Big deal, smart for all parties, really. Apple standards will make Intel step up and become a better foundry partner.
Apple will gain increasingly needed diversification.
US supply chain gets a boost.
Should be fine for TSMC in the short to medium term. Apple not going to risk actual mainline iPhone SoC on Intel any time soon, so lion share of TSMC Apple revenue will be fine.
The biggest reason to do this is because TSMC's N2 node and future nodes will be dominated by AI chips. Since AI chips have far bigger margins than most Apple chips, Apple will get outbid by companies like Nvidia, AMD, and Broadcom. Nvidia already became TSMC's biggest customer last year. Every TSMC advanced node from N5 to N2 is fully booked and running at max capacity.
It's not really realistic to make Mac, Watch, iPad chips on TSMC's best node in the next 3-4 years - assuming there is no collapse in AI. Unfortunately, this might mean we will get inferior Intel chips for our Macs. Intel nodes, as it stands, are far more power hungry, less dense, and lower yielding. Intel's own Panther Lake CPU tile is on 18A and it's extremely disappointing in terms of perf/watt and raw perf.
I still expect iPhone chips to be made on the best TSMC nodes though. I'm assuming Apple will design every future core for both TSMC and Intel, sort of like how they dual sourced with TSMC and Samsung in the past for the same generation.
I do not know on what data you base your sentence "Intel's own Panther Lake CPU tile is on 18A and it's extremely disappointing in terms of perf/watt and raw perf."
Panther Lake does not have great raw performance, because for now Intel has not succeeded to obtain in their new 18A CMOS process clock frequencies as high as they get in the older TSMC 3-nm process used for their previous Arrow Lake H CPU generation and the CPU cores of Panther Lake have only minor changes that can affect performance in comparison with Arrow Lake/Lunar Lake.
On the other hand, from the published reviews that I have seen, Panther Lake has significantly better performance per watt than Arrow Lake H, which can be attributed only to the Intel 18A process when compared with the TSMC 3 nm process.
The energy efficiency i.e. performance per watt ratio of CPUs is mainly determined by the fabrication process and not by the CPU design, as long as the CPU designers are competent enough (unlike the single-thread performance, which is determined mainly by the CPU design).
So there is no doubt that Apple CPUs made with the Intel 18A process will have better performance per watt than those made with a TSMC 3-nm process. Moreover, because Apple CPUs can reach a given level of performance at lower clock frequencies, they should be much less affected by the lower clock frequencies attainable with Intel 18A than the Intel CPUs.
We also do not know whether Apple intends to use the Intel 18A process (currently used for Panther Lake laptop CPUs and Clearwater Forest server CPUs), or only its successor, Intel 14A.
The most important one for efficiency is ST perf/watt. MT perf/watt is largely based on how many cores there are. You can achieve better MT perf/watt simply by having more cores (more transistors) and run them at lower clocks. Panther Lake also has an entirely new MT config with 3 tiers of cores vs 2 for Arrow Lake.
For ST perf/watt, it loses to LNL.
Keep in mind that LNL and Arrow Lake used N3B, and future N3 nodes have been much more efficient. Panther Lake CPU is also a new design which should have improved perf/watt automatically regardless of node.
Based on this, one can deduce that Intel 18A is likely a bit worse than N3B and perhaps equivalent to N4P. Keep in mind that N3B went into production in late 2022 and N4P was a 2021 node.
Nvidia’s chips aren’t usually on the latest nodes.
Not yet. The primary reason is because most AI chips are full reticle sized which means the first year yields likely won't be very cost effective. It takes a new node a few years to fully mature in terms of yield. Little iPhone A series and server CPU chiplets are perfect for new nodes.
That said, Nvidia will certainly try to move smaller and lower volume chips in future generations to the most cutting edge node such as their CPUs, networking chips. Vera Rubin has 7 unique chips. They don't need be all on the same node, and they're not.
AMD is taking up much of the N2 supply with their Epyc CPUs this year. There is no doubt in my mind that Nvidia, ARM, Graviton will try to book as much of the most cutting edge node as possible for their future enterprise CPUs given that AMD has done it for N2. I can see enterprise CPUs becoming equal launch partners to TSMC nodes as Apple. Agentic AI is going to cause a huge demand increase in CPUs.
Apple arguably are making AI workstations that can do inference and training by their Mac Studio and Macbook Pros to a lesser extent. The M6 generation is going to be interesting and before the memory pricing going up their products were competitive to the rest of the industry. Intel is still working with small and smaller process nodes.
Yes, I want Apple to focus on Mac inference. It could be the return of laptops/desktops as a major revenue source for Apple. Macs have been ~10% of Apple's revenue for the last 10 years or so. I'd love to see Macs get up to 20-30%.
I do expect personal AI machines to take off in a few years once local models and local hardware hit an inflection point. M5 Max is a major improvement for local inference due to the added matmul accelerators, but the RAM capacity and bandwidth bottleneck is huge.
That said, enterprise AI chips will still take the cake in terms of margins.
At any point in the last six years, Apple could have signed Nvidia's aarch64 BSD drivers and watched their revenue climb. It's a minuscule commitment that is fully supported by the higher-end Mac Pros, only disabled by software. That would have sent sales skyrocketing as far as the supply could handle it.
But Apple is about B2C, and customers buy services. All of us know, deep down, that Apple Intelligence will be a subscription service offered as part of Apple One. The Mac won't become the magical backbone for your personal inference network, it's a product used to consume Apple Services first and everything else comes second.
> TSMC's N2 node and future nodes will be dominated by AI chips.
Apple was reported to have locked up half of the initial year's 2nm production, which is lower than their share of 3nm, but hardly a sign of being squeezed out of the market
It takes TSMC years to develop a new node. Apple has been the launch customer for a long time for TSMC. This agreement likely happened many years ago, before this AI boom.
The Macrumors article definitely isn't when Apple decided to buy half of N2 capacity for the first year. It would have happened years ago.
Besides the fact that Lunar Lake has a lower consumption in the memory interface, which has nothing to do with the fabrication process, single-thread benchmarks cannot be used to compare CPU fabrication processes.
Both the absolute performance and the performance per watt in single-thread benchmarks are determined mainly by the CPU design and they are only slightly constrained by the CPU fabrication process.
Only the multithreaded benchmarks are useful for comparing CMOS fabrication processes, because the performance in multithreaded benchmarks (with a given cooling system) is limited mainly by the energy required to switch a logic gate, which is a characteristic of the fabrication process, and they are only weakly dependent on the CPU design, as long as the CPU design does not have obvious mistakes.
In multithreaded benchmarks, CPUs work at a fixed power consumption, determined by the maximum allowable temperature and the cooling system. A fixed power means a fixed number of gates that switch per second. The completion of a given benchmark requires a similar number of gate switchings in well designed CPUs, in which case the performance in such a benchmark is fully determined by the fabrication process. Deviations from proportionality appear when some CPUs need much less gate switchings than others to complete some work, which happens for example when a CPU has wider vector or matrix execution units, e.g. by supporting AVX-512 or SME or AMX.
On package memory disproportionally affects idle power consumption more than load. In Cinebench 2024, which is a heavy load test, on package memory likely makes little difference.
ST is far better than MT for this node comparison. MT is heavily influenced by core count, clock speed, core configuration. Panther Lake also has 3 tiers of cores compared to Arrow Lake's 2. The architecture for MT is entirely different.
Meanwhile, for ST, a core is a core. It's less or not affected by architectural changes to core configurations.
> With the new Panther Lake mobile processors, Intel has managed to successfully combine the two previous generations, Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake, as the performance is even better than with Arrow Lake, while efficiency has been improved at the same time. Even with low power limits, the performance is very competitive, and Intel (in conjunction with the new GPUs) is therefore the better choice for slim laptops.
The performance with LNL is not apples-to-apples, like the comparison with Arrow Lake H.
LNL has a much lower power consumption in the memory interface, like the Apple CPUs, which has nothing to do with the fabrication process. Also LNL is a lower performance CPU, for which it is normal to have better energy efficiency.
Only the comparison between Panther Lake and Arrow Lake H, which have equivalent structures, can be used to compare the Intel 18A and the TSMC 3-nm fabrication processes.
This comparison shows that Intel 18A ensures a better performance per watt, i.e. energy efficiency, which leads to a better multithreaded performance, but the TSMC 3-nm process, at least for now, allows higher maximum clock frequencies, which make possible a higher single-thread performance.
