Intel Wants In On Apple But As A Third-party Manufacturer

Apple made the decision to make its own processors for its MacBooks quite recently and this will automatically take Intel out of the picture of Apple’s supply chain. Intel still wants in on the giant tech company’s operations and is trying to reserve a seat for itself as a third-party manufacturer.

On Thursday, Intel made it public that it plans on investing about $20 billion in building a pair of chips fabs in Ocotillo, Arizona. According to reports by CNBC, the company plans to dedicate some portion of the output to a newly founded subsidiary. The new subsidiary is called Intel Foundry Services and is the company’s new manufacturing arm. Intel Foundry services is charged with the highly-regarded responsibility of producing the silicon based on Intel’s favoured x86 architecture, as well as ARM designs like those used in Apple’s A and M series SoCs. Senior Vice President Randhir Thakur has been placed in charged of the operation.

Intel Foundry Services will run its operations on its own and as its own unit, according to what the company’s CEO Pat Gelsinger told the press. The CEO also revealed that the unit is working with Amazon, Cisco, IBM and Microsoft on this initiative and is hoping to gain the interest of Apple. Prior to now, Apple had turned on TSMC for its modern chip designs. Intel Foundry Services is located both in Taiwan where it is based and, in the US, and is totally sure that it can meet Apple’s demands but what is in the dark is if Intel Foundry Services can compete with TSMC that is already leading this market.

While Intel is still struggling to get its 7nm chip line operational, Apple and TSMC are already producing wafers on a 5nm process and are gearing towards producing more powerful and efficient 4nm and 3nm technology.

Intel’s CEO said recently announced that its 7nm chip called Meteor Lake will be finished by the second quarter of the year but the company will still need manufacturing aid from other companies including TSMC which it intends to compete with.

Since Apple made it known that it is switching from Intel’s processors to its own ARM-based designs, Intel has not taken this well as it is currently running an attack ad targeted at Apple’s Mac.