Why Intel is teaming with Elon Musk on an ambitious chipmaking venture
Intel will bring its design and packaging experience to the expensive Terafab project jointly led by Tesla and SpaceX. Elon Musk wants his Terafab to make logic and memory chips - and to package them.Intel is the first major chip maker to lend Elon Musk a helping hand in his bid to launch a potentially multitrillion-dollar semiconductor manufacturing project.Musk announced plans in March to develop the Terafab, a massive manufacturing project jointly led by Tesla and SpaceX. Together, the companies said, they would aim to manufacture 1 terawatt of computing capacity a year, or twice as much as needed by the entire U.S.While some experts praised Musk's ambition, others noted that Tesla and SpaceX lack experience with chip manufacturing. That's where Intel comes in."Our ability to design, fabricate, and package ultra-high-performance chips at scale will help accelerate Terafab's aim to produce 1 TW/year of compute to power future advances in AI and robotics," Intel said in a statement