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IT HISTORY
Gordon Moore Told Morris Chang TSMC Wasn’t a Good Idea. In 2024, TSMC Made Intel’s Lunar Lake Chip
The foundry started on other companies’ leftovers with one willing partner. It now books $122 billion a year, and Intel is a customer
Intel’s chief explained himself in Taipei
In June 2024, at Computex in Taipei, Intel chief executive Pat Gelsinger was asked why the chip at the heart of Intel’s next laptop processor, Lunar Lake, came from TSMC. “Lunar Lake picked TSMC as a better process technology at that point in time,” he said, as PC Gamer reported.
It was the language of a customer, not a rival.
Nearly forty years earlier, Intel had been asked to invest in that factory. Its chief executive then was Gordon Moore.
“Morris, you’ve had a lot of good ideas in your time. This isn’t one of them.”
Moore said it to Morris Chang in the mid-1980s, as Chris Miller tells it in Chip War. Chang had come for money to build a new chip foundry in Taiwan, a visit his 2024 autobiography also records, as Reuters reported.
Intel did not invest.
