amplify our momentum as our foundry business becomes even more attractive to customers,” the Intel boss said.