Intel Corp (INTC)

[wbmw]

Intel is a low volume (not in the top ten) customer for TSMC..not to mention a future competitor (and very vocal about it). So the way I guess the Sofia negotiations went down was that Intel pays for all of TSMC's upfront engineering costs (+ a nice margin)..and then made minimum volume commitments before TSMC would lift a finger.

What do you mean "TSMC's upfront engineering costs"? Intel designed the part themselves, and is using an off-the-shelf process for SoFIA. They could have easily chosen a similar process from Samsung or Global Foundries, if TSMC wanted to price gouge. I agree Intel probably isn't getting big discounts, but I doubt many others are, either. 28nm-LP has been in high volume for a while, and it's now considered a sustaining node.

If your whole argument is based on the hypothesis that Intel is victim to paying TSMC huge payments while the rest of the world gets discounted, then I'll leave you to your own wild theories. It's not possible to disprove a negative.

So..now that the chips are ready the 3G chip market is imploding..Intel is stuck with all these chips.. Contra revenue '15...

Yeah, there's only a few hundred million left... poor Intel....