On-package memory disproportionately affect idle power more than load power. The benchmark was done with Cinebench 2024 which is a heavy load test. Therefore, LNL's on package memory would have made little to no difference overall to perf/watt in Cinebench 2024 ST.
Only the comparison between Panther Lake and Arrow Lake H, which have equivalent structures, can be used to compare the Intel 18A and the TSMC 3-nm fabrication processes.
Panther Lake uses a new core design which likely contributed to better perf/watt regardless of which node was used. For example, Zen3 had a 19% increase in IPC despite being on the same N7 family node as Zen2. Panther Lake has 3 tiers of cores instead of 2 in Arrow Lake. The MT design is very different. New core and layout designs can make a huge difference in efficiency on the same node.
This comparison shows that Intel 18A ensures a better performance per watt, i.e. energy efficiency, which leads to a better multithreaded performance, but the TSMC 3-nm process, at least for now, allows higher maximum clock frequencies, which make possible a higher single-thread performance.
We should compare ST perf/watt instead of MT. MT has too many factors including core count, die size, transistor count, clock speed.
Based on ST perf/watt, Intel 18A is likely a bit worse than N3B (2022 node) and a bit better than N4P (2021 node).
The Panther Lake cores, i.e. Darkmont and Cougar Cove are the Arrow Lake/Lunar Lake cores, i.e. Skymont and Lion Cove, ported from the TSMC 3 nm to the Intel 18A fabrication process.
The Panther Lake cores have only minor changes, i.e. bug fixes and the addition of a new mechanism for interrupts and exceptions, FRED. A preliminary version of FRED is likely to have already been implemented on Arrow Lake/Lunar Lake, but if so it was disabled there after production.
In any case FRED will not cause improvements in the present benchmarks, as it is used only inside the operating system and the current operating systems are unlikely to have been updated to use it anyway.
In contradiction with what you say, ST performance or performance per watt cannot be used to compare fabrication processes but only the multithreaded performance can bu used for this purpose.
Single-thread performance is affected by a lot of factors that have nothing to do with the fabrication process, but all those have little or no influence on multithreaded performance.
The reason is that in any well optimized MT workload, the CPU runs at a constant power consumption. This eliminates the influence of all factors mentioned by you.
I have already explained in another comment that a constant power consumption means a constant number of gate switchings per second, which is determined by the energy required to switch a logical gate, which is a characteristic of a fabrication process.
When a given amount of work is done by a benchmark using the same algorithm, well-designed CPUs will need approximately the same number of gate switchings to complete the work, regardless of the number of cores included in a CPU.
Significant variations of the numbers of gate switchings can be caused only by architectural differences like the width of vector and matrix execution units. Smaller variations are caused by various quality characteristics of a CPU core design, like the frequencies of branch mispredictions and of cache misses, which should be similar for CPU design teams that do not differ much in competence.
When we compare equivalent cores in different fabrication processes, like Arrow Lake H vs. Panther Lake, the multithreaded benchmarks are almost unaffected by anything else except the fabrication process, assuming that the cooling systems are also equivalent.
I find it ironic that Apple did the whole silicon thing to get away from Intel and now they are reportedly crawling back to Intel? I hope M6 and beyond continue to be competitive for inference.
This is about FABs and not chip designs. Imagine a parallel universe where Apple was sourcing AMD chips (they actually did for graphic cards) and then went to TSMC to whom AMD is also a customer.
Note that I said M6 and beyond. I know the chip designs being produced will remain Apple's.
Other commenters in the thread talk about how Intel's node is simply inferior to TSMC's and will bottleneck the performance of the same chip designs simply by being bad. I hope that is not the case and/or that I won't have to settle for an Intel node inside my Apple chips. (They better not try to pull an AMD where some chips simply have utterly kneecapped performance for no good reason.)
ASML is one of the bigger bottlenecks I hear. They're fully booked out years in advance so even if Intel wants to build many more fabs, they can't.
There was a recent interview with Dylan Patel and he explained it pretty well.
Basically, there are tiers of risks and how "AGI pilled" each tier is. The bottlenecks and supply constraints get worse and worse as you down down the tiers.
Tier 1: OpenAI/Anthropic - extremely AGI pilled and think it's a sure thing. They want all layers underneath to prepare to make as many chips as possible and go all in.
Tier 2: Nvidia/AMD/Broadcom - very bullish but doesn't think AGI is a sure thing
Tier 3: TSMC, Samsung, SK Hynix, Intel, Sandisk, Micron - bullish but if they're wrong and overbuild, they can actually go bankrupt. Each fab can cost tens of billions. An N2 fab is estimated to be $30b each.
Tier 4: Every supplier to T3 such as ASML, Applied Materials, other fab machines and suppliers - Less bullish, may even see this as just a super cycle rather than a permanent increase in demand so they're less inclined to take too many risks to scale up
Next decade seems possibly false - if Intel starts getting deals and commitments now, it takes them about half a decade to build a fab. Agree it seems unlikely though.
Intel doesn't even have enough capacity right now to make enough Xeon chips. CPU demand is absolutely booming but their Intel 18A and 3 nodes don't have great yields.
Time will tell but with Ternus taking over, a hardware and engineering mindset, could be going for a long term learn and build together, and of Intel can get it together and go where Apple needs, later buyout Intel.
Lip-Bu Tan is a year older than Tim Cook. Doubt he wants to run Intel for very long.
Would be hard for me in the Ternus role to not have that in mind if Intel gets it together.
TSMC fabs on home turf is just as good from a security point of view. But in reality for VLSI at this scale and volume it’s just single supplier in series with single supplier all the way down. You don’t really get security with such a vulnerable supply chain, regardless of ownership.
Apple Inc. has held exploratory discussions about using Intel Corp. and Samsung Electronics Co. to produce the main processors for its devices in the US, a move that would offer a secondary option beyond longtime partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. [0] (paywalled)
They wouldn’t need either Intel or Samsung if it wasn’t bleeding edge. I think it’s 14A for Intel. TSMC is still have the edge overall, but they are neck and neck in terms of node.
TSMC will be more than fine. They are hardly able to meet the demands.
Also an “exploratory discussion” is not the same as a signed contract. Apple has tons of custom silicon now. There are many low risk ASICs Apple could kick the tires with.
This is the third year in a row that Apple's most advanced chips have used a version of TSMC's 3nm node, with a transition to a more advanced node due in the next generation.
Intel would only need to be on par with TSMC's older 3nm node to Fab Apple's entry level SOCs.
Intel just bought a ton of ASML's most advanced machines (way more than TSMC) so theoretically they should be able to manufacture stuff on an equivalent node or better. And given the kind of performance and battery life we have seen from their latest chips they definitely seem to be back in the game
Do you have a source of how many total EUV machines Intel bought and TSMC bought in the last 1-2 years?
Yes, Intel made the first purchase for High NA EUV machines. That's largely because they were so far behind TSMC, they took a big risk as the first adopter for High NA EUV with their upcoming 14A node to try to catch up.
TSMC thinks it can keep using low NA EUV machines for N2 and A14 nodes even if they have to increase the number of patterning steps. This also means TSMC will likely keep all the AI chip design wins since High NA has half of the reticle size of low NA. The maximum chip size of High NA is half of low NA. This is a major deal for AI chips because they tend to want to be as big as possible.
None of these things mean Intel bought more total EUV machines than TSMC. A quick internet search says TSMC has about 2x as many fabs in active construction as Intel.
Actually, Intel tried to stuff too many advances into 10nm when ASML hasn't even shipped EUV machines yet. That's where they got stuck. Once they got stuck, EUV transitioned was delayed for Intel.
"Big if true". That's surprising. More ASML machines = more capacity in the future. Do you have a source for that?
Intel would need to have lots of (and / or very big) customers lined up or big plans to manufacture possibly more than CPUs of their own design to make use of that capacity.
Nothing about the number of machines in that article though. I could well see Intel buying the first ones of the new series as a PR coup. I mean obviously they are going to use them, too.
> Intel has secured all of ASML’s stock of High Numerical Aperture NA Extreme Ultraviolet (High NA EUV) chipmaking equipment due to be manufactured this year.
Anyways, it doesn't matter if it's high NA or low NA when it comes to capacity. What matters is how many total EUV machines and fabs. As of right now, a Google search says TSMC has 2x the number of fabs in construction as Intel.
