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Comment by tgtweak | Hacker News Reader

I really don't understand why companies are ignoring intel's foundry services... for the first time since probably the 2000's, intel's 18A nodes are significantly ahead of what TSMC is offering. Apparently they have capacity and are demonstrating wafer production with their own chips.

It seems wholly illogical that Apple would get refused wafer volume by TSMC and still refuse to give volume to intel foundry services. When you layer on geopolitical factors and national security implications + the fact that Apple is a US company - what reason could they possibly have to turn the shoulder to intel's foundries?

If Taiwan ends up imploding in any of the numerous ways we are aware of today - and which this article adds to - I think there are exactly zero reasons to feel like this couldn't have been avoided.

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Some of us are old enough to remember the last time Intel was definitely, 100%, for-sure committed to offering foundry services, and then changed their mind and canceled the whole thing (it was in 2018) and want to see (a) someone else have success with 18A first and (b) intel show an actual long-term commitment to using their foundry for outside customers before we risk our companies' future on them.

There are risks with TSMC, but "TSMC just decides it's not interested in making chips for other people, and cancels the whole business" isn't one of them. The same cannot be said for Intel.

If Intel decides they're not going to continue foundry services after 14A - you can just shift back to TSMC like everyone did between Samsung and TSMC?

And just hope they have any capacity to deliver? That's what I'd worry about, especially right now.

"Just shift back" is really underestimating how much effort it takes to port a design to a different foundry. Sure, you can target a new stdcell library and recompile your RTL (and re-floorplan, and re-do a bunch of other stuff) but you also have to swap out all your memories and interfaces, not all of which may have exact equivalents... it can easily take 1+ years of work for a competent team, and if you have to shift back all that time and effort was wasted.

Seems most major players are not only fabless but also fab-agnostic - as I noted they switch from one supplier to another even for the same product line. I'm sure it is work but it doesn't seem to be an existential crisis for a huge provider to send some volume to a new fab - certainly if it's derisking supply capacity, tariffs or other geopolitical risks.

That work is an opportunity cost that you could have used in taping out new designs.

https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20260128PD213/tsmc-intel-nvi...

This is why: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/01/core-ultra-series-3-...

Intel doesn't have any spare capacity.

>intel's 18A nodes are significantly ahead of what TSMC is offering

A nice comparison table linked below. The best comparison imho is transistor density which is 313MTr/mm2 for TSMC's latest in-production process vs 238 for intel (higher is better).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_nm_process

Also make sure to read the drama around https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_Lake_(microprocessor). Intel literally gave up making their own CPU on their own 20A process and instead utilised TSMCs fab.

Intel doesn't seem to be properly resourcing and supporting Intel foundry. A lot of it is cultural/political, intels fabs are used to working only for Intel and not having to worry about propriety details of fab processes leaking externally, so there's a distrust when working with the foundry team and external customers.

   intel's 18A nodes are significantly ahead of what TSMC is offering.

Citation needed. From density charts, Intel's 18A is roughly equal to TSMC's N4P, released in 2022.

Further more, Intel's 18A yields are not where Intel needs them to be to be competitive.

Shewie, given all the replies to this, and my personal living memory/experiences with these kinds of things as they relate to said replies, sounds like buying intel stock is probably a pretty good idea.

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