5 Burning Questions About Elon Musk’s Terafab Chip Partnership with Intel

Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan said Tuesday that the chipmaker volition “work closely” with Elon Musk to enactment the billionaire entrepreneur's Terafab project, a perchance monolithic spot improvement and fabrication cognition that volition beryllium jointly developed by SpaceX and Tesla. A photograph posted by Intel’s authoritative X relationship shows the 2 executives shaking hands past play successful beforehand of a ample Intel sign. Musk’s 1-terawatt, ultra-high show spot fabrication facility, which whitethorn span aggregate locations, could outgo billions of dollars.

“Terafab represents a measurement alteration successful however silicon logic, representation and packaging volition get built successful the future,” Tan said successful a societal media post. “Intel is arrogant to beryllium a spouse and enactment intimately with Elon connected this highly strategical project.”

Exactly however Tan and Musk program to execute specified an ambitious task remains unclear. Musk has been talking astir the request to make a alleged Terafab for months, viewing the endeavor arsenic a mode to nutrient the immense fig of chips his companies volition request for cars, robots, and information centers. Some spot manufacture analysts are highly skeptical that Musk tin propulsion disconnected specified a analyzable and capital-intensive venture.

Intel, meanwhile, has been attempting to marque a mighty comeback aft years of stagnation, and portion of its efforts see pitching its capableness to manufacture precocious semiconductors to tech companies bare for chips to powerfulness the AI boom. As WIRED precocious reported, Intel’s quality to unafraid these extracurricular customers is captious to its success. And Musk could beryllium a immense whale of a customer.

Musk did not respond to WIRED’s questions astir the partnership. A spokesperson for Intel referred WIRED to the company’s posts astir the woody connected societal media and declined to remark further. For now, present are 5 outstanding questions astir however Intel’s engagement could impact Terafab’s chances of success.

How Big Is The “Deal”?

Hard to say. Neither Intel nor Tesla has filed immoderate paperwork with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which is typically required if a caller concern oregon woody materially changes the superior concern oregon manufacturing capableness of a nationalist company.

For example, erstwhile chipmaker AMD and Meta announced a “multi-year, multi-generation” concern successful February to deploy up to 6 gigawatts of AMD GPUs for Meta’s AI services, AMD disclosed the woody successful an SEC filing. As of publishing, nary specified forms person been filed yet by Intel oregon Tesla. That indicates Tan and Musk’s statement whitethorn beryllium mostly handshakes and vibes astatine the moment. As 1 spot manufacture insider enactment it, “It makes rather a header for a mates days, no?”

What Is Intel Actually Contributing?

Intel’s nationalist connection astir the mashup with Musk is astir comically vague. The institution said that its “ability to design, fabricate, and bundle ultra-high-performance chips astatine scale” volition assistance accelerate Terafab’s extremity of producing 1 terawatt of computing powerfulness a twelvemonth to enactment “future advances successful AI and robotics.”

Pat Moorhead, a longtime spot manufacture expert and laminitis of Moor Insights & Strategy, predicts that Musk volition thin connected Intel for its precocious packaging capabilities to start. He notes that Tesla “doesn’t request [chip] plan engineering; they’re already precise susceptible of that.” Moorhead adds that Musk whitethorn besides privation to licence Intel’s spot architecture, which Terafab could physique upon and customize.

Intel handling precocious packaging is simply a harmless stake successful the adjacent term, due to the fact that it gives each of the companies progressive a accidental to trial their concern without alienating TSMC, which runs the world’s biggest fabs, Moorhead says. “If you bash packaging first, you’re not going to infuriate TSMC arsenic overmuch arsenic you would if you utilized Intel for wafers,” helium says. (Tesla has existing spot partnerships with TSMC and Samsung.)