According to the CEO of Intel, the shortage of semiconductors will last until 2024, the fault of a demand which does not fall and the production limits of the lithographic scanners of the Dutch ASML which is struggling to keep up. The entire industry will therefore suffer from this shortage to varying degrees. All ? No, because a village of irreducible gau… Americans could do well in this difficult period: Intel.
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If the semiconductor giant has been jostled for a few years as much on the performance of its chips as its engraving processes, the shortage suits it to delight thanks to two forces: Intel has factories and Intel is rich.
On the factory side, Intel is a UFO in the world of semiconductors since it is the only player to design AND produce its chips. Unlike Apple, AMD, MediaTek, Nvidia, Qualcomm, etc. who are all fabless, that is to say without factories – they have to call on “founders” such as TSMC or Samsung to produce. Even soon Intel, which is in the process of creating its foundry service to open its factories to competition. An Intel which invests massively in its industrial tool with large blows of tens of billions of dollars. This mastery of the tool certainly cost him when he lost the advantage of fine engraving, but today it is the guarantee of being able to produce without fighting for the production lines.
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And it is this “fight” to access the best production lines that Intel is also about to win over… AMD. Ultra dependent on the Taiwanese TSMC which manufactures almost all of its chips, AMD would be forced to postpone the 3 nm production of its Zen 5 chips to 2024-2025 because of its rival. Because as we told you, Intel is rich. If many Sunday analysts have been predicting the death of the giant for years, the real ones know: even though Intel did cede ground to AMD and Nvidia and lost competitiveness, the giant never lost money – it even closed the best fiscal years in recent years.
Sitting on a mountain of cash, Intel has therefore reserved all of the first 3 nm production lines with Apple – at the end of 2023 – for some of its very high-end chips. Shaking up an AMD certainly in full progress and with multiple technological victories, but much less rich than the blue giant.
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If Intel is doing well – and this seems to be the case since the arrival of Mr. Gelsinger – Intel should not experience the same supply problems as its competitors in the next two years. And being the only supplier available is a huge advantage in a chip-hungry world.