What does this have to do with the subject at hand? Is the internet like this now, that in every message board there is just islands of content floating in oceans of snark?
Here’s my guess as to Apple's reasoning: They like to dominate suppliers, but TSMC is in such high demand that they’re on equal footing now. Going into bed with Intel gives them the chance to set strict terms again.
Certainly an aspect; would you rather negotiate with a supplier who has more power, or less power?
But it’s likely not a one-dimensional decision. Supply chain diversification, China / Taiwan, Intel having established US fabs, on and on. Seems like a wise decision in every way.
Getting another supplier certainly makes negotiations easier but I doubt it's the main reason. The main reason is that TSMC simply does not have enough wafers no matter how much money Apple throws at them. TSMC is fully booked in 2026 and well into 2027 from reports.
It's not clear if it's going to get better either. It could get worse in terms of supply.
This is really nice for competition in semiconductor manufacturing. The TSMC quasi-monopoly (with Samsung fabs slightly lagging) and limited capacity is not good for the market. Owning leading edge fabs might also help Intel to keep up the competition in the x86 market. Intel is the underdog now!
The key distinction is Intel as a foundry versus Intel as the CPU designer. Apple can still be fully committed to its own silicon while wanting another manufacturing option.
Is this Intel Foundry Services fabbing apple-designed chips, or Apple using Intel-designed chips in their products? I would assume the former but don't see where in the article it says either way.
Even if we make the not-particularly-reasonable assumption that Apple would want to own a fab, and the wildly unreasonable assumption that they would accept any outside customers for the fab: building a fab business from scratch to something competitive would take on the order of a decade or more even for a company with Apple's resources. And if Apple bought somebody else's fab business, it seems most likely that it would be Intel's and there would no longer be an Intel do design chips that would be in search of a foundry. (Intel has the only relevant logic fab business that could plausibly end up getting sold off to the likes of Apple.)
Yes, I suppose I was imagining the weird transition like AMD did when they split off Global Foundries. Imagine the remaining Intel being a chip designer like AMD. For someone of my age, it seems both incomprehensible and somehow inevitable. Crazy leadership choices seem to be happening so often in recent years.
Honestly, I found it hard to understand why they abandoned RAM and solid state memory fab sectors too. With all the national security spending by DoD, DoE, etc., I would have thought there is room for some US-based business to remain, even if some of the mass consumer stuff has been lost to low margin international competitors.
They wanted to focus resources on the very profitable top end of the market and leave the low-margin commodity business to competitors. If you repeat that cycle enough eventually you just stop competing with anyone because you’ve fired everyone who has the capacity to do that. Then it’s only a matter of time before you get eaten for lunch.
They already spun off Intel vs Intel Foundry into separate companies awhile back
Intel was in ram and solid state for a bit but didnt stick with it. Optane was a huge flop and they use different manufacturing techniques vs CPUs. Plus Micron is one of the biggest dram manufacturers and US based.
> not-particularly-reasonable assumption that Apple would want to own a fab, and the wildly unreasonable assumption that they would accept any outside customers for the fab
Isn’t running a fab only while it makes top of the line chips a bad idea because you can still make good money from it in later years?
If so, I think they, _if_ they ever want to own a fab (unlikely, IMO), they’ll want to accept outside customers for it when it has stopped being best-in-the-world.
Pardon my lack of faith but ... this article is clueless. No information whatsoever. Except:
> The Journal report said the U.S. government, which became Intel's largest shareholder last year under a deal with its CEO Lip-Bu Tan, played a major role in bringing Apple to the negotiating table.
I'm shocked to see people reason around "why Apple wants this" when the article is pointing right towards coercion. Follow the money, the rest is amateur hour.
how do you get to the content? I keep getting a 401 and a message to "enable JS and disable any ad blocker" even though JavaScript(tm) is enabled and I don't have an ad blocker. Do you have to use Safari or Edge or something?
Intel seems far & away the best at chiplet right now. Foveros, EIMB, etc, and possible Z-Angle next... Intel seems way ahead. They're trying to get to 12x reticle size in 2028, and doing it super smartly (eimb).
https://bsky.app/profile/ogawa-tadashi.bsky.social/post/3mld...
Yes, Intel is actually competitive again. Between working backside power, the most advanced chiplet packaging tech going, 18A yields steadily improving, and other good news, Intel is really on plane. Now they've landed both SpaceX and Apple.
It's good to see. Guess they were worth saving. I do hope their abandonment of discrete desktop GPU is temporary.
Intel has been deemed a national security asset. Essential infrastructure.
The government (both current and previous administrations) is doing everything it can to make sure they do keep up, at the very least. And with enough money being thrown at it, they probably will.
Also keep in mind that none of the big chip purchasers (Apple, Nvidia, etc), want to depend on one supplier for their chips. There are huge incentives among them to encourage Intel's success.
Nobody benefits if just one company controls the state of the art in chip manufacturing, and Intel is one of maybe two other companies positioned to have a chance at competing effectively with TSMC.
I've always thought letting the free market decide everything is not an optimal strategy. Protecting sovereignty of key industries like this is a good example.
What IMO is a bad strategy is the aversion to nationalization that exists in the USA. They buy billions worth of shares in key companies to inject capital during times of crisis, to later divest and refuse to be a player in industry.
China's model is much more complex. There's state-owned companies, companies where the state is a major stake-holder, and private companies too. It seems to afford them more tools to push and steer industries as they see important.
The USA is no stranger to this at smaller scales; airports are state run (at the municipal or state level). This rids them of the burden of profit, and allows them to be strategically use for the broader benefit when it makes sense.
Some are profitable; state-run doesn't necessarily mean unprofitable. But some can written off as infrastructure investments that don't make money but make other industries in the region competitive. At some point this makes sense if you want to keep pushing forward; let's stop worrying too much about making money on X, because if X is a widely-available commodity, we can instead make money on Y and Z.
I see it in Mexico too. Mexico's private healthcare is affordable and good because it has huge state-run healthcare system to compete with. State-provided healthcare isn't the best or fastest healthcare you can get, but it is free. This certainly puts competitive pressure on private healthcare companies, and in a way gives the Mexican government the best regulatory tool: the market itself. The Mexican government isn't trying to destroy private health, but via the state health enterprise it gains tools to steer and push the health industry in ways it may deem important.
Looking at the state of EVs and the car industry, I think it's clear whatever the Chinese government did to incentivize EV innovation was more effective than the federal incentives the USA government provided. At one point the USA government had a 60% stake in General Motors [1]; meaning it was nationalized, before being privatized again by 2013.
I just wonder what the USA could've done with that machinery; could they have offered a cheap EV, even if it's low quality, to push adoption, competitive pressure and get supply chains going? Could they have further commoditized certain parts to lower costs? Could they have strategically opened factories in certain locations to lower the risk and investment cost of future companies, and this way get the ball rolling on creating new auto-industry regions? We will never know, but we do know the USA's auto industry is now on the defense playing catch-up to China, and there seems to be little the USA government can do except placing tariffs and offering subsidies.
IMHO, the big thing was the mismatch between what Apple wanted in a CPU and what Intel was prepared to offer the marketplace, and AMD wasn't different enough to matter.
Intel/AMD chips are designed with one thermal target for acceptable computing and a second, much higher target if you want to compute at the highest throughput continuously.
Apple did not provide the highest thermal capaicity and suffered when comparing similar cpu against another OEM. With Apple silicon, the cpu is designed around the thermal solution Apple is willing to provide. A lower power target leads to a lower clockspeed target leads to different design tradeoffs than Intel/AMD where flagship designs must clock to the moon. You can see similar benefits for the lower targets in AMD's ZenC cores.
But ZenC wasn't available, and Apple probably wouldn't want to be running laptops with only ZenC when you could get a regular Zen laptop from someone else. Apple benefits from avoiding apples to apples comparisons.
Likely Apple won't lean too heavily on Intel fab to start with. Let them do processors for value products and see where it goes, but always plan for fab agility. At least until Intel fab becomes a reliable partner.
> It was about x64 being unable to keep up - independent of Intel’s Fab capabilities which have improved lately.
But the big reason x64 couldn't keep up was that Intel's fab capabilities were horrible. Intel got stuck and couldn't get smaller nodes out and competing fabs caught up and left Intel in the dust.
