Intel CEO Planning Trip to Taiwan and Malaysia, Meeting with TSMC


Pat Gelsinger is planning a trip to Asia next week, where he’ll stop over in Taiwan and Malaysia according to Bloomberg. There he’s apparently planning to hold talks that show that manufacturing in Asia is a key part to his efforts of turning Intel’s fortunes around. It’s said that he’ll also be meeting with TSMC.

This will be Gelsinger’s first trip to Asia as Intel’s CEO, largely due to the pandemic, although outside of meeting with TSMC, his schedule wasn’t further mentioned, but it’s likely he will be meeting with key partners and suppliers. Intel does some of its chip packaging in Malaysia, on the island of Penang to be more specific, where plants have been temporarily closed due to the pandemic, which in turn has hurt supply for the tech companies located there.

As far as the meeting with TSMC goes, Bloomberg speculates that Gelsinger will be discussing current and future partnerships, as well as the kind of production volumes Intel is going to need. As we know, Intel is making its GPUs at TSMC, as well as some other products, but with the current supply constraints on bleeding edge nodes, Intel is going to have to do some tough negotiating, as all of its competitors are vying for the same nodes at TSMC.