Intel engineer begs management and Trump to not 'sell out' to TSMC just as the company is set to regain its 'technical lead' in chip manufacturing
«A horrible, demoralizing mistake.» So said Joseph Bonetti, Principal Engineering Program Manager at Intel Corporation, on Linkedin earlier this week in response to rumours that TSMC might be in talks to take control of Intel's chip-manufacturing fabs.
Perhaps inevitably, Bonetti has since deleted his LinkedIn post though it is currently preserved for posterity on archive.today (via Tom's Hardware). While the post was up, Bonetti made an impassioned plea to Intel management and the Trump administration to pass up any capitulation to TSMC over chip manufacturing.
«Intel Leaders, Intel Board, Trump Administration, please do not sell out and/or give control of Intel Foundry to TSMC, just as Intel is taking a technical lead and getting out of first gear,» Bonetti said.
He also laid out the case for why the rumours don't make any sense in the first place.
"Many articles say TSMC engineers will come over and share their know-how and help Intel to get their '3nm' & '2nm' nodes working. Huh? Intel's '3nm' node, Intel 3, has been in production for many months & is used in Intel's latest Xeon 6 chips.
«Intel 18A, Intel's '2nm' node is nearing completion, showing healthy progress, sampling chips to laptop makers, & is on track to be in Panther Lake chips late this year. Does TSMC have their '2nm' node, N2, up and running? No. Neither company has a '2nm' node at this point. However, Intel is on track to have theirs in production sooner,» he explained.
Bonetti likewise bigged up Intel's all-important new 18A node.
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"Recent reports suggest Intel 18A will outperform TSMC's N2. Both of these upcoming '2nm' nodes feature a new type of transistor called gate all around (GAA). However, InteI's 18A node has backside power delivery, an amazing engineering feat in and of itself. 18A is the more advanced node.'
«What about future nodes beyond N2 and 18A? These will likely need ASML's latest
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