If they hadn't cut fab R&D years ago to juice profit margins, they wouldn't be in this situation now. I have no reason to believe they will suddenly start acting intelligently or with any real long-term thinking. Most likely it's just about managing the decline at this point (please Pat, prove me wrong)
It's still not clear that Intel shouldn't just go fabless like their competition. They're going for a hybrid approach right now where some of their own stuff is produced elsewhere. They're trying to get some manufacturers to use their fabs but they're nowhere near the state of the art. They lost that battle to TSMC a long time ago.
Will not happen for National Security reasons. DoD standard policy is that high criticality components must be able to made domestically. Or at least it was at some point.
Yes, but: the CHIPS act plans to increase domestic semiconductor manufacturing significantly. In the future, Intel might be able to go fabless with domestic manufacturing partners to satisfy DoD requirements.
“America invented the semiconductor, but today produces about 10 percent of the world’s supply—and none of the most advanced chips. Instead, we rely on East Asia for 75 percent of global production. The CHIPS and Science Act will unlock hundreds of billions more in private sector semiconductor investment across the country, including production essential to national defense and critical sectors.”
Just because Intel would go fabless doesn't mean the fabs themselves would disappear. They could spin them out just like AMD did when they were in trouble.
