TSMC founder Morris Chang – Image Credit: Acquired/YouTube
TSMC and Apple’s partnership hasn’t always been certain, with a new interview detailing how the company fended off an attempt by Intel to become Apple’s chip foundry partner in 2011.
TSMC has a long history being Apple’s chip producer, with it making everything from iPhone chips to Apple Silicon. However, there was a chance that Intel could’ve been in that role.
In an interview with YouTube channel Acquired, TSMC founder Morris Chang explained how Apple paused talks with TSMC in February 2011, to hear a proposal from Intel. At the time, Intel wanted to become the firm to construct Apple’s chips, in the midst of when Intel chips were used throughout the Mac lineup.
Despite having a history with Intel, it apparently only took two months for Apple CEO Tim Cook to decide to use TSMC instead of Intel.
Chang recounts that a private meeting with Cook in March of that year effectively sealed the deal. He traveled to Apple’s headquarters to talk to Cook about the pause in discussions, only to be reassured by him.
Cook reportedly told Chang “Intel just does not know how to be a foundry.”
Communication is key
Talking about the relationship with Apple, Chang boasts that he “wasn’t too worried” about Intel’s offer, due to TSMC’s manufacturing capabilities and how it handles its clients.
“I knew a lot of Intel’s customers in Taiwan, and none of them liked Intel,” he explains. “Intel always acted like they were the only guy for microprocessors.”
Chang also brought up that TSMC as a foundry business “does not compete with customers,” meaning that even if Intel worked in good faith, “they do have a the conflict of interests.”
TSMC’s approach was also one where it was responsive to the whims of the clients. “When the customer asks a lot of things, we have learned to respond to every request,” Chang states.
“Some of them were crazy, some of them were irrational, but we respond to each request courteously,” he continued. Intel has never done that.”
An example of this was early on in the relationship, with Apple causing major changes to the TSMC chip roadmap in 2014. At a time when TSMC wanted to shift from a 28-nanometer planar process to a 16-nanometer FinFET version, Apple decided it wanted to use a custom 20-nanometer planar node instead.
With a lack of research and development teams at the time, TSMC couldn’t create two different processing technologies at the same time. In the end, TSMC decided to keep Apple happy by shifting all of its development to what the iPhone maker wanted.
The approach worked, as Apple went from a dual-sourced approach with TSMC and Samsung for the A8 and A9 chips, in favor of a TSMC-only chip supply chain.
Over the years, Intel has been keen to win back Apple as a client. So far, Apple has not entertained the prospect at all.
