Intel In Collaboration Deal With Taiwan Semi On Atom

Intel (INTC) this morning announced a collaboration agreement with Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM) on Intel’s Atom processor, which is used in netbooks, handsets and other devices. The announcement the two companies made is a little, well, hard to parse. The companies said they reached a memorandum of understanding to “collaborate on addressing technology platform intellectual property infrastructure and system-on-a-chip solutions,” and that Intel will “port its Atom processor CPU cores to the TSMC technology platform including processes, IP, libraries and design flows.” Intel said the deal is “intended to expand” availability of Atom systems-on-a-chip availability for a wider range of applications. The deal apparently will make it easier for TSM’s customers to build Atom into their systems. There had been some speculation that Intel might actually outsource some production to Taiwan Semi, but that didn’t happen. In today’s ... (link)