Apple was able to ship 22nm Intel processors in Summer 2012 while their iPhone processors were 32nm that Fall and 28nm in Fall 2013. Spring 2015, Apple shipped 14nm Intel laptops and later that Fall 14/16nm iPhones. Competitors had caught up and soon TSMC started surpassing Intel.
Yes, Intel's fab capabilities have improved lately, but Intel's fab failures were causing x64 to fall behind. If Intel had retained fab supremacy, x64 wouldn't have fallen behind. I think Apple still likes the idea of being able to build exactly the parts they want (so they can optimize for power, thermals, etc), but Intel fell behind because their fabs stopped being competitive.
>> It was about x64 being unable to keep up - independent of Intel’s fab capabilities, which have improved lately.
> But the big reason x64 couldn't keep up was that Intel's fab capabilities were horrible. Intel got stuck and couldn't get smaller nodes out, and competing fabs caught up and left Intel in the dust.
It also was that Intel couldn’t execute reliably on their own roadmap, forcing Apple at the time to do extra engineering to incorporate Intel's chips. Apple sells a lot of laptops; Intel never got their act together regarding mobile processors for MacBooks and MacBook Pros.
The 8-core Mac Pro used Intel Xeon 5500 series; at idle, it used 309 W; it used 9 fans for cooling [1]. It sounded like a jet engine when it was running. And while it was an elegant design for the time, they shouldn’t have needed to jump through these hoops.
For what it’s worth I thought Intel was down and out and on the decline, but that is not the case 18A is more advanced and more performant than TSMC’s N2- which are both foundary’s most advanced chips. The main problem Intel has is scaling. It just cannot provide the volume right now. That seems like a much more tractable problem, especially with 14 A on the horizon.
"In general, we want to and have been helping Intel," the official said, adding the effort was not because of the equity stake in Intel, but because the company is a major U.S. semiconductor producer.
"We have been trying to drum up business for Intel."
Some people also thought Gamestop was a good deal at $400 after 50x-ing...but when you look at fundementals, earnings and actual projected growth and not just the hype, you see the stock for what it really is. At $20 it was a good deal because of the possibilities of long term success (which we haven't seen any actual evidence of yet), but at $125 it is way overpriced.
Another way to look at it. TSMC profit in 2025 was equivalent to Intel revenue (both about $55B), but Intel made zero dollars profit, yet somehow their market cap is now half of TSMCs.
Intel is the Chrysler of chipmaking. It's only alive because the USA strategically needs a USA company to be able to make and design at least some kind of chips.
I actually owned quite a bit of Intel stock bought at $19, but was forced to sell it. Then I bough some for $45 last year, and sold couple weeks ago for $60, just a day or two before it took off. Lucky me....
+1 for me in Australia, but it's due to using an ad blocker:
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For what it's worth, Reader Mode in Firefox displays the article text anyway.
I believe that both of those statements are true. Nonetheless, I and other posters are experiencing one here and can't read the article. Your valid anecdote does not help us.
> The Journal report said that the U.S. government, which became Intel's largest shareholder last year under a deal with its CEO Lip-Bu Tan, played a major role in bringing Apple to the negotiating table.
Ah, so this wasn't a decision Apple freely made based on technical merits. Instead it sounds more like big government and a fancy stock manipulation scheme.
My guess, Apple drags their feet for a couple years and bails after Trump leaves office(or is significantly weakened after the midterms).
Yes and it can also reduce competitive forces which were driving Intel to innovate. The goal of a robust supply chain is not aligned with the goal of technical supremacy. Sure, the US did achieve technical supremacy in the past with government intervention and assistance, but the world was much different then. Now the US has to compete with East Asian innovation.
Counter point: Apple exists in their size because of the US’s willingness to keep shipping lanes and trade routes open by use of force and US diplomatic efforts to allow for trade to exist in foreign nations.
It’s debatable if this still holds true or is the correct approach given the shitshow going on right now.
It's also a major concern to have a supply chain that can be protected from foreign manipulation.
A compromised supply chain is a huge intelligence/national security risk, not just for military platforms but everything from government and commercial datacenters to personal devices used by both public and private sector individuals.
This is more my imagining a book plot than any real insight, but...
This wouldn't be Apple's first rodeo with Intel. They know how prior partnerships soured. Could a sufficiently powerful shareholder, like the US government, help mitigate Apple's concerns about the outcome of a new partnership? I.e. that Intel would be pressured to honor certain strategic obligations, even if the leadership at Intel isn't so keen?
How can the USG improve the competitiveness of INTC's process nodes with political pressure?
Was the concern in the past that Intel wasn't honoring strategic obligations or was it that Apple realized their tech sucked and TSMC was the only viable path to deliver world-leading products?
There are many recent examples of market manipulation, but this isn't one of them. Digital sovereignty is being pushed in the EU too, and it's a good thing.
I imagine it would be a big lift. Asahi linux is managing through reverse engineering the hardware support, without any official documentation. Even with official documentation it would be a significant change from other aarch64 hardware.
Technically speaking, Bootcamp is an iBoot problem. Apple stopped shipping Macs with firmware UEFI which breaks 99% of generic OS installers out of the box.
Microsoft is pretty justified not wanting to support that, versus UEFI on OG Bootcamp. The majority of Linux distros don't ship image support for iBoot either.
Big deal, smart for all parties, really. Apple standards will make Intel step up and become a better foundry partner.
Apple will gain increasingly needed diversification.
US supply chain gets a boost.
Should be fine for TSMC in the short to medium term. Apple not going to risk actual mainline iPhone SoC on Intel any time soon, so lion share of TSMC Apple revenue will be fine.
The biggest reason to do this is because TSMC's N2 node and future nodes will be dominated by AI chips. Since AI chips have far bigger margins than most Apple chips, Apple will get outbid by companies like Nvidia, AMD, and Broadcom. Nvidia already became TSMC's biggest customer last year. Every TSMC advanced node from N5 to N2 is fully booked and running at max capacity.
It's not really realistic to make Mac, Watch, iPad chips on TSMC's best node in the next 3-4 years - assuming there is no collapse in AI. Unfortunately, this might mean we will get inferior Intel chips for our Macs. Intel nodes, as it stands, are far more power hungry, less dense, and lower yielding. Intel's own Panther Lake CPU tile is on 18A and it's extremely disappointing in terms of perf/watt and raw perf.
I still expect iPhone chips to be made on the best TSMC nodes though. I'm assuming Apple will design every future core for both TSMC and Intel, sort of like how they dual sourced with TSMC and Samsung in the past for the same generation.
I do not know on what data you base your sentence "Intel's own Panther Lake CPU tile is on 18A and it's extremely disappointing in terms of perf/watt and raw perf."
Panther Lake does not have great raw performance, because for now Intel has not succeeded to obtain in their new 18A CMOS process clock frequencies as high as they get in the older TSMC 3-nm process used for their previous Arrow Lake H CPU generation and the CPU cores of Panther Lake have only minor changes that can affect performance in comparison with Arrow Lake/Lunar Lake.
On the other hand, from the published reviews that I have seen, Panther Lake has significantly better performance per watt than Arrow Lake H, which can be attributed only to the Intel 18A process when compared with the TSMC 3 nm process.
The energy efficiency i.e. performance per watt ratio of CPUs is mainly determined by the fabrication process and not by the CPU design, as long as the CPU designers are competent enough (unlike the single-thread performance, which is determined mainly by the CPU design).
So there is no doubt that Apple CPUs made with the Intel 18A process will have better performance per watt than those made with a TSMC 3-nm process. Moreover, because Apple CPUs can reach a given level of performance at lower clock frequencies, they should be much less affected by the lower clock frequencies attainable with Intel 18A than the Intel CPUs.
We also do not know whether Apple intends to use the Intel 18A process (currently used for Panther Lake laptop CPUs and Clearwater Forest server CPUs), or only its successor, Intel 14A.
All efficiency data can be found here: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Panther-Lake-Core-Ultra-...
The most important one for efficiency is ST perf/watt. MT perf/watt is largely based on how many cores there are. You can achieve better MT perf/watt simply by having more cores (more transistors) and run them at lower clocks. Panther Lake also has an entirely new MT config with 3 tiers of cores vs 2 for Arrow Lake.
For ST perf/watt, it loses to LNL.
Keep in mind that LNL and Arrow Lake used N3B, and future N3 nodes have been much more efficient. Panther Lake CPU is also a new design which should have improved perf/watt automatically regardless of node.
