Intel will explore manufacturing some chips in India’s first fab after forming an alliance with Indian mega-corp Tata.
The two companies announced the alliance yesterday.
India has satisfied its supercomputing needs, but not its ambitions
As is often the case with these things, the language used was vague and included no firm commitments. The notable elements of the alliance are:
- A plan “to explore manufacturing and packaging of Intel products for…
Intel will explore manufacturing some chips in India’s first fab after forming an alliance with Indian mega-corp Tata.
The two companies announced the alliance yesterday.
India has satisfied its supercomputing needs, but not its ambitions
As is often the case with these things, the language used was vague and included no firm commitments. The notable elements of the alliance are:
- A plan “to explore manufacturing and packaging of Intel products for local markets at Tata Electronics’ upcoming Fab and OSAT (Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test) facilities, as well as a collaboration for advanced packaging in India.”
- A collaboration “focused on consumer and enterprise hardware enablement, and semiconductor and systems manufacturing to support India’s domestic semiconductor ecosystem.”
- The intention to “explore the opportunity to rapidly scale tailored AI PC solutions for consumer and enterprise markets in India” by using AI compute reference designs cooked up by Intel.
It’s hard to see how Tata’s first fab matters to Intel, because it will mostly build logic chips using manufacturing processes that aren’t suitable for creating Chipzilla’s flagship server and PC processors. Tata is also yet to send a single chip out the door, so is an unproven player
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The Register believes Intel is more interested in Tata’s OSAT facilities. Intel already outsources some chip packaging to South Korea’s Amkor. A similar relationship with Tata could make it easier for Intel to target India’s fast-growing PC market.
Incomes in India remain low by global standards, so if Intel is going to sell PC processors in India it will need products that let it hit low price points. The mentions of PCs tailored to Indian needs, and AI hardware reference designs, suggests Intel could create products tailored to Indian buyers.
“We see this as a tremendous opportunity to collaborate with Tata to rapidly scale in one of the world’s fastest-growing compute markets, fueled by rising PC demand and rapid AI adoption across India,” Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan said in a canned quote that doesn’t explain what Intel intends to scale in India. Perhaps he wants to scale low-cost PC production.
Or perhaps the CEO’s remarks refer to the two additional chip fabrication plants that Tata plans to build in India.
Whatever’s going on, Tata is touting the vague alliance as evidence that its intention to kickstart India’s chipmaking industry has sufficient credibility that even Intel wants to explore the possibilities it presents. ®