Intel Orders SoFIA Handset Chips from TSMC of Taiwan

Intel Corp., a globally major microprocessor maker, has contracted Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSCM), major contract-chip maker, to make its SoFIA family of handset chips using 28nm process.

TSMC has begun making SoFIA 3G chips at its factory in central Taiwan and will begin to make SoFIA 3G-R and SoFIA LTE chips in H1, 2015.

Industry executives believe Intel’s orders for chips to mostly keep TSMC’s 28nm process production lines humming in H1, 2015.

Intel rolled out SoFIA 3G chip,  combination of 3G baseband IC and Atom duo-core processor, in the final quarter this year, and will  release the quad-core SoFIA 3G-R chip in H1, 2015, having also  decided to advance the rollout date of its SoFIA LTE chip to H2,  2015 from 2016.

SoFIA chips are for low-mid-range smartphones and to lure market share away from established vendors Qualcomm Inc. and MediaTek Inc.

Such handset chips are part of Intel’s plan to boost its share of the mobile-computing device market,  mostly composed of tablet PC and smartphone. The company has attained the goal of shipping 40 million tablet-PC processors for this year due to offering subsidy to become the world’s No.2 vendor of the processors. (KL)