Elon Musk's missing piece

MediaTek could provide a solution for Elon Musk's Terafab design team. Photo: Wccftech .

Terafab, the in-house chip design team combining capabilities from SpaceX and Tesla, is pursuing one of the most ambitious semiconductor projects ever undertaken. According to renowned tech analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, MediaTek is emerging as the strongest candidate to fill the gap left by Terafab.

The scale of the Terafab project is remarkable. The team is working in parallel with all three of the world's largest manufacturers: TSMC, Samsung, and Intel. This is an unprecedented collaboration in the history of integrated circuit design.

They developed more than six chip lines simultaneously, including AI chips, Dojo chips, and dedicated chips for SpaceX, spanning two areas: ground-based computing and space computing. Even more remarkably, Terafab's design cycle was only about 9 months, compared to the standard 18-24 months, or even 2-3 years for more complex designs.

However, great ambition comes with great pressure. Kuo identifies three main bottlenecks that Terafab must overcome.

First, there's the technical complexity. Terafab had to deeply integrate four processes into a single project: lithography mask design, logic circuitry, memory, and advanced packaging. This is an unprecedented scale in the industry.

Secondly, there's the time pressure. Terafab is racing against Intel's 14A PDK 0.9 release schedule in October. If it misses, Elon Musk's chip design team risks missing Intel's 2028 small-scale production run of the 14A and falling behind a generation of chips. Kuo says recent industry surveys show Terafab is quoting significantly higher prices than the market to secure critical equipment supplies, a clear sign of the time pressure.

Thirdly, there's the human resources aspect. Apple's Silicon Engineering team, one of the world's best chip design teams, is many times larger than the combined chip teams of SpaceX and Tesla. Meanwhile, Terafab's smaller team has to handle a much broader scope of work in a shorter timeframe.

This is where MediaTek comes in. The chip design company from Taiwan (China) already has practical experience with Intel 16 and advanced EMIB-T packaging technology. Their familiarity with the Intel ecosystem allowed MediaTek to help Terafab shorten development time by several months after PDK 0.9 was released.

MediaTek is also collaborating with Google on the TPU chip line, with the TPU 8t expected to enter mass production in Q4 2026.

Ultimately, MediaTek established a commercial relationship with SpaceX by supplying Wi-Fi SoC chips for Starlink terminals. Given Terafab's tight deadlines, partnering with a certified supplier eliminates a time-consuming verification step.