The Hot Take: As it should be, given all of the other ones are own by foreign entities.
Intel has completed its RAMP-C program, which now aims to enable customers to move from test chips to domestic high-volume manufacturing. Intel RAMP-C Leads To Successful Development of a Strong "Design Enablement Infrastructure" Which Enables Commercial & Defense Customers To Design & Fabricate Chips Within the US Press Release: Intel Foundry has completed the Rapid Assured Microelectronics Prototypes - Commercial (RAMP-C) program. Launched in September 2021, the program supported development of domestic, leading-edge CMOS technology and manufacturing in the United States, establishing a foundation for expanded trusted domestic semiconductor manufacturing. “The collaboration between the DoW and Intel on the Trusted […]Read full article at https://wccftech.com/intel-emerges-as-americas-only-leading-edge-chipmaker-as-ramp-c-hands-domestic-18a-production/
By ckasprzak | TkOut | July 27, 2026 | Hardware, Intel
The Hot Take: Good to hear, and hope it's true.
Intel is back with unusually strong quarterly figures. In the second quarter of 2026, the company generated revenue of around 16.1 billion US dollars, 25 percent more than in the same period last year. According to Intel, this was the strongest revenue growth in more than 15 years. The data-center processor business in particular benefited […]
The Hot Take: Hopefully better implemented to prevent all the exploits of the past.
Hyper-Threading is what Intel calls its implementation of what is more academically known as "Simultaneous Multi-Threading" (SMT). This describes a method where a single processor core can interleave processing of two or more separate program threads, usually delivering an overall performance uplift on multi-threaded tasks. Intel killed off
Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan has acknowledged that the semiconductor giant must catch up to rivals AMD and Arm, and said it now assumes edge AI and robotics will be a business as big as PCs. Tan made those remarks during Intel’s Q2 earnings call, which saw the company report $16.1 billion revenue – a 25 percent year-on-year increase. “Q2 was another quarter of solid execution,” the CEO said. “Revenue, gross margin, and earnings per share were above our guidance. This marks the seventh consecutive quarter of exceeding our financial expectations.” Yet it didn’t deliver a profit as Intel reported a GAAP loss of $11 billion (and a non-GAAP loss of $2.2 billion). Tan remained optimistic about Intel’s prospects, thanks to the AI boom spurring demand for many of its products, and its foundry service. “Our core server CPU franchise is growing faster than ever,” the CEO said, before observing the Xeon 6 range “continues to be one of the fastest-ramping products in Intel's history.” That may be the case, but Intel’s hyperscale customers have designed their own Arm-powered CPUs and are deploying so many that analyst firm IDC recently found non-x86 servers now account for almost half of all sales. Intel’s great rival, AMD, has grown its market share to a third of the x86 server market. During the earnings call, Morgan Stanley analyst Joe Moore asked Tan how he plans to regain market share. Tan pointed to Intel’s forthcoming Clearwater Forest, Diamond Rapids, and Coral Rapids processors as evidence the company is creating products that can compete with anyone. “Some areas we are still behind,” he admitted, “but we are catching up very fast and we try to leapfrog some of the CPU architecture, and we are putting major effort into it. Time will tell.” Tan is also pondering time in terms of how component shortages impact the company’s sales and revenue. “The industry is facing one of the most severe supply constraints in its history, across leading-edge logic silicon wafers, memory, and substrates,” he said. “These shortages will persist for the foreseeable future.” Intel is of course a big player in the semiconductor supply chain, and Tan offered the happy news that wafer output across its major manufacturing nodes exceeded expectations from 90 days ago, and that yields from its leading-edge 18A process “are trending ahead of targets.” The CEO also said, “supply remains very tight and the near-term linearity of our supply growth is more skewed towards the end of Q3 and into Q4, especially for servers.” He had slightly better news about Intel’s foundry business, which is developing an advanced manufacturing process called 14A that could make Chipzilla a more formidable competitor to TSMC. “We remain on track for 14A risk production for our internal products in the second half of 2027, and we made the decision in Q2 to fully commit to high volume ramp in 2028,” Tan said. Intel’s current flagship 18A process is also going well. “In our core PC client segment, Intel 18A is now in volume production across multiple commercial and consumer products,” Tan said. “Our factory output continues to increase sequentially every month. The successful high volume ramp of 18A for our internal products provides important validations as Intel Foundry engages with external customers.” The CEO added his view that “We still have work to do to establish a strong footprint in the edge and physical AI ecosystem but see this opportunity as an important future growth driver.” So important that Intel recently renamed its PC business the “Client Computing and Physical AI Group” (CCPG). That change is more than cosmetic, because CFO David Zinsner said Intel believes “the edge and physical AI opportunity is likely to at least match the client TAM [total addressable market] over time.” That would make edge and physical AI an $8 billion business, given that in this quarter Intel said ten percent of CCPG’s $8.9 billion revenue came from edge products. Overall CCPG revenue rose 13 percent year-over-year, growth that Intel found pleasantly surprising. Zinsner said the PC market is “softer” in part due to “the memory dynamics in the marketplace,” and predicted Q3 performance will fall. ®
The Hot Take: USA domestic manufacturing is blowing up and saving Intel.
