Tech

Intel buys Tower Semiconductor for $5.4 billion to diversify foundry business

(credit: Andrew Cunningham) Intel has agreed to pay $5.4 billion to buy Tower Semiconductor, an Israeli foundry that focuses on specialty processes to make chips for imaging, power management, and wireless communications. The acquisition is Intel’s latest move to add capacity and customers to its new foundry division, which focuses on making chips for other […]

Tech

Intel “mega-fab” coming to Ohio, reports say

Enlarge (credit: ony Avelar/Bloomberg) Intel is reportedly planning to build a large chip facility in New Albany, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus, the state capital. An official announcement is expected on January 21. The company reportedly plans to invest $20 billion in the site, and the city of New Albany is working to annex up […]

Tech

Intel slipped—and its future now depends on making everyone else’s chips

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Aurich Lawson) Last month, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger stepped to a podium on a hazy, wind-whipped day just outside Phoenix. “Isn’t this awesome! ” Gelsinger exclaimed, gesturing over his shoulder. Behind him, two large pieces of construction equipment posed theatrically atop the ocher Arizona soil, framing an organized tangle of […]

Tech

TSMC: How a Taiwanese chipmaker became a linchpin of the global economy

Enlarge (credit: TSMC) When Li Ta-sen was a little boy, he used to walk to school through fields of sugarcane taller than himself. Some 40 years later, he is making a living by selling off the same fields as a property boom takes hold in his hometown of Shanhua. The reason for the construction frenzy […]