Want An Intel Inside Sticker On Your Car?

Intel’s Driving Urge To Boost Their Fab Business

Intel’s new head, Pat Gelsinger spoke with Reuters about his plans to offer some of Intel’s fab capacity to automakers to help alleviate the chip shortage that is driving the car market down.  Car manufacturers have had to decrease the amount of vehicles available for sale as the chips they require for their cars, from the dashboard display to the trunk release are in very short supply.  Car enthusiasts are feeling something similar to what those shopping for GPUs are experiencing.

Intel is hoping that they will be able to start the process by the end of the year, at the latest.  This suggests that not only do they have space on some of their fab lines, but that they can also convert those lines to the new wafers without a large increase in cost to automotive companies.  This will also help with their current campaign to increase the volume of product they fab for third parties, especially in the US. 

The details are somewhat scarce at the moment, but as both General Motors and Ford are being hit hard by the shortages they would be an obvious choice for Intel to reach out to.  They are not likely to stick to just the domestic manufacturers if this is successful, as automakers all across the globe are having the same sort of issues.

Soon, your car may contain both NVIDIA and Intel silicon so let’s hope the crypto-kids don’t find a way to start mining on your next vehicle.