United States based Intel Corp announced its plans for sourcing subcomponents of its chips from external factories as a part of its turnaround strategy, new details of which were provided by the company earlier this week.

The company plans to source chip components from suppliers including through partnerships with rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), about which the company also provided some details.

Intel is among the very few companies in the world today that not only designs its own semiconductor chips but also manufactures them itself. But in the area of designing the fastest chips, Intel has in recent years lagged behind its rival TSMC, with the Taiwanese firm more focused on manufacturing designs from outside firms. Intel has also been plagued by missteps in its manufacturing operations.

An outline of Intel’s strategy to regain its footing in manufacturing by 2025 was made available to the media and investors earlier this year by the company’s Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger. In e meantime however, Intel aims to prevent losing out its chip market share further to its rivals such as Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD.O) and Nvidia Corp, who have developed and are making faster semiconductors than Intel.

One of the tactics to for achieving that strategic aim is to strike partnership with its rivals such as TSMC for subcomponents of chips called “tiles” and then getting them together in its own factories with packaging technology.

Key tiles made with TMSC’s “N5” and “N7” chip making technologies, which will be placed on top of an Intel-made base, will be made use of by Intel for making its new “Ponte Vecchio” chip, Intel said earlier this week.

A supercomputer that Intel is building for the US Department of Energy will make use of the “Ponte Vecchio” chip for the first time in any major project.

Intel has not been able to challenge Nvidia at speeding up artificial intelligence software, which is a market that has in recent years driven much of the expansion in eth global chip industry, for years now, conceded Raja Koduri, senior vice president of Intel’s accelerated computing systems and graphics group.

The “Ponte Vecchio” chip is faster than those of Nvidia at some of those tasks, Koduri said.  “For a decade, we let them just have free reign,” Koduri said. “That ends now.”

A new name to its graphics chips, aimed for the video gaming market, is set to rival Nvidia’s other major market segment, Intel said earlier this week.

The “Alchemist” graphics chips of Intel will be made by TSMC and use the latter’s newly named “N6” chipmaking technology, which is an upgraded  version of its “N7” technology, Intel said.

There were reports in January this year of Intel partnering with TSMC and using the latter’s upgraded technology.

(Adapted from EconomicTimes.com)