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Five Years After Apple Broke Up With Intel, Intel is Begging for Money

Unregistered 4U said:
The problem is, Intel isn’t a legitimate option. With the investment Intel has seen from others, they’ve got plenty of money to try to do things differently without having to be concerned about profit for awhile. But, even after the deals, it’s the same Intel, just with more money. The same Intel that have been on a downward slide that, unfortunately, was not caused by a lack of money, but a lack of performance. Billions of dollars doesn’t magically turn into performance.
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Totally agree. While I'm not an expert in the area, my understanding is that Intel's fab capabilities are quite far behind TSMC's... So today, Intel isn't a legitimate option.

But for Intel to be one 3 years from now, 5 years from now... it'll take significant investment dollars today. And a longer-term horizon perspective.

When you look at the tech world from a 30,000 ft perspective, whether it's foundry capabilities, AI tech, etc. it is the new arms race of the 21st century. And I think the US has realized it needs a US-based champion / alternative here or it will become a greater national security concern in the coming years.
 
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I wonder if this is a hedge against future antitrust action. Keeping Intel in the marketplace - even lagging behind in its current diminished state - may help in some ways. Also, maybe paying forward the old Microsoft investment…even though folks are divided about it in this thread, I think that there are enough engineering folks who have an attachment to Intel (or what it stood for) that some kind of investment would be a ‘nice’ thing to do, or a respectful tip of the hat to a group of folks who helped to create the industry (not an expert on processor history or evolution, but that’s my lay understanding).
 
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Intel's problem is their marketing dept held back the industry for a decade+ with two core pieces of crap in laptops. Only when other chipsets went to lots of cores were INTC left scrambling. That company stopped being an engineering org a long time ago to wring the profits from legacy chips while holding back the advances they made. The sooner INTC dies then the sooner tech will get to a better place.
 
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The Intel modem in the iPhone XS was crap, and a clear drop in quality compared to Qualcomm chips at the time. The final MacBook Intel chips were power hungry and throttled too easily given the thermal constrains. The first M1 chip outperformed most Intel chips in the MacBook Pro at the time.

Their precipitous fall from being a Silicon Valley powerhouse is worthy of a documentary series.
 
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gpat said:
Meh... kinda baity for a title. Apple should really owe some gratitude to Intel, even today.
I remember the latest PowerPC days of Apple and they were in really some deep sh*t.
Switching from PPC to Intel in 2006 was WAY more necessary than switching to Apple Silicon in 2020.

I'll probably get hate for this comment, but Intel really revived Mac as a platform in 2006, which was necessary for birthing the Apple we have today.
Should probably have done it way sooner, completely skipping the G5 which was a major fail.

PowerPC CPUs manufacturers were complete amateurs and Steve Jobs couldn't wait to get rid of them.
Motorola, Freescale... it was all a big freakshow.
Steve probably lost some months of life because of fighting with them, no joke.

Intel is struggling today, but I'm sure they'll manage. Their 12gen CPUs were nice products.
Also Lunar Lake mobile CPUs are still top class for x86 even if not as good as Apple Silicon.
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This is certainly a take... The intel transition was certainly hailed as a success at the time. But if I recall correctly, it was more to due with getting on the same track as PC makers at the time, opening up Bootcamp, and ditching PowerPC which was on the way down. But that was nearly two decades ago. The first M1 chip completely blew intel out of the water, and was a far bigger gain in terms of compute and battery life.
 
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okay what is the point of this post? its neither a rumor, ad nor even apple related... kind of unbecoming for MR especially considering how ban happy they are... i can already feel the "your comment has been removed" alert from the mod Weasel as I'm typing this.
 
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One interesting aspect is Intel is the owner of a high NA EUV lithography instrument which is more advanced than the TSMC EUV instruments. It seems that Intel has not been able really do much with this yet, but if they manage to establish a process, they could end up making the most advanced chips in the world.
 
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hieranonymous said:
Back when Intel was still bigger than Apple, Steve Jobs approached Intel multiple times about developing custom silicon for Apple’s laptops and smartphones. Intel declined every time. That decision essentially made Intel irrelevant once Apple fully embraced ARM and the rest of the industry followed Apple’s lead. The then-CEO of Intel later admitted that saying no to Jobs was his biggest blunder.
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There are so many things Steve ended up being vindicated on. I can’t believe there was once a time when people were begging for Flash on mobile. Steve definitely made the right call. Things like HTML5, H.264 video, JavaScript, etc was where the industry was heading. And Steve said let’s rip the bandaid off and get there as soon as possible.
 
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Spock said:
They are going to be working together to add a hardware based x86 emulation layer to Apple Silicon for the new Apple gaming PC, it will include BootCamp 2 for Windows 11. Trust me.
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Okay, now pull my other leg, so I don't walk with a limp. I like the idea but don't believe it.
So Windows can run on ARM, just not a chip with the Apple logo on it.
 
Eventually Apple will need to build their own fabs. And to get that started, they will need to buy Intel's.

If Apple does not buy Intel's fabs, Nvidia will.
 
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Thought there was more PCs than Macs, more Windows than MacOS. Where’s the problem Intel? Should be a drop in the bucket. :rolleyes:
 
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