Intel Foundry might be heading into a big deal with NVIDIA, as the company is expected to offer packaging and wafer support for next-gen Feynman GPUs. NVIDIA Feynman GPUs Could Be Intel Foundry's Biggest Win To Date With Chipzilla Providing Both Packaging & Wafer Supply A deal between Intel and NVIDIA won't be a major surprise for those following our previous reports, but it is definitely a big win for Intel's Foundry business. Earlier this year, we reported that NVIDIA might be looking into Intel's upcoming process & advanced packaging technologies for its next-generation GPUs, codenamed Feynman. Well, according to […]Read full article at https://wccftech.com/intel-foundry-nvidia-feynman-gpu-wafer-packaging-deal/
Intel and AMD are signing long term agreements with Chinese data center firms to provide them with CPUs for AI computing, says a report from Reuters. CPUs in AI computing rose to prominence earlier this year after agentic AI demand reshaped the market. Agentic computing places a greater emphasis on CPUs, and according to the sources, the deals are motivated by the rapid price rise due to high demand. AMD & Intel Set To Cover A Year's Worth Of CPU Supplies To Chinese AI Data Centers, Says Report The surge in AI demand for CPUs has also led to Intel […]Read full article at https://wccftech.com/intel-and-amd-lock-in-year-long-cpu-deals-with-chinese-ai-firms-as-prices-surge-40/
The Hot Take: The more the merrier and helps Intel get back to track making and developing x86 CPUs. Hopefully GPUs too.
Fortinet on Tuesday revealed it will use Intel Foundry to fab its sixth-gen Security Processor (SP6), a nice win for Chipzilla's sputtering chipmaking biz. The chips feature dedicated accelerators designed specifically for the security and cryptographic operations required by modern hardware firewalls. The custom chips are one of Fortinet's defining features. Many cybersecurity hardware players build appliances around commodity hardware like x86 and Arm CPUs, but Fortinet prefers custom application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs). The two companies haven't said when the chips will enter production, much less what the SP6's speeds and feeds will entail, though we imagine it'll have a bit more pep than Fortinet's SP5 chips. The SP5 launched in 2023 and boasted support for layer 7 firewalling and IPsec VPN connectivity at speeds exceeding 30 Gbps. Throughput fell when advanced threat protection or SSL inspection was enabled, but Fortinet still claimed a speedy 4.3 Gbps and 3.3 Gbps, respectively. As you might have already figured out, Fortinet's SP line is designed primarily for smaller appliances like SD-WAN gateways, rather than larger datacenter-centric appliances built around its beefier NP and CP-series parts. While Intel couldn't offer much detail on the chip itself, we're told it will use the older Intel 4 process node rather than the leading-edge 18A process tech. Chipzilla also suggested Fortinet will draw on its experience in disaggregated semiconductor design and advanced packaging, which could mean a chiplet architecture with greater scalability. With so little detail, we can only speculate. Intel declined to say which technologies beyond Intel 4 the chip will use. The x86 giant also declined to comment on the availability of the product, noting only that "details regarding the Fortinet Security Processor 6 availability will be announced at a later date." While SP6 won't use the latest chipmaking tech, it will be built in an American fab by an American company, offering a level of supply chain security that remains difficult to find. If you want even remotely leading-edge silicon, Intel, Samsung, and TSMC are your only options. US-based production can still mean settling for a less advanced process, although TSMC's first Arizona fab has already begun churning out 4 nm silicon and Samsung aims to bring its new Texas plant online this year. Fortinet would not be the first to enlist Intel's manufacturing might for sensitive workloads. Under DARPA's HIVE program, the chipmaker built an eight-core, 528-thread processor with 1 TB/s silicon-photonics interconnects specifically to accelerate graph analytics workloads. But it doesn't stop at the DoD. Supply chain security is something Intel has leaned into as it has sought to reinvent itself from an integrated device manufacturer serving mainly itself, and occasionally the US government, into a full-fledged foundry ready to compete with Samsung and, ultimately, TSMC. In mid-2024, Uncle Sam awarded Intel $3 billion to establish a secure enclave for manufacturing chips for government agencies. Since then, the US government has taken a 9.9 percent stake in the American chip biz. ®
The Hot Take: Long wait for the next build I guess.... LOVIN' the Antec Flux Nocua edition until then I guess.
