This is an interesting little speculation being made as a result of Intel's decision to open up its chip making fabs to other designers. The idea that it will, at some point in the near future, start making the processing chips for Apple.
The idea isn't all that far-fetched either:
Intel Corp has agreed to make chips on behalf of Altera, a significant step toward opening its prized manufacturing technology to customers on a larger scale, potentially including Apple.
The basic problem that Intel is facing is that being able to actually manufacture chips just gets ever more expensive with each generation of them. That's fine when your chips are being used to run nearly everything: but that's not really the case for Intel any longer. In order to make back the billions upon billions it costs to make the chip fabs, it might be a good idea for them to be making other peoples' designs in those very expensive factories.
Which brings us to the idea about Apple. As we've all seen over the past couple of years Apple and Samsung are having something of a spat. And from what we can see Apple seems to be gently disengaging itself from using Samsung as its largest supplier of parts out of which to build the iPhones and iPads. And one of the things that Samsung does is make all of the ARM processors that go into all of Apple's mobile devices. That's what they do at that large plant in Austin, TX.
There's more to it than just that too. It used to be that Apple told Samsung what it wanted and Samsung did the design work as well as the actual making. Over the generations of chips this has rather changed: Apple now does the design, Samsung just fabricates. All of which makes it much easier to move off to another chip fab to get those chips made. Not that Samsung would mind all that much I wouldn't think. Their own sales are so high that they might well welcome greater fab space for their own production.
It should be said, this idea that Intel will manufacture for Apple is only speculation at this time. But Intel's opening up its fab plants to other designers, Apple is now designing its own chips and only using Samsung as a fab plant. Could be a marriage made in heaven, that one.
