Apple and Intel Rumored to Partner on Mac Chips

https://www.macrumors.com/2025/11/28/intel-rumored-to-supply-new-mac-chip/

by bigyabai • 8 months ago

130 88 8 months ago

macrumors.com

mushufasa• 8 months ago

This is the type of rumor that could swing a stock price... I'm skeptical of how this got out there and by whom.

Izikiel432• 8 months ago

Is this 2006 again?

SG-3• 8 months ago

no? It's still Apple's CPU, they're just looking at getting another fab supplier.

Izikiel432• 8 months ago

It was a joke. I can’t believe I have to explain that.

timw4mail• 8 months ago

To fab the CPUs...seems more plausible than anything else with Intel.

bigyabai11• 8 months ago

AFAIK Intel Foundry Services are the only product they can't find big customers for. Apple would be the first if they move past the sampling phase.

turtletontine• 8 months ago

They’ve already secured Microsoft as a customer, they’ll be making the next Maia AI accelerator for Azure on 18A. Apple would be a much bigger catch for sure, but they have in fact secured one big customer.

alecco• 8 months ago

An insignificant token to appease growing discontent by American people. Apple was investing in China around "$55 billion per year by 2015".

baq• 8 months ago

they did it with the modem previously, the second supplier was strictly worse, but they need to have a negotiating position with their single point of failure supplier

mschuster913• 8 months ago

but they need to have a negotiating position with their single point of failure supplier

They don't. Apple has an Architecture License for ARM, they can do whatever the fuck they want.

If you're referring to TSMC - it shouldn't be too much of a problem for Apple to go and contract Samsung instead, at least assuming Samsung can keep up the yield. Intel isn't a competitor to either TSMC or Samsung, their fab process is years behind.

bigyabai11• 8 months ago

Strictly speaking, Samsung currently has no analogous product to 18A or TSMC 2nm.

deaddodo2• 8 months ago

Intel’s 18A is closer to availability (functional, ramping to production) than Samsung’s SF2 (still in dev/testing phase); which is roughly analogous to TSMC N2.

TSMC is ahead, as usual, but Intel is closer than Samsung (in this specific case).

nicoburns2• 8 months ago

Intel isn't a competitor to either TSMC or Samsung, their fab process is years behind.

It's certainly in Apple (and every company that requires a leading-edge fab)'s interest to try and keep Intel competitive with TSMC and Samsung. 3 companies is already too few for a truly competitive market. And 2 is worse.

I'd argue it's also in everyone's interest to have some redundancy in the chip fabrication supply chain (esp. given the geopolitical situation in Taiwan). It would already be catastrophic if TSMC's production was disrupted for any reason. It would be even more catastrophic if there was no Intel.

oskarkk• 8 months ago

Intel isn't a competitor to either TSMC or Samsung, their fab process is years behind.

Is it? I've read that Intel's newest process is closer to TSMC N3 than N2, but surely it's not years behind Samsung? I think the biggest problem for Intel right now is acquiring customers and learning how to work with them (but the new CEO should be the right person to do that).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_nm_process#3_nm_process_node...

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

dagmx• 8 months ago

The modem was two specifically separate designs from two different companies.

hedora3• 8 months ago

So, they’re going to use a more power hungry process for the low end devices? The whole point of the Air and SE lines was that they were lightweight and compact.

Watching a company at that scale completely lose its own plot is depressing. Did they replace Cook with an LLM that compacted its context one too many times?

Edit: This is a bad look for intel too. How are Apple store employees/nerds going to explain this product line bifurcation? “This low end Apple gizmo is a hot mess because it has Intel Inside. Also, it’s $50 more than last year. MAGA!”

progval• 8 months ago

What makes you think they are going to be more power-hungry than if Apple manufactured them itself?

hedora3• 8 months ago

The article says it’s going on Intel 18a, which has better performance, but worse density/power consumption than TSMC’s comparable node:

https://www.techspot.com/news/106782-intel-18a-found-faster-...

Unless Apple is going to add active cooling or something to the Air, iPad and iPhone, I’d expect more thermal throttling on the intel chips (though the difference isn’t as stark as I assumed — it looks like Intel closed the gap a bit with 18a).

bigyabai11• 8 months ago

How are Apple store employees/nerds going to explain this product line bifurcation?

I really doubt most Apple customers care. A few do, but they've long been the minority.

hedora3• 8 months ago

Yeah; but the ones that don’t care about the details often ask someone “which one should I buy?”

Currently, for MacBooks, the answer is “the small one doesn’t have a fan, so for sustained work like games or iMovie it is slower. However, it is smaller, lighter, quieter and cheaper”.

chasil2• 8 months ago

In the days of Intel modems, advising against buying from AT&T and T-Mobile was sound, as the performance was worse than a Qualcomm model.

chasil2• 8 months ago

Is the 18A process more power hungry?

'Kuo said Apple plans to utilize Intel's 18A process, which is the "earliest available sub-2nm advanced node manufactured in North America."'

jjtheblunt• 8 months ago

What is the more power hungry process?

M5 uses a 3nm process

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/tsmcs-3nm-update-...

but Intel is proposing using their fab configured for the "earliest available sub-2nm advanced node manufactured in North America", according to the article (and from searching outside).

GeekyBear10• 8 months ago

So, they’re going to use a more power hungry process

This is exactly what Google did when their Pixel SOCs were fabbed by Samsung.

