I’m not sure it would have made a difference if they hit 10nm faster. Apple has always wanted to make its own chips. Some marginal efficiencies wouldn’t dissuade them from investing in themselves. And it’s not like Intel was going to start a consumer PC business…
Yep, Apple buying PA Semi was an indicator of their intention all those years back. I suspect intel was just hoping they would fail at their ambitions.
Hey... that Arc GPU is the one silver lining to what intel is doing recently. Is it perfect, far from it but it ain't bad.
These are all downstream of R&D. If your fab cannot shrink it's node size, then you won't get the most profitable orders.