Intel Meteor Lake chip delayed to 2024, TSMC slows 3nm expansion

NEW DELHI: The mass production of chip-maker Intels next big flagship processor Meteor Lake is expected to be delayed until 2024, a report has said.

According to TrendForce research, Intel plans to outsource the tGPU chipset in Meteor Lake to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) for manufacture.

"Mass production of this product was initially planned for 2H22 but was later postponed to 1H23 due to product design and process verification issues," the report mentioned.

Recently, the product's mass production schedule has been postponed again to the end of 2023 for some reason, "completely cancelling 3nm production capacity originally booked in 2023 with only a marginal amount of wafer input remaining for engineering verification".

Intel said earlier this year that Meteor Lake would be "powering on" this summer before shipping in 2023.

This incident has "greatly affected TSMC's production expansion plan, resulting in Apple being the one company among the first wave of 3nm process clients from 2H22 to the start 2023 with products including M series chips and A17 Bionic", the report mentioned.

In view of this, TSMC has decided to slow the progress of its production expansion.

In addition to formally notifying equipment suppliers of the company's intention to adjust 2023 equipment orders, due to the high cost of 3nm expansion, TrendForce expects that this move will also affect some parts of TSMC's 2023 CapEx planning.

Apple's new 2024 iPhone is expected to fully adopt 3nm processors.

"If Intel 4 fails to mass-produce as scheduled, Intel may outsource its computing tiles to TSMC, strongly driving growth in 2024," it added.

Intel suffered a 25 per cent decline in consumer chip sales in the second quarter, along with revenue of $15.3 billion, down 22 per cent year over year (YoY).

Its profits nosedived as it lost half a billion dollars in the April-June period -- a 109 per cent decline in profit from $5.1 billion it saw in Q2 last year.