Intel's first chips to surpass Microsoft's lofty Copilot+ performance targets have arrived, promising up to 120 TOPS of AI performance across an improved CPU, GPU and NPU. This development was brought to you by the move to TSMC.
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Intel's new Core Ultra 200V mobile processors, launched ahead of the IFA conference in Berlin this week, are actually outsourced to TSMC for manufacturing and engineered using the x86 giant's Fovero 3D packaging technology.
Intel has been a TSMC customer for years for things like graphics processors, network cards and AI accelerators. When it came to processors, however, the chip manufacturer has almost exclusively handled manufacturing in-house. As CEO Pat Gelsinger noted during Intel's disastrous second-quarter earnings call last month, this decision is really a stopgap until its Foundry division can expand its 20A and 18A process technologies with products expected to return home in the 2026 timeframe.
This decision does not appear to have had a negative impact on the chip's performance. In fact, on the contrary, Intel previously claimed that instructions per clock increased by 14 percent for its performance cores and a whopping 68 percent for its efficiency cores this time around.
