Intel to build Qualcomm chips, aims to catch foundry rivals by 2025
I&#x27;d be more interested in hearing about the terms of the Qualcomm deal. Is Qualcomm putting its eggs in the Intel basket for 2025 or has Intel reached an agreement with Qualcomm that Qualcomm will buy from them if it fits Qualcomm&#x27;s needs and it&#x27;s ready in time?<p>If the agreement is &quot;Qualcomm will send <i>some</i> of its business Intel&#x27;s way,&quot; that isn&#x27;t a huge vote of confidence. Heck, are we talking about Qualcomm&#x27;s Snapdragon 8xx series or just some Qualcomm chips like the ones they put in WiFi routers? Or their low-end Snapdragon 4xx series?<p>The article is kinda spinning it as &quot;Intel will be making the Qualcomm chips going into everyone&#x27;s phones,&quot; but it could be more &quot;Qualcomm is going to have Intel manufacture its low-end stuff which is always behind tech-wise and Intel is giving them a big discount because Intel needs a win.&quot;<p>&gt; In the chip world where smaller is better, Intel previously used names that alluded to the size of features in &quot;nanometers&quot;. But over time the names used by chipmakers became arbitrary marking terms... This, he said, gave the mistaken impression that Intel was less competitive.<p>They are definitely less competitive at this point. Nanometers might not be the right measurement, but one can measure transistor density. Maybe that would make more sense?<p>Even if &quot;Intel 7&quot; (10nm Enhanced SuperFin) is equivalent to TSMC&#x27;s 7nm, we saw TSMC&#x27;s 7nm back in 2018. I have a TSMC 5nm in my pocket. I guess if Intel can keep to its road map, it will catch up. If &quot;Intel 4&quot; comes out with products in early 2023, it won&#x27;t be far behind TSMC&#x27;s 3nm process (which will likely debut in the 2022 iPhone).<p>Of course, we&#x27;ll have to see how well these Intel chips perform. We should be able to benchmark Intel 7 processors with Alder Lake processors landing later this year. Will these stand up well against AMD&#x27;s 7nm Zen 2&#x2F;3? Will they stand up against AMD&#x27;s upcoming 5nm Zen 4? I guess we&#x27;ll be able to test Intel&#x27;s chips against what AMD has been shipping and see how well Intel 7 stands up against both 7nm and 5nm processes.