Performance and power efficiency were both substandard compared to TSMC but the chips were cheaper.

lloydatkinson2• 8 months ago

Again? I’m kind of surprised Intel wants anything to do with them after the M stuff. Things must be really bad at Intel.

mschuster913• 8 months ago

Intel knows that it's their own fault Apple ditched Intel for M CPUs. Intel couldn't provide any meaningful improvements particularly for MacBooks for years.

SG-3• 8 months ago

you been in a cave for the last few years? things are bad at Intel for a while now and they need a fab customers. the deal they will likely throw at Apple to get capacity and show off their fab process doesn't suck is likely incredible.

lloydatkinson2• 8 months ago

I have not been in a cave

GeekyBear10• 8 months ago

The word was that TSMC was previously looking to charge much more for their 2nm node.

Apple may have just been looking to apply pricing pressure.

TSMC has finalized the pricing for its upcoming 2nm process, setting the wafer price at around $30,000. This marks a 10%–20% increase compared with the 3nm process average of $25,000–$27,000, lower than earlier market speculation of a 50% hike.

https://technode.com/2025/10/09/tsmc-sets-2nm-wafer-price-at...

CharlesW• 8 months ago

Apple may just be looking to apply pricing pressure.

Even if TSMC wasn't going to tighten the screws, it makes sense that Apple would be talking to Intel since Apple abhors single-source external dependencies. Plus, it gives them brownie points with our Grifter In Chief. https://www.intc.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1748/...

GeekyBear10• 8 months ago

Apple abhors single-source external dependencies.

Apple previously dual sourced SOCs from both TSMC and Samsung, before dropping Samsung.

The performance and power efficiency has to be there.

If Intel can get good yields and performance/power efficiency from their new process node, then it can be worth the added complexity.

lostlogin• 8 months ago

Apple may have just been looking to apply pricing pressure.

It fits perfectly with Apples sucking up to Trump too.

SilverElfin• 8 months ago

Thanks for reminding me of the golden award from Tim Apple

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/08/07/tim-...

It’s interesting how open the corruption is from mega corporate American leaders, who don’t seem to hold to any principles.

dbg314153• 8 months ago

Please tell me this means we can have Bootcamp back?

SG-3• 8 months ago

why would it? they're only intereated in Intel's fab, not their actualy CPU technology. they're looking at diversifying they their fab stuff so it's not only TSMC.

dbg314153• 8 months ago

Partnerships could mean more than just fab capacity -- maybe even incentives to build an instruction translation layer so software built for Intel chips could run natively on Apple Silicon. Something like Rosetta, but at the hardware level.

Getting a lot of down-votes for this... why are people so down on the idea? Was Boot Camp really that unpopular? I always enjoyed it -- especially for gaming. Sure, laptops weren't ideal, but even then the same games ran noticeably better on Windows than on macOS.

musicale• 8 months ago

Apple could do Boot Camp for ARM Windows if they wanted to, but they seem to be focusing on other things at the moment.

naveen992• 8 months ago

I don’t understand why intel doesn’t build a fab in Taiwan or another lower cost location ?

rmah• 8 months ago

lack of skilled labor, probably

naveen992• 8 months ago

Taiwan surely has some poachable labor.

vessenes• 8 months ago

No state infrastructure available to protect them, among many other considerations.

ac29• 8 months ago

Intel's most advanced production Fab is in Ireland, which is higher income than Taiwan but much lower than the US.

osnium1232• 8 months ago

Intel has announced that Intel 18A manufacturing will take place in Arizona. Salaries are a relatively small amount of the total costs of running a fab.

https://newsroom.intel.com/client-computing/intel-unveils-pa...

faragon• 8 months ago

Why Apple don't just buy Intel? That would allow better vertical integration.

walterbell2• 8 months ago

Buyer could not fire existing customers, as Broadcom did with VMware.

etempleton2• 8 months ago

Risky. Apple loves to vertically integrate and they could certainly give a cash infusion, but right now they can bounce between TSMC, Intel and Samsung and probably get sweetheart deals at each because of their scale / the positive press from serving Apple as a customer.

GeekyBear10• 8 months ago

Apple doesn't buy manufacturing companies, however if you can make something they want, they have definitely been known to pay for a dedicated manufacturing line up front.

cromka• 8 months ago

Good luck with the EU OK-ing this

osnium1232• 8 months ago

China would also block this deal

alwillis2• 8 months ago

Why Apple don't just buy Intel?

Apple doesn't need a fab. They bought P.A. Semi in 2008, which got them microprocessor design talent that lead to Apple Silicon.

That would allow better vertical integration.

Apple already ships devices with CPUs, GPUs, NPU's (Neural Processing Unit), modem and wi-fi chipsets all designed by them. I'll also add the H2 audio processor in the AirPods.

It's hard to get more vertically integrated than that.

[1] https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/11/02/pa-semi-looking...

tooltalk• 8 months ago

I always thought that while PA Semi brought some power efficiency tech to Apple, many didn't stick around. And that the Intrinsity team made also made significant contribution, having validated their tech in Samsung's Hummingbird core.

dexwiz• 8 months ago

Apple did buy part of Intel in 2019. From what I was told, Intel failed to deliver a competitive 5G modem in time. Afterwards they sold the entire department to Apple.

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/07/apple-to-acquire-the-...

drob518• 8 months ago

This is a good play for Intel. It lets them play both sides of the market.

xnx• 8 months ago

Source: https://x.com/mingchikuo/status/1994422001952555318

Apple and Intel Rumored to Partner on Mac Chips

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