Intel CEO rejects reports the company is obtaining TSMC secrets from former executive — Taiwan's investigation into Intel's controversial recent hire continues
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Lip-Bu Tan, chief executive of Intel, addressed concerns that a former TSMC executive allegedly hired by Intel could have brought the foundry's trade secrets to the U.S. Chipmaker in a bid to help it improve its production capabilities, triggering an investigation by Taiwanese authorities. The head of Intel dismissed claims that this could happen at all and insisted that the company respects IP.
"It is rumor and speculation," Lip-Bu Tan told Bloomberg on the sidelines of the Semiconductor Industry Association Awards. "There is nothing to it. We respect IP."
Earlier this week, Taiwanese prosecutors announced they had begun a national-security probe involving former TSMC R&D leader Wei-Jen Lo, who retired from the contract chipmaker and served as senior vice president of corporate strategy development in July after 21 years at the company, examining whether he improperly transferred advanced process information to an overseas firm. Lo re-emerged at Intel in late October as 'vice president of R&D' overseeing 'advanced equipment and module development from R&D up to pre-mass-production,' according to Taiwan-based Liberty Times.
Another report from DigiTimes suggests that Lo would be responsible for luring away customers from TSMC Arizona to Intel. However, this rumor looks very odd considering the extremely limited leading-edge manufacturing capacities that Intel has and the difficulties associated with porting a leading-edge design from one fabrication process to another. Yet another rumor cited by DigiTimes is that Lo could try to persuade TSMC customers to use Intel's advanced packaging technologies instead of TSMC's own or alternatives offered by ASE, Amkor, or SPIL. While this could have merit, moving from chief of TSMC strategy to an ambassador for Intel's back-end packaging offerings is a strange career decision.
The Liberty Times report claims that before leaving, Lo used his senior position in corporate strategy to request internal technical files on N2, A16, A14, and post-A14 process technologies from staff. Given Lo's high-ranking position at TSMC, the request did not trigger internal alarms. The report remains unconfirmed, and neither Intel nor TSMC commented on the matter earlier this week.
As the information has not been confirmed, at this point, we do not know whether Intel has hired Wei-Jen Lo, and we certainly have no idea what information (if anything at all) Lo gathered from TSMC in his final days at the company.
Given how complex modern process technologies are and the length of their development cycles, it is highly unlikely that any information about TSMC's N2, A16, and A14 will meaningfully benefit Intel. The company's 18A fabrication process has entered limited volume production, and at this stage, Intel cannot fundamentally change it. The company also released an early process design kit (PDK) for its next-generation 14A technology earlier this year, so the most fundamental aspects of the node have been frozen and cannot be changed. Last but not least, both 18A and 14A differ in many ways from TSMC's N2/A16 and A14 that the foundry's know-how is largely irrelevant to Intel's process engineers, though it could still be useful for competitive-analysis teams.
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Perhaps knowing TSMC's direction for post-A14 production nodes could be a benefit, but chipmakers tend to share their discoveries early with academia and industrial communities through specialized publications, so general R&D directions of various chipmakers are known to their rivals. Meanwhile, the Taiwanese probe into the matter continues.