Based on this, one can deduce that Intel 18A is likely a bit worse than N3B and perhaps equivalent to N4P. Keep in mind that N3B went into production in late 2022 and N4P was a 2021 node.
Nvidia’s chips aren’t usually on the latest nodes. The M5 is in N3P, Blackwell is N4P. M6 is expected to be on an N2 node while Rubin is N3P.
I don’t think Nvidia even has an N2 chip announced, could be wrong through.
That said, Nvidia will certainly try to move smaller and lower volume chips in future generations to the most cutting edge node such as their CPUs, networking chips. Vera Rubin has 7 unique chips. They don't need be all on the same node, and they're not.
AMD is taking up much of the N2 supply with their Epyc CPUs this year. There is no doubt in my mind that Nvidia, ARM, Graviton will try to book as much of the most cutting edge node as possible for their future enterprise CPUs given that AMD has done it for N2. I can see enterprise CPUs becoming equal launch partners to TSMC nodes as Apple. Agentic AI is going to cause a huge demand increase in CPUs.
Apple arguably are making AI workstations that can do inference and training by their Mac Studio and Macbook Pros to a lesser extent. The M6 generation is going to be interesting and before the memory pricing going up their products were competitive to the rest of the industry. Intel is still working with small and smaller process nodes.
Yes, I want Apple to focus on Mac inference. It could be the return of laptops/desktops as a major revenue source for Apple. Macs have been ~10% of Apple's revenue for the last 10 years or so. I'd love to see Macs get up to 20-30%.
I do expect personal AI machines to take off in a few years once local models and local hardware hit an inflection point. M5 Max is a major improvement for local inference due to the added matmul accelerators, but the RAM capacity and bandwidth bottleneck is huge.
That said, enterprise AI chips will still take the cake in terms of margins.
At any point in the last six years, Apple could have signed Nvidia's aarch64 BSD drivers and watched their revenue climb. It's a minuscule commitment that is fully supported by the higher-end Mac Pros, only disabled by software. That would have sent sales skyrocketing as far as the supply could handle it.
But Apple is about B2C, and customers buy services. All of us know, deep down, that Apple Intelligence will be a subscription service offered as part of Apple One. The Mac won't become the magical backbone for your personal inference network, it's a product used to consume Apple Services first and everything else comes second.
> TSMC's N2 node and future nodes will be dominated by AI chips.
Apple was reported to have locked up half of the initial year's 2nm production, which is lower than their share of 3nm, but hardly a sign of being squeezed out of the market
But this was likely locked up years ago before this boom. Will Apple still be the premier customer for TSMC's next node A14?
Apple was actually told by TSMC to move off of N3 asap because Nvidia with its Vera Rubin and Google TPUs will take over.
Semianalysis had a great and detailed article about TSMC & Apple and how the future might play out: https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/apple-tsmc-the-partner...
The reporting was from August of last year.
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/08/28/apple-tsmc-2nm-producti...
It takes TSMC years to develop a new node. Apple has been the launch customer for a long time for TSMC. This agreement likely happened many years ago, before this AI boom.
The Macrumors article definitely isn't when Apple decided to buy half of N2 capacity for the first year. It would have happened years ago.
Panther Lake's efficiency doesn't match M5, but it seems to be very good by all accounts. "Extremely disappointing" is a misrepresentation.
Scroll to the "Cinebench 2024 Single Power Efficiency" section.[0]
It doesn't even beat Lunar Lake in efficiency (made on TSMC N3B) released in 2024.
[0]https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Panther-Lake-Core-Ultra-...
Besides the fact that Lunar Lake has a lower consumption in the memory interface, which has nothing to do with the fabrication process, single-thread benchmarks cannot be used to compare CPU fabrication processes.
Both the absolute performance and the performance per watt in single-thread benchmarks are determined mainly by the CPU design and they are only slightly constrained by the CPU fabrication process.
Only the multithreaded benchmarks are useful for comparing CMOS fabrication processes, because the performance in multithreaded benchmarks (with a given cooling system) is limited mainly by the energy required to switch a logic gate, which is a characteristic of the fabrication process, and they are only weakly dependent on the CPU design, as long as the CPU design does not have obvious mistakes.
In multithreaded benchmarks, CPUs work at a fixed power consumption, determined by the maximum allowable temperature and the cooling system. A fixed power means a fixed number of gates that switch per second. The completion of a given benchmark requires a similar number of gate switchings in well designed CPUs, in which case the performance in such a benchmark is fully determined by the fabrication process. Deviations from proportionality appear when some CPUs need much less gate switchings than others to complete some work, which happens for example when a CPU has wider vector or matrix execution units, e.g. by supporting AVX-512 or SME or AMX.
On package memory disproportionally affects idle power consumption more than load. In Cinebench 2024, which is a heavy load test, on package memory likely makes little difference.
ST is far better than MT for this node comparison. MT is heavily influenced by core count, clock speed, core configuration. Panther Lake also has 3 tiers of cores compared to Arrow Lake's 2. The architecture for MT is entirely different.
Meanwhile, for ST, a core is a core. It's less or not affected by architectural changes to core configurations.
From the article you linked:
> With the new Panther Lake mobile processors, Intel has managed to successfully combine the two previous generations, Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake, as the performance is even better than with Arrow Lake, while efficiency has been improved at the same time. Even with low power limits, the performance is very competitive, and Intel (in conjunction with the new GPUs) is therefore the better choice for slim laptops.
Notice how it doesn't say it's more efficient than Lunar Lake.
Their benchmarks say LNL is more efficient.
The performance with LNL is not apples-to-apples, like the comparison with Arrow Lake H.
LNL has a much lower power consumption in the memory interface, like the Apple CPUs, which has nothing to do with the fabrication process. Also LNL is a lower performance CPU, for which it is normal to have better energy efficiency.
Only the comparison between Panther Lake and Arrow Lake H, which have equivalent structures, can be used to compare the Intel 18A and the TSMC 3-nm fabrication processes.
This comparison shows that Intel 18A ensures a better performance per watt, i.e. energy efficiency, which leads to a better multithreaded performance, but the TSMC 3-nm process, at least for now, allows higher maximum clock frequencies, which make possible a higher single-thread performance.
On-package memory disproportionately affect idle power more than load power. The benchmark was done with Cinebench 2024 which is a heavy load test. Therefore, LNL's on package memory would have made little to no difference overall to perf/watt in Cinebench 2024 ST.
Panther Lake uses a new core design which likely contributed to better perf/watt regardless of which node was used. For example, Zen3 had a 19% increase in IPC despite being on the same N7 family node as Zen2. Panther Lake has 3 tiers of cores instead of 2 in Arrow Lake. The MT design is very different. New core and layout designs can make a huge difference in efficiency on the same node. We should compare ST perf/watt instead of MT. MT has too many factors including core count, die size, transistor count, clock speed.Based on ST perf/watt, Intel 18A is likely a bit worse than N3B (2022 node) and a bit better than N4P (2021 node).
Panther Lake does not have new CPU cores.
The Panther Lake cores, i.e. Darkmont and Cougar Cove are the Arrow Lake/Lunar Lake cores, i.e. Skymont and Lion Cove, ported from the TSMC 3 nm to the Intel 18A fabrication process.
The Panther Lake cores have only minor changes, i.e. bug fixes and the addition of a new mechanism for interrupts and exceptions, FRED. A preliminary version of FRED is likely to have already been implemented on Arrow Lake/Lunar Lake, but if so it was disabled there after production.
In any case FRED will not cause improvements in the present benchmarks, as it is used only inside the operating system and the current operating systems are unlikely to have been updated to use it anyway.
In contradiction with what you say, ST performance or performance per watt cannot be used to compare fabrication processes but only the multithreaded performance can bu used for this purpose.
Single-thread performance is affected by a lot of factors that have nothing to do with the fabrication process, but all those have little or no influence on multithreaded performance.
The reason is that in any well optimized MT workload, the CPU runs at a constant power consumption. This eliminates the influence of all factors mentioned by you.
I have already explained in another comment that a constant power consumption means a constant number of gate switchings per second, which is determined by the energy required to switch a logical gate, which is a characteristic of a fabrication process.
When a given amount of work is done by a benchmark using the same algorithm, well-designed CPUs will need approximately the same number of gate switchings to complete the work, regardless of the number of cores included in a CPU.
