Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto / Contributor | NurPhoto )

Today, Intel officially announced the termination of a $5.4 billion deal with Tower Semiconductor that was supposed to propel Intel closer to its "goal of becoming the second-largest global external foundry by the end of the decade."

Yesterday, the deadline for completing the deal passed after the tech companies failed to secure timely regulatory approval in China, Intel said in its press release.

Intel and Tower reached the deal back in February 2022. According to Bloomberg , this week's scrapping of the deal was expected, as Chinese officials dragged their feet for months, ultimately never signing off on it.

Enlarge / Silicon wafers from a TSMC factory. (credit: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd.)

It's been rumored for several months now that Apple will be using a new 3 nm manufacturing process from Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) for its next-generation chips, including M3 series processors for Macs and the A17 Bionic for some next-gen iPhones . But new reporting from The Information illuminates some of the favorable terms that Apple has secured to keep its costs down: Apple places huge chip orders worth billions of dollars, and in return, TSMC eats the cost of defective processor dies.

At a very high level, chip companies use large silicon wafers to create multiple chips at once, and the wafer is then sliced into many individual processor dies. It's normal, especially early in the life of an all-new manufacturing process, for many of those dies to end up with defects—either they don't work at all, or they don't perform to the specifications of the company that ordered them.

Normally, chip designers would have to pay for each individual die whether it worked or not; that's a major reason why companies sell cut-down or "binned" chips that run at lower clock speeds or have parts switched off. That way, they can recover some money from a defective die instead of none. Apple's orders with TSMC are apparently large enough that TSMC can afford not to charge Apple for defective dies.

Enlarge / Signage outside the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. facility under construction in Phoenix, Arizona. (credit: Bloomberg / Contributor | Bloomberg )

The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) was supposed to have its first Arizona chip factory operational by late 2024 but now has confirmed significant delays. Primarily due to a shortage of technical workers with critical expertise in the US, TSMC projects to finish construction instead by 2025.

This is an "ominous delay," Bloomberg reported , and it comes right when investment in AI is booming. TSMC is a leading supplier of AI chips, and the Biden administration is scrambling to quickly expand the US domestic chip industry. But the delay wasn't necessarily unexpected, ASML Holding NV CEO Peter Wennink told Bloomberg. Wennink's company is one of the world's leading producers of chipmaking equipment, and he said that getting access to skilled workers is a common cause of setbacks when building semiconductor fabrication plants, also known as fabs.

“People don’t seem to realize that when we start building those fabs across the globe now and are everywhere, that skill has been refined over the last couple of decades in only a few places on the planet—predominantly in Taiwan and in Korea and a bit in China,” said Wennink. “Getting access to the requisite skills and skilled workers to keep the construction plan on time is a challenge.”

Enlarge / The 2022 13-inch MacBook Pro with an M2 chip. (credit: Samuel Axon)

The third generation of Apple silicon chips for Macs and iPads will launch before the end of the year, according to two reports. One simply claims that they will launch in the third quarter of the year, while another says October.

We've known for a while that the first Macs with the M3 processor were due soon, but we didn't know quite when. But in his weekly newsletter, Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman said his sources claimed that in addition to the annual iPhone and Apple Watch launch event this September, Apple plans to put on one additional event in October. He then speculated that the "likely topic" of that event will be Macs, though he based that only on past history rather than any revelation by his sources. I agree this matches Apple's history, though; the company has often held a second event in October or November to launch new Macs and iPads after the iPhone fanfare from September has quieted.

Meanwhile, a preview of an upcoming DigiTimes report seen by MacRumors claims that "Apple's next-generation MacBook Pro slated for launch in the third quarter will feature 3 nm processors, according to industry sources."

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images )

Chipmaker TSMC said on Friday that one of its hardware suppliers experienced a “security incident” that allowed the attackers to obtain configurations and settings for some of the servers the company uses in its corporate network. The disclosure came a day after the LockBit ransomware crime syndicate listed TSMC on its extortion site and threatened to publish the data unless it received a payment of $70 million.

The hardware supplier, Kinmax Technology, confirmed that one of its test environments had been attacked by an external group, which was then able to retrieve configuration files and other parameter information. The company said it learned of the breach on Thursday and immediately shut down the compromised systems and notified the affected customer.

“Since the above information has nothing to do with the actual application of the customer, it is only the basic setting at the time of shipment,” Kinmax officials wrote . “At present, no damage has been caused to the customer, and the customer has not been hacked by it.”