Despite potshots, Intel & Samsung want to make Apple Silicon
A new report says that both Intel and Samsung hope to win orders from Apple to manufacture Apple Silicon processors, currently all made by TSMC.
Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger recently and quite grudgingly said that Apple had done a "pretty good job" with Apple Silicon. At the same time that Intel has been developing widely derided marketing campaigns that try to say Apple Silicon is inferior, the company is also reportedly hoping to manufacture it for Apple.
According to Digitimes Asia, unspecified sources within the industry say that both Intel and Samsung are striving to win orders to manufacture the processors. The sources say, however, that TSMC is expected to remain the sole supplier, at least for now.
It's not clear what moves Samsung is making toward this goal, but it isn't a new decision from Intel. Back in March 2021, Intel invested $20 billion in a pair of processor fabrication plants in Arizona, seemingly aiming to build chips for Apple.
Intel's Gelsinger said at the time that the plants were to work independently of the rest of the company, and was looking to build up its client base. Apple was said to be a target, but the plant was already working with Amazon, Cisco, IBM, and Microsoft.
Read on AppleInsider
Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger recently and quite grudgingly said that Apple had done a "pretty good job" with Apple Silicon. At the same time that Intel has been developing widely derided marketing campaigns that try to say Apple Silicon is inferior, the company is also reportedly hoping to manufacture it for Apple.
According to Digitimes Asia, unspecified sources within the industry say that both Intel and Samsung are striving to win orders to manufacture the processors. The sources say, however, that TSMC is expected to remain the sole supplier, at least for now.
It's not clear what moves Samsung is making toward this goal, but it isn't a new decision from Intel. Back in March 2021, Intel invested $20 billion in a pair of processor fabrication plants in Arizona, seemingly aiming to build chips for Apple.
Intel's Gelsinger said at the time that the plants were to work independently of the rest of the company, and was looking to build up its client base. Apple was said to be a target, but the plant was already working with Amazon, Cisco, IBM, and Microsoft.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
Samsung stole Apple's designs years ago and they are not any different now. There is a different integrity mindset in other places in the world.
last I heard, there wasn’t a lot of extra production capacity anyway. Assuming there is, selling the chips to Intel would give additional income to support further development, but it’s also ‘aiding the enemy.’ At least intel isn’t in direct competition the way Samsung is.
The chips are pretty widely available for copying now. Only need to buy a new phone.
It's not that anyone can't design similar chips to Apple's, it's that Apple's designs are very expensive. You need scale and huge profit margins. Each generation of their SoC designs end up in hundreds of millions of "higher end" devices over the course of several years.
Plus, Intel and AMD have the problem that their CPU's are based on the bloated x86 architecture that's never going reach the efficiency of ARM.
Samsung is a huge conglomerate and while their consumer electronics/appliance division is a cess pool full of turds, their industrial/manufacturing arms are of the best in the world - they haven't and wouldn't steal IP from a client.
I'd assume that Apple would be happy to get more leading edge fab capacity in the future, especially from Intel, to burnish its "made in U.S.A" credentials, if nothing else.
so... yeah, right Intel. You're not ever going to make a chip like this even if you had the ability (which currently you don't)
Apple could conceivably better help fund another TSMC plant if needed for volume.
Intel could also just fab the design, their "5nm" generation fab is still on paper only, while TSMC has been getting 80% yields on shipping chips for a year.
Plus I'd imagine they'd be eating crow to start fabbing ARM chips, with their bald claims of a superior chip design. Not to mention ARM licensing.
At least Apple was transparent about going with the best available ships for the job.
TSMC is building a fabrication plant in Arizona to be finished in a few years. And TSMC will have 3nm on the market before Intel even moves to 7nm. Which would you think Apple would consider "leading edge."