Significant variations of the numbers of gate switchings can be caused only by architectural differences like the width of vector and matrix execution units. Smaller variations are caused by various quality characteristics of a CPU core design, like the frequencies of branch mispredictions and of cache misses, which should be similar for CPU design teams that do not differ much in competence.
When we compare equivalent cores in different fabrication processes, like Arrow Lake H vs. Panther Lake, the multithreaded benchmarks are almost unaffected by anything else except the fabrication process, assuming that the cooling systems are also equivalent.
I find it ironic that Apple did the whole silicon thing to get away from Intel and now they are reportedly crawling back to Intel? I hope M6 and beyond continue to be competitive for inference.
This is about FABs and not chip designs. Imagine a parallel universe where Apple was sourcing AMD chips (they actually did for graphic cards) and then went to TSMC to whom AMD is also a customer.
Intel is both at the same time, AMD and TSMC.
Note that I said M6 and beyond. I know the chip designs being produced will remain Apple's.
Other commenters in the thread talk about how Intel's node is simply inferior to TSMC's and will bottleneck the performance of the same chip designs simply by being bad. I hope that is not the case and/or that I won't have to settle for an Intel node inside my Apple chips. (They better not try to pull an AMD where some chips simply have utterly kneecapped performance for no good reason.)
That’s unlikely to be how it’s working out for Intel.
Apple aren’t going to be asking for Intel Inside.
It’ll be more like ‘Can you make this thing? How many and much?’
> Apple not going to risk actual mainline iPhone SoC on Intel any time soon
Not to mention that Intel does not and will not any time in the next decade have the capacity for a product of that quantity.
ASML is one of the bigger bottlenecks I hear. They're fully booked out years in advance so even if Intel wants to build many more fabs, they can't.
There was a recent interview with Dylan Patel and he explained it pretty well.
Basically, there are tiers of risks and how "AGI pilled" each tier is. The bottlenecks and supply constraints get worse and worse as you down down the tiers.
Tier 1: OpenAI/Anthropic - extremely AGI pilled and think it's a sure thing. They want all layers underneath to prepare to make as many chips as possible and go all in.
Tier 2: Nvidia/AMD/Broadcom - very bullish but doesn't think AGI is a sure thing
Tier 3: TSMC, Samsung, SK Hynix, Intel, Sandisk, Micron - bullish but if they're wrong and overbuild, they can actually go bankrupt. Each fab can cost tens of billions. An N2 fab is estimated to be $30b each.
Tier 4: Every supplier to T3 such as ASML, Applied Materials, other fab machines and suppliers - Less bullish, may even see this as just a super cycle rather than a permanent increase in demand so they're less inclined to take too many risks to scale up
Next decade seems possibly false - if Intel starts getting deals and commitments now, it takes them about half a decade to build a fab. Agree it seems unlikely though.
Intel doesn't even have enough capacity right now to make enough Xeon chips. CPU demand is absolutely booming but their Intel 18A and 3 nodes don't have great yields.
Time will tell but with Ternus taking over, a hardware and engineering mindset, could be going for a long term learn and build together, and of Intel can get it together and go where Apple needs, later buyout Intel.
Lip-Bu Tan is a year older than Tim Cook. Doubt he wants to run Intel for very long.
Would be hard for me in the Ternus role to not have that in mind if Intel gets it together.
I don’t imagine Apple views fab technology as a potential differentiator worth the massive investment.
This is about diversifying their supply chain as they have done all over the place for decades. Displays, for example.
That's why I wrote time will tell.
The uncertainty of political order in the near term could make having fabs on their home turf as worth the security.
Learn now, collaborate as preparation in case certain criteria politically, financially, are met.
TSMC fabs on home turf is just as good from a security point of view. But in reality for VLSI at this scale and volume it’s just single supplier in series with single supplier all the way down. You don’t really get security with such a vulnerable supply chain, regardless of ownership.
It’s the main processor:
Apple Inc. has held exploratory discussions about using Intel Corp. and Samsung Electronics Co. to produce the main processors for its devices in the US, a move that would offer a secondary option beyond longtime partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. [0] (paywalled)
They wouldn’t need either Intel or Samsung if it wasn’t bleeding edge. I think it’s 14A for Intel. TSMC is still have the edge overall, but they are neck and neck in terms of node.
TSMC will be more than fine. They are hardly able to meet the demands.
[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-05/apple-exp...
What does “main” mean? Main processor for a flagship iPhone? Or main processor for a HomePod?
There’s a lot of “main” processors for Apple’s devices at this point.
I would be deeply skeptical of a brand new flagship iPhone <n> Pro having an Intel fab’d SoC until at least a few years into this arrangement.
Also an “exploratory discussion” is not the same as a signed contract. Apple has tons of custom silicon now. There are many low risk ASICs Apple could kick the tires with.
This is the third year in a row that Apple's most advanced chips have used a version of TSMC's 3nm node, with a transition to a more advanced node due in the next generation.
Intel would only need to be on par with TSMC's older 3nm node to Fab Apple's entry level SOCs.
Intel just bought a ton of ASML's most advanced machines (way more than TSMC) so theoretically they should be able to manufacture stuff on an equivalent node or better. And given the kind of performance and battery life we have seen from their latest chips they definitely seem to be back in the game
Do you have a source of how many total EUV machines Intel bought and TSMC bought in the last 1-2 years?
Yes, Intel made the first purchase for High NA EUV machines. That's largely because they were so far behind TSMC, they took a big risk as the first adopter for High NA EUV with their upcoming 14A node to try to catch up.
TSMC thinks it can keep using low NA EUV machines for N2 and A14 nodes even if they have to increase the number of patterning steps. This also means TSMC will likely keep all the AI chip design wins since High NA has half of the reticle size of low NA. The maximum chip size of High NA is half of low NA. This is a major deal for AI chips because they tend to want to be as big as possible.
None of these things mean Intel bought more total EUV machines than TSMC. A quick internet search says TSMC has about 2x as many fabs in active construction as Intel.
> TSMC thinks it can keep using low NA EUV machines for N2 and A14 nodes even if they have to increase the number of patterning steps.
Intel thought they could skip buying into EUV at all and just increase their patterning steps.
That didn't work out as well as they hoped.
Actually, Intel tried to stuff too many advances into 10nm when ASML hasn't even shipped EUV machines yet. That's where they got stuck. Once they got stuck, EUV transitioned was delayed for Intel.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Panther-Lake-Core-Ultra-...
"Big if true". That's surprising. More ASML machines = more capacity in the future. Do you have a source for that?
Intel would need to have lots of (and / or very big) customers lined up or big plans to manufacture possibly more than CPUs of their own design to make use of that capacity.
They mention that Intel bought the initial production run in the page that introduced the new product.
> can print transistors 1.7 times smaller – and therefore achieve transistor densities 2.9 times higher – than they can with NXE systems.
https://www.asml.com/en/news/stories/2024/5-things-high-na-e...
Nothing about the number of machines in that article though. I could well see Intel buying the first ones of the new series as a PR coup. I mean obviously they are going to use them, too.
> Intel has secured all of ASML’s stock of High Numerical Aperture NA Extreme Ultraviolet (High NA EUV) chipmaking equipment due to be manufactured this year.
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/intel-acquires-as...
In 2024.
Anyways, it doesn't matter if it's high NA or low NA when it comes to capacity. What matters is how many total EUV machines and fabs. As of right now, a Google search says TSMC has 2x the number of fabs in construction as Intel.
> Apple standards
Apple hardware standards. Apple software could use some of these.
What does this have to do with the subject at hand? Is the internet like this now, that in every message board there is just islands of content floating in oceans of snark?
Apple standards not being followed by Apple has nothing to do with the topic?
Always has been.
Here’s my guess as to Apple's reasoning: They like to dominate suppliers, but TSMC is in such high demand that they’re on equal footing now. Going into bed with Intel gives them the chance to set strict terms again.
Certainly an aspect; would you rather negotiate with a supplier who has more power, or less power?
But it’s likely not a one-dimensional decision. Supply chain diversification, China / Taiwan, Intel having established US fabs, on and on. Seems like a wise decision in every way.
Getting another supplier certainly makes negotiations easier but I doubt it's the main reason. The main reason is that TSMC simply does not have enough wafers no matter how much money Apple throws at them. TSMC is fully booked in 2026 and well into 2027 from reports.
It's not clear if it's going to get better either. It could get worse in terms of supply.
