Intel could best TSMC within five years

For a long time, Intel was the unchallenged leader in the semiconductor process technology segment. But following significant setbacks with 10nm plus struggles with 7nm, Intel has a lot of catching up to do. Pat Gelsinger, who was appointed as Intel's CEO earlier this year, intends to return Intel to its former manufacturing glory and will open up the firm for foundry services.

A couple of days ago, Intel presented its manufacturing roadmap. The chip giant provided a lot of detail about what it foresees for the next couple of years. Intel also renamed its future process nodes, the upcoming 10nm Enhanced SuperFin is now "Intel 7" and the future 7nm node will be known as "Intel 4". Looking a couple of years into the future, Intel will enter the angstrom era of semiconductors with the "Intel 20A". The latter will be used by Qualcomm for future SoCs.

DigiTimes spoke to industry sources and got to hear that if things go well, Intel could challenge TSMC in the next five years and regain the process technology crown.

Gas contamination destroys Apple chips at TSMC

On a related note, TSMC suffered a minor setback as a gas contamination took out some production at its Fab 18 facility. In a press communication, TSMC explained the contamination happened Thursday night. Some iPhone and Mac chips for Apple were impacted by the issue. TSMC believes it received contaminated gases from a supplier. The foundry switched to other gas supplies but is performing further checks to ensure there's no impact on production quality. TSMC says manufacturing was only affected in a limited way and believes there's no obvious impact on operations.