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Intel CEO Lip Bo Tan said on Tuesday that the chipmaker will “work closely” with Elon Musk to support the billionaire entrepreneur’s TerraFab project, a potential mega-project. Chip development and manufacturing The process to be jointly developed by SpaceX and Tesla. A image Intel’s official X account shows the two executives shaking hands last weekend in front of a large Intel banner. Musk’s 1-terawatt high-performance chip manufacturing facility, which could span multiple locations, could cost billions of dollars.
“Teravab represents a major change in how silicon logic, memory and packaging are built in the future,” said Tan. he said in a social media post. “Intel is proud to be a partner and work closely with Elon on this highly strategic project.”
It remains unclear exactly how Tan and Musk plan to implement such an ambitious project. It was musk We talk about it The need to develop the so-called TerraFab took several months, considering that this endeavor was a way to produce the huge number of chips that his companies would need. Cars, Robotsand Data centers. Some chip industry analysts are Very skeptical That Musk could undertake such a complex and capital-intensive project.
Intel, meanwhile He was trying to make a strong comeback After years of stagnation, part of its efforts include offering its ability to manufacture advanced semiconductors to technology companies hungry for chips to power the artificial intelligence boom. As wired I mentioned recentlyIntel’s ability to secure these external customers is critical to its success. Musk could be a huge whale for the client.
Musk did not respond to WIRED’s questions about the partnership. An Intel spokesperson referred WIRED to the company’s posts about the deal on social media and declined to comment further. For now, here are five lingering questions about how Intel’s involvement will impact TerraFab’s chances of success.
How big is the “deal”?
It’s hard to say. Neither Intel nor Tesla have filed any paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which is typically required if a new partnership or deal materially changes the capital investment or manufacturing capacity of a public company.
For example, when chipmaker AMD and Meta announced a “multi-year, multi-generation” partnership in February to deploy up to 6 gigawatts of AMD GPUs for Meta’s AI services, AMD disclosed the deal in an SEC filing. As of press time, no such models have yet been offered by Intel or Tesla. This suggests that Tan and Musk’s agreement may be mostly handshakes and feelings for now. As one chip industry insider said: “It’s in the headlines for a few days, right?”
What is Intel’s actual contribution?
Intel’s public statement about the merger with Musk is almost comically vague. The company said its “ability to design, manufacture and package high-performance chips at scale” will help accelerate TerraFab’s goal of producing 1 terawatt of computing power per year to support “future advances in artificial intelligence and robotics.”
Pat Moorhead, a longtime chip industry analyst and founder of Moor Insights & Strategy, expects Musk to lean on Intel to kick-start advanced packaging capabilities. Tesla “doesn’t need to engineer the design of (the chips), they’re already very capable of doing that,” he points out. Moorhead adds that Musk may also want to license Intel’s chip architecture, which Terafab can build upon and customize.
Moorhead says tackling Intel’s advanced packaging business is a safe bet in the near term, because it gives all companies involved a chance to test their partnership without antagonizing TSMC, which runs the world’s largest manufacturing plants. “If you package first, you won’t piss off TSMC as much as you might if you used Intel to make chips,” he says. (Tesla has existing chip partnerships with TSMC and Samsung.)