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.
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.
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.
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.