Jason Chen, Chairman and CEO of Acer, gave his two cents on the NVIDIA partnership with Intel, after it invested in the stocks of the latter. Chen says that the introduction of a third potential supplier of PC components would likely complicate its procurement and inventory management moving forward.
As a quick primer, NVIDIA threw Intel a lifeline last month when it announced that it was entering a partnership with the blue chipmaker. At the same time, it also purchased US$5 billion (~RM21 billion) worth of common stock from the CPU brand.
Under the partnership, NVIDIA will also develop a special x86 RTX SoC chipset—an x86 CPU chiplet tightly connected to an RTX GPU via the green team’s NVLink interface.
In addition, Stan Shih, Founder of Acer, also chimed in at the company’s annual Long Time Smile Awards, stating that the situation wasn’t alleviated by US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s proposal to split US-bound semiconductor manufacturing right down the middle, between Taiwan and the US. Shih says that while the 50-50 split would be possible, it would take at least half a century to achieve.
Acer would have to restructure its supply chain in that event. As it stands, the company has already had to restructure its manufacturing processes for US-bound products in order to avoid the high tariffs imposed by Trump.
(Source: Digitimes via Tom’s Hardware)
