The US government is allegedly asking major tech giants that include NVIDIA and Apple to make use of Intel’s foundries, and to use the blue chipmaker’s chip supply. The request or rather, beseechment, reportedly came from Gina Raimondo, the US Department of Commerce Secretary.
The details of the US government’s request are still sketchy, as Raimondo had reportedly held discussions with the major players behind closed doors. However, it’s clear to see the reasons why it is making the plea.
The first and obvious reason is that the US hopes that major tech brand shareholders would take care of their own: the blue chipmaker isn’t in a great place at the moment, with issues ranging from vulnerabilities with its Raptor Lake desktop CPUs and laying off staff, to it not having received a promised US$8.5 billion (~RM36.7 billion) in grants from the Chips Act. Intel, NVIDIA, and Apple are all US-owned and based companies, so the government is hoping that they would look out for their own.
It is also to the US’s benefit that they see Intel’s chip manufacturing flourish, primarily because it is the biggest recipient of the Chips Act. For that matter, it is possible that the reason the blue chipmaker hasn’t received said funding is because the US government is just waiting for the company to get its act together.
The third reason is that the US government hopes that the tech bigwigs would reduce their reliance on Taiwanese semiconductor maker, TSMC, to produce advanced chips. That’s a tall order, especially since the semiconductor foundry is practically the world’s foundry of choice. Just look at AMD: all of its Ryzen and Radeon chips are designed and built based on TSMC silicon.
(Source: Tom’s Hardware, CNBC)
