Comment: Is Abu Dhabi targeting Intel rather than TSMC?

Peter Clarke, EE Times 
(11/09/2009 9:35 AM EST)

LONDON — With Waleed Al Muhairi, chief operating officer of Abu Dhabi government investment vehicle Mubadala Development Co., predicting Abu Dhabi would be making chips at home within four years, we are reminded that the Gulf states' aspirations to get into the chip business are long-enduring. But when Al Muhairi said Abu Dhabi wants to compete with Intel was that hubris?

Mubadala has a 19.9 percent stake in Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) which has been the leading but struggling competitor to Intel in the PC processor business.

There would be a certain irony in the fact that the region's first attempt to get into chip making — through Communicant Semiconductor Technologies AG — was started with the help of a process technology supplied by Intel Corp.

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