This is really nice for competition in semiconductor manufacturing. The TSMC quasi-monopoly (with Samsung fabs slightly lagging) and limited capacity is not good for the market. Owning leading edge fabs might also help Intel to keep up the competition in the x86 market. Intel is the underdog now!
How does Global Foundries fit into this? Are they still a thing?
They stopped pursuing cutting edge fabrication processes many years ago. Always seemed like a short sighted business decision to me.
The key distinction is Intel as a foundry versus Intel as the CPU designer. Apple can still be fully committed to its own silicon while wanting another manufacturing option.
Is this Intel Foundry Services fabbing apple-designed chips, or Apple using Intel-designed chips in their products? I would assume the former but don't see where in the article it says either way.
Apple designed chips, manufactured by Intel.
How many more economic cycles until Intel is asking Apple to fab Intel-designed chips?
Even if we make the not-particularly-reasonable assumption that Apple would want to own a fab, and the wildly unreasonable assumption that they would accept any outside customers for the fab: building a fab business from scratch to something competitive would take on the order of a decade or more even for a company with Apple's resources. And if Apple bought somebody else's fab business, it seems most likely that it would be Intel's and there would no longer be an Intel do design chips that would be in search of a foundry. (Intel has the only relevant logic fab business that could plausibly end up getting sold off to the likes of Apple.)
Yes, I suppose I was imagining the weird transition like AMD did when they split off Global Foundries. Imagine the remaining Intel being a chip designer like AMD. For someone of my age, it seems both incomprehensible and somehow inevitable. Crazy leadership choices seem to be happening so often in recent years.
Honestly, I found it hard to understand why they abandoned RAM and solid state memory fab sectors too. With all the national security spending by DoD, DoE, etc., I would have thought there is room for some US-based business to remain, even if some of the mass consumer stuff has been lost to low margin international competitors.
They wanted to focus resources on the very profitable top end of the market and leave the low-margin commodity business to competitors. If you repeat that cycle enough eventually you just stop competing with anyone because you’ve fired everyone who has the capacity to do that. Then it’s only a matter of time before you get eaten for lunch.
They already spun off Intel vs Intel Foundry into separate companies awhile back
Intel was in ram and solid state for a bit but didnt stick with it. Optane was a huge flop and they use different manufacturing techniques vs CPUs. Plus Micron is one of the biggest dram manufacturers and US based.
> not-particularly-reasonable assumption that Apple would want to own a fab, and the wildly unreasonable assumption that they would accept any outside customers for the fab
Isn’t running a fab only while it makes top of the line chips a bad idea because you can still make good money from it in later years?
If so, I think they, _if_ they ever want to own a fab (unlikely, IMO), they’ll want to accept outside customers for it when it has stopped being best-in-the-world.
Former, for sure
This might explain why Apple has so many positions open at their Beaverton office, which coincidentally is not too far from ASML and Intel.
There are no details in the article.
It is probably a second source deal for a popular chip or a support chip in an older process node like a power converter.
I'm guessing lower volume, less important chips like for the Watch, TV, entry level iPads, possibly a few Macs.
Pardon my lack of faith but ... this article is clueless. No information whatsoever. Except:
> The Journal report said the U.S. government, which became Intel's largest shareholder last year under a deal with its CEO Lip-Bu Tan, played a major role in bringing Apple to the negotiating table.
... smells what it smells.
I'm shocked to see people reason around "why Apple wants this" when the article is pointing right towards coercion. Follow the money, the rest is amateur hour.
2010: Intel silicon
2020: Apple Silicon
2030: Intel Apple Silicon
how do you get to the content? I keep getting a 401 and a message to "enable JS and disable any ad blocker" even though JavaScript(tm) is enabled and I don't have an ad blocker. Do you have to use Safari or Edge or something?
Well, I'm using uBlock Origin on Firefox and can see the content just fine. So maybe that's the way.
Intel seems far & away the best at chiplet right now. Foveros, EIMB, etc, and possible Z-Angle next... Intel seems way ahead. They're trying to get to 12x reticle size in 2028, and doing it super smartly (eimb). https://bsky.app/profile/ogawa-tadashi.bsky.social/post/3mld...
That alone is a strong reason for Apple to show up. Apple has some pretty wild patents on chiplet System-on-Chip designs! https://bsky.app/profile/ogawa-tadashi.bsky.social/post/3mi7...
Yes, Intel is actually competitive again. Between working backside power, the most advanced chiplet packaging tech going, 18A yields steadily improving, and other good news, Intel is really on plane. Now they've landed both SpaceX and Apple.
It's good to see. Guess they were worth saving. I do hope their abandonment of discrete desktop GPU is temporary.
Wasn't the whole apple silicon thing about Intel being unable to keep up?
Is this maybe a way to expand the affordable neo line?
Intel has been deemed a national security asset. Essential infrastructure.
The government (both current and previous administrations) is doing everything it can to make sure they do keep up, at the very least. And with enough money being thrown at it, they probably will.
Also keep in mind that none of the big chip purchasers (Apple, Nvidia, etc), want to depend on one supplier for their chips. There are huge incentives among them to encourage Intel's success.
Nobody benefits if just one company controls the state of the art in chip manufacturing, and Intel is one of maybe two other companies positioned to have a chance at competing effectively with TSMC.
I've always thought letting the free market decide everything is not an optimal strategy. Protecting sovereignty of key industries like this is a good example.
What IMO is a bad strategy is the aversion to nationalization that exists in the USA. They buy billions worth of shares in key companies to inject capital during times of crisis, to later divest and refuse to be a player in industry.
China's model is much more complex. There's state-owned companies, companies where the state is a major stake-holder, and private companies too. It seems to afford them more tools to push and steer industries as they see important.
The USA is no stranger to this at smaller scales; airports are state run (at the municipal or state level). This rids them of the burden of profit, and allows them to be strategically use for the broader benefit when it makes sense.
Some are profitable; state-run doesn't necessarily mean unprofitable. But some can written off as infrastructure investments that don't make money but make other industries in the region competitive. At some point this makes sense if you want to keep pushing forward; let's stop worrying too much about making money on X, because if X is a widely-available commodity, we can instead make money on Y and Z.
I see it in Mexico too. Mexico's private healthcare is affordable and good because it has huge state-run healthcare system to compete with. State-provided healthcare isn't the best or fastest healthcare you can get, but it is free. This certainly puts competitive pressure on private healthcare companies, and in a way gives the Mexican government the best regulatory tool: the market itself. The Mexican government isn't trying to destroy private health, but via the state health enterprise it gains tools to steer and push the health industry in ways it may deem important.
Looking at the state of EVs and the car industry, I think it's clear whatever the Chinese government did to incentivize EV innovation was more effective than the federal incentives the USA government provided. At one point the USA government had a 60% stake in General Motors [1]; meaning it was nationalized, before being privatized again by 2013.
I just wonder what the USA could've done with that machinery; could they have offered a cheap EV, even if it's low quality, to push adoption, competitive pressure and get supply chains going? Could they have further commoditized certain parts to lower costs? Could they have strategically opened factories in certain locations to lower the risk and investment cost of future companies, and this way get the ball rolling on creating new auto-industry regions? We will never know, but we do know the USA's auto industry is now on the defense playing catch-up to China, and there seems to be little the USA government can do except placing tariffs and offering subsidies.
[1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2013/12/09/government-sells-the-last-of...
IMHO, the big thing was the mismatch between what Apple wanted in a CPU and what Intel was prepared to offer the marketplace, and AMD wasn't different enough to matter.
Intel/AMD chips are designed with one thermal target for acceptable computing and a second, much higher target if you want to compute at the highest throughput continuously.
Apple did not provide the highest thermal capaicity and suffered when comparing similar cpu against another OEM. With Apple silicon, the cpu is designed around the thermal solution Apple is willing to provide. A lower power target leads to a lower clockspeed target leads to different design tradeoffs than Intel/AMD where flagship designs must clock to the moon. You can see similar benefits for the lower targets in AMD's ZenC cores.
But ZenC wasn't available, and Apple probably wouldn't want to be running laptops with only ZenC when you could get a regular Zen laptop from someone else. Apple benefits from avoiding apples to apples comparisons.
Likely Apple won't lean too heavily on Intel fab to start with. Let them do processors for value products and see where it goes, but always plan for fab agility. At least until Intel fab becomes a reliable partner.
It was about x64 being unable to keep up - independent of Intel’s Fab capabilities which have improved lately.
