More reasons
Graphics expertise
- TSMC has been manufacturing graphics processors for the likes of NVIDIA and ATI for years. Intel has been threatening to become a bigger player in the graphics market for a while now with its project codenamed Larrabee. Maybe the Atom arrangement is just the start of a growing collaboration between the two companies.
Atom graphics
- NVIDIA is threatening to take the Atom graphics market away from Intel with its ION platform. There has been speculation that Intel might attempt to prevent the utilisation of ION by OEMs by insisting Atom is bought bundled with its own IGP chipset, but that may not be legal.
- If, however, Intel were to manufacture a successor to Atom with the graphics on the same die as the CPU then it could legitimately insist it's not possible to separate the two. Is it likely that OEMs would then want to buy an extra IGP on top of the one included in this new Atom processor? It could be a case of: if you can't beat ‘em, join ‘em.
Competing with ARM
- ARM has historically designed very low power processors for use in things like mobile phones, but its latest generation of designs look set to compete with Atom in the key convergent device market. As the PC and telco markets converge, the battle to be the CPU at the centre of the future mobile internet device of choice could be critical.
- TSMC has been manufacturing silicon for ARM ODMs like Texas Instruments and Qualcomm for a while. So if Intel plans to go head to head with ARM, it may have concluded that partnership with TSMC gives it the best chance.
Those are some possible reasons and there may well be others. Let us know in the HEXUS.community what you think the reasons behind this move might be.