Intel was expected to unveil its next-generation desktop processors later this year. The upcoming Nova Lake lineup has been making the rounds online, and a new report from VideoCardz suggests that Intel could introduce it under the Core Ultra Series 400 branding. For context, the current Arrow Lake and Arrow Lake Refresh desktop CPUs follow the Core Ultra Series 200 naming scheme, while Intel's latest Panther Lake mobile processors carry the Core Ultra Series 300 branding.Go deeper with TH Premium: CPU(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)CPU scaling with DLSSRyzen to the top: How AMD innovated in the gaming CPU marketHow ARM is working its way into PCsAMD CES 2026 gaming trends press Q&A roundtable transcriptThe report also claims to reveal the review embargo windows and launch timeline for several Nova Lake models. According to the report, Intel will initially introduce a 28-core DS package, which is expected to launch between January and March 2027. The new DS suffix is said to be an internal package designation for processors featuring dual-compute tiles. This will reportedly be followed by 28-core K-series (unlocked) models between March and April 2027, while 16-core and 8-core variants are expected to arrive between late March and May 2027. The flagship 52-core DS model is reportedly scheduled for a much later launch, potentially between late May and September 2027.Rumored Nova Lake launch timelineProcessorP-coresE-coresLPE-coresExpected launch52-core DS16324Late May to September 202728-core DS8164January to March 202728-core K-series8164March to April 202716-core484Late March to May 20278-core440Late March to May 2027While Intel is yet to officially confirm a launch date for Nova Lake, various leaks have suggested that the lineup could be one of the company's biggest generational leaps in recent years. The flagship desktop SKU, featuring a 52-core configuration, is expected to combine 16 Coyote Cove Performance (P) cores, 32 Arctic Wolf Efficiency (E) cores, and four Low Power Efficiency (LPE) cores. This would be a notable jump over the current Core Ultra 9 285K, which features a total of 24-cores. The introduction of Coyote Cove and Arctic Wolf also points to an entirely new CPU architecture, replacing the Lion Cove and Skymont cores found in Arrow Lake.Nova Lake is also rumored to bring new platform upgrades including support for DDR5-8000 memory, up to 24 PCIe 5.0 lanes for expansion, Thunderbolt 5, and Intel's next-generation Xe3 Celestial integrated graphics. The processors are also expected to feature an upgraded NPU5 for AI workloads along with a 150W Processor Base Power (PBP) and 253W Maximum Turbo Power (MTP) on the flagship model, despite the substantial increase in core count. Earlier reports have also indicated that Nova Lake will transition to a new LGA1954 socket, meaning users will likely need a new motherboard to upgrade from the existing Arrow Lake platform.
Intel is reportedly making a significant change to the manufacturing strategy for its upcoming Nova Lake processor family by shifting the majority of compute tile production back to Intel Foundry.
The Hot Take: Makes sense, especially if China takes Taiwan....
According to the Wall Street Journal (paywalled), Apple agreed to use Intel's U.S. chipmaking plants after White House officials pressured Tim Cook during tariff-relief talks last summer. MacRumors reports: In August 2025, Apple CEO Tim Cook was in Washington to lobby the Trump administration to drop its proposed 100 percent tariff on semiconductor imports -- a levy that would have raised costs across Apple's product line. Apple reportedly secured an exemption after pledging to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the U.S., although many of those investments were already planned. During the meetings, president Trump and commerce secretary Howard Lutnick are said to have urged Cook to use Intel's fabrication plants to make some of Apple's chips. The link between the tariff talks and the Apple-Intel deal had not been previously reported.
Almost a year later, Trump announced via his Truth Social platform that Apple would begin using Intel-made chips in some products. "We need to design and build our Chips right here in America," the president posted. The news sent Intel shares to record highs. According to a person familiar with the negotiations cited by the WSJ, Apple plans to have Intel make chips for both Mac laptops and iPhones. The report doesn't say which chips or in what volume, and Apple is expected to remain reliant on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC, for the majority of its custom silicon.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.