Also, the NEO line uses cutting edge technology that is necessary for the iPhone SOC, so this is probably for other chips.
> It was about x64 being unable to keep up - independent of Intel’s Fab capabilities which have improved lately.
But the big reason x64 couldn't keep up was that Intel's fab capabilities were horrible. Intel got stuck and couldn't get smaller nodes out and competing fabs caught up and left Intel in the dust.
Apple was able to ship 22nm Intel processors in Summer 2012 while their iPhone processors were 32nm that Fall and 28nm in Fall 2013. Spring 2015, Apple shipped 14nm Intel laptops and later that Fall 14/16nm iPhones. Competitors had caught up and soon TSMC started surpassing Intel.
Yes, Intel's fab capabilities have improved lately, but Intel's fab failures were causing x64 to fall behind. If Intel had retained fab supremacy, x64 wouldn't have fallen behind. I think Apple still likes the idea of being able to build exactly the parts they want (so they can optimize for power, thermals, etc), but Intel fell behind because their fabs stopped being competitive.
>> It was about x64 being unable to keep up - independent of Intel’s fab capabilities, which have improved lately.
> But the big reason x64 couldn't keep up was that Intel's fab capabilities were horrible. Intel got stuck and couldn't get smaller nodes out, and competing fabs caught up and left Intel in the dust.
It also was that Intel couldn’t execute reliably on their own roadmap, forcing Apple at the time to do extra engineering to incorporate Intel's chips. Apple sells a lot of laptops; Intel never got their act together regarding mobile processors for MacBooks and MacBook Pros.
The 8-core Mac Pro used Intel Xeon 5500 series; at idle, it used 309 W; it used 9 fans for cooling [1]. It sounded like a jet engine when it was running. And while it was an elegant design for the time, they shouldn’t have needed to jump through these hoops.
[1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102839
> maybe a way to expand the affordable neo line?
It’s a good way to keep pumping the share price too.
For what it’s worth I thought Intel was down and out and on the decline, but that is not the case 18A is more advanced and more performant than TSMC’s N2- which are both foundary’s most advanced chips. The main problem Intel has is scaling. It just cannot provide the volume right now. That seems like a much more tractable problem, especially with 14 A on the horizon.
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/intels-18a-and-ts...
"In general, we want to and have been helping Intel," the official said, adding the effort was not because of the equity stake in Intel, but because the company is a major U.S. semiconductor producer. "We have been trying to drum up business for Intel."
-dystopian
Ah yes the classic pump. Has a 3x parabolic move ever maintained price over extended periods of time?
What year is this? What happened to the M1, M2, ... MN chips of Apple's? Is Apple going to go with Motorola after Intel???
Obviously I couldn't read the article due to it being paywalled.
If you can't read, why comment?
>It is unclear which Apple products Intel would make chips for, according to the report. Intel and Apple declined to comment.
Intel was not "allowed" to fail. (But Spirit Airlines was) and now the stock is at an all time high.
It was only 9 months ago [0] that almost everyone here was bearish (not me [1]). Now it is the opposite.
Next we will here some folks wishing they should have joined Intel when it was $20 a share.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44675965
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44676641
Some people also thought Gamestop was a good deal at $400 after 50x-ing...but when you look at fundementals, earnings and actual projected growth and not just the hype, you see the stock for what it really is. At $20 it was a good deal because of the possibilities of long term success (which we haven't seen any actual evidence of yet), but at $125 it is way overpriced.
Another way to look at it. TSMC profit in 2025 was equivalent to Intel revenue (both about $55B), but Intel made zero dollars profit, yet somehow their market cap is now half of TSMCs.
Trump talking up intel was the time to buy.
But when is the time to get out?
r/wallstreetbets has been amusing to watch.
18A was Schrodinger's fab: we didn't know if it was alive or dead. Now we know it's alive.
Intel is the Chrysler of chipmaking. It's only alive because the USA strategically needs a USA company to be able to make and design at least some kind of chips.
I actually owned quite a bit of Intel stock bought at $19, but was forced to sell it. Then I bough some for $45 last year, and sold couple weeks ago for $60, just a day or two before it took off. Lucky me....
Paywall
+1 for me in Australia, but it's due to using an ad blocker:
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For what it's worth, Reader Mode in Firefox displays the article text anyway.
Seemed to load just fine here.
Reuters usually don't have paywalls, and neither I am experience one here.
I believe that both of those statements are true. Nonetheless, I and other posters are experiencing one here and can't read the article. Your valid anecdote does not help us.
I am also getting a paywall. Subscribe to read more.
another triumph for x86
This is a fab deal, nothing to do with x86
Technically, but the money doing this will indirectly help Intel's chip line through experience and increased fab quality
> The Journal report said that the U.S. government, which became Intel's largest shareholder last year under a deal with its CEO Lip-Bu Tan, played a major role in bringing Apple to the negotiating table.
Ah, so this wasn't a decision Apple freely made based on technical merits. Instead it sounds more like big government and a fancy stock manipulation scheme.
My guess, Apple drags their feet for a couple years and bails after Trump leaves office(or is significantly weakened after the midterms).
>big government and a fancy stock manipulation scheme.
What's wrong with US gov caring about supply chain and manufacturing capability of the most needed technology right there - on American soil?
It is in US' interest to be able to produce such complex tech locally
Yes, it's called industrial policy and it can work very well.
Yes and it can also reduce competitive forces which were driving Intel to innovate. The goal of a robust supply chain is not aligned with the goal of technical supremacy. Sure, the US did achieve technical supremacy in the past with government intervention and assistance, but the world was much different then. Now the US has to compete with East Asian innovation.
Samsung has a Texas fab(and AAPL is in discussions with them alongside INTC).
The issue for some is the driving force is military, to secure their supply chain to kill people.
Counter point: Apple exists in their size because of the US’s willingness to keep shipping lanes and trade routes open by use of force and US diplomatic efforts to allow for trade to exist in foreign nations. It’s debatable if this still holds true or is the correct approach given the shitshow going on right now.
It's also a major concern to have a supply chain that can be protected from foreign manipulation.
A compromised supply chain is a huge intelligence/national security risk, not just for military platforms but everything from government and commercial datacenters to personal devices used by both public and private sector individuals.
This is more my imagining a book plot than any real insight, but...
This wouldn't be Apple's first rodeo with Intel. They know how prior partnerships soured. Could a sufficiently powerful shareholder, like the US government, help mitigate Apple's concerns about the outcome of a new partnership? I.e. that Intel would be pressured to honor certain strategic obligations, even if the leadership at Intel isn't so keen?
How can the USG improve the competitiveness of INTC's process nodes with political pressure?
Was the concern in the past that Intel wasn't honoring strategic obligations or was it that Apple realized their tech sucked and TSMC was the only viable path to deliver world-leading products?
There are many recent examples of market manipulation, but this isn't one of them. Digital sovereignty is being pushed in the EU too, and it's a good thing.
As said already, Intel isn't the only US fab now. TSMC and Samsung also have US fabs and Apple is also talking to Samsung.
Your comment is dismissive without evidence. The linked article claims there was political pressure. Do you have evidence to the contrary?
This comment should be more visible
Or use it to de-risk their supply chain.
Then why did the USG need to get involved to bring AAPL to the table?
Sure, supply chain redundancy is good, but that wasn't enough to get AAPL interested before.
Intel chip fab facility in Arizona came online recently, probably has something to do with it, the manufacturing capability didn't exist before.
So did TSMC's? And Samsung has a Texas fab.
Would love to see this mean the return of Bootcamp, but that's probably gone forever.
Boot camp is a windows problem. This can be done today on apple silicon but Microsoft dosent want to go through the effort to support it.
I imagine it would be a big lift. Asahi linux is managing through reverse engineering the hardware support, without any official documentation. Even with official documentation it would be a significant change from other aarch64 hardware.
Technically speaking, Bootcamp is an iBoot problem. Apple stopped shipping Macs with firmware UEFI which breaks 99% of generic OS installers out of the box.
Microsoft is pretty justified not wanting to support that, versus UEFI on OG Bootcamp. The majority of Linux distros don't ship image support for iBoot either.
> Apple stopped shipping Macs with firmware UEFI which breaks 99% of generic OS installers out of the box.
Did Apple ever support UEFI? I thought it was only ever EFI; no U.
Yes: https://support.apple.com/guide/security/uefi-firmware-secur...
In any case, EFI is still well-supported by OS installers. iBoot is not.