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 1. Tech Industry
 2. Artificial Intelligence


SOFTBANK'S INTEL AI PROCESSOR PLANS IN DOUBT AS INSIDERS SAY IT IS NOW
CONSIDERING A TSMC PARTNERSHIP

News
By Anton Shilov
published yesterday

SoftBank's Project Izanagi will likely use TSMC.

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Comments (1)

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(Image credit: Intel)


SoftBank has been working with Intel to build AI processors for its Project
Izanagi initiative. However, due to Intel's failure to meet 'volume and speed'
requirements, SoftBank will shift its focus to TSMC, reports the Financial
Times citing its sources. Despite this setback, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son
remains determined to push forward with his ambitious AI plans and the sources
do not rule out working with Intel in the future.



Under Project Izanagi, SoftBank planned to develop its own AI processors that
would be able to rival Nvidia's AI GPUs in terms of performance and
capabilities. Additionally, it would design its own software stack and put it
into its own massive AI data centers that would be supplied with their own power
plants. SoftBank reportedly wanted Intel to produce the processors, but the
processor giant could not meet the Japanese company's requirements for 'volume
and speed,' indicate unnamed insiders.



Following the breakdown with Intel, SoftBank turned its attention to the world's
largest contract chipmaker TSMC, indicates the FT. While discussions are
ongoing, no agreement has been reached, as TSMC is currently struggling to meet
the demands of its existing customers, including AMD and Nvidia. 




Another aspect of Project Izanagi's execution is that SoftBank does not have its
own chip design expertise. Having said that we must note that it owns Arm, which
now develops 'Compute Subsystems' CSS reference implementations of its
processors for various workloads. It also recently acquired Graphcore, which
produced rather competitive hardware, but failed to make it popular among
developers of AI software, partly because Nvidia could offer a significantly
better CUDA software stack. Intel reportedly offered SoftBank its chip design
expertise, though it is unclear whether it could complete the design on time.
Also, it is unclear whether this was meant to be an Arm-based design.

LATEST VIDEOS FROM tomshardwareTom's Hardware



Masayoshi Son’s AI strategy is broad as he plans to invest billions of dollars
to place SoftBank at the forefront of the AI industry — essentially competing
against AWS, Google, Microsoft Azure, and Meta — in a move that could
significantly alter the competitive landscape. Financially, the venture could be
enormously costly, potentially running into the tens of billions of dollars or
even hundreds of billions of dollars, though it is hard to put a firm number at
this point. Son has reportedly reached out to investors in Saudi Arabia and the
United Arab Emirates for potential funding, though no concrete agreements have
been made.



To support his Project Izanagi vision, Son has also been pitching the idea to
major tech companies like Google and Meta, seeking their backing and financial
support. He believes that with the right partners, SoftBank can help counter
Nvidia's dominance in the AI processor sector. However, given the scope of
SoftBank's AI initiative which includes hardware, software, data center
infrastructure, and data centers themselves, it will inevitably compete against
the aforementioned companies, something they might not like. 

One of the risks associated with Son's plan is the potential impact on Arm's
relationship with its key clients. Critics reportedly argue that moving Arm into
direct chip design and production could strain its relationships with developers
of Arm-based data center processors, but SoftBank is apparently willing to take
that risk for the potential reward.

Neither Arm, SoftBank, Intel, TSMC, Google, nor Meta issued supporting comments
to the Financial Times.


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Anton Shilov
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Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of
decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from
modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.




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TOPICS
arm

See all comments (1)


1 Comment Comment from the forums
 * JRStern
   And if that is unsatisfactory they'll set up their own fabs.
   Reply
 * View All 1 Comment

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