There's a rumor going on that Raja Koduri's (Intel Senior Vice President & Chief Architect) appearance at Samsung Foundry's SAFE Forum on October 22, 2020 could signal that Intel maybe moving to Samsung Foundry rather than TSMC.
That would certainly be a surprise as:
1. I didn't view Samsung's process to be superior than Intel's. If Intel does use Samsung...does this signal Intel tacit admission that
BOTH TSMC
AND Samsung has surpassed its process technology?
2. Swan mentioned the importance of providing a "predictable cadence of leadership products" for Intel customers. I'm assuming Swan is also balancing wafer pricing and foundry availability here as TSMC currently has the best process technology. The question for Intel is...does it really want to compete with AMD using Samsung's 4nm (or possibly 3nm GAAFET process) vs TSMC's 3nm?
Getting Intel's business would be a
HUGE win for Samsung. However using Samsung may be a
HUGE risk for Intel...imagine telling your customers that demand exceeds supply and that most of them wouldn't be able to get their hands on your product until next year (like what Jensen Huang/Nvidia is saying right now!). That's almost as bad as telling everyone that your advanced process node just got delayed AGAIN (and again)!