The partnership between Apple and Intel on chip manufacturing took shape during White House talks over tariff exemptions.
(via Cult of Mac - Your source for the latest Apple news, rumors, analysis, reviews, how-tos and deals.)
Intel outlined a €5 billion capital investment in its Republic of Ireland campus to expand European output to meet the increased demand for AI and high-performance computing.
The chipmaker stated the expansion at its facility in Leixlip, County Kildare, began earlier in the year and involves upgrading fabrication facilities and installing leading-edge manufacturing equipment to boost production of its Intel Xeon 6 and next-generation Xeon processors built on the advanced Intel 3 process node.
Intel stated the chips are increasingly critical to power AI factories.
As part of the infrastructure overhaul, Intel is expanding its “automated track system to integrate disparate campus modules” into a single, “high-velocity production environment”.
Intel explained the investment programme would create permanent high-tech jobs alongside engaging specialised building and equipment installation tradespeople.
Naga Chandrasekaran, EVP and GM of Intel Foundry, said the investment is a “definitive commitment to maximising capacity” for foundry customers.
Upgrading the site “with state-of-the-art technology and installing cutting-edge tools” would help keep the Republic of Ireland “at the forefront of the world’s most advance manufacturing ecosystems while strengthening” Europe’s position in “the global technology landscape”, he said.
The move aligns with broader European Union tech-sovereignty goals to establish a resilient, domestic supply chain for leading-edge processors.
Intel invested more than €30 billion in the Republic of Ireland since establishing operations in 1989. The Leixlip site currently employs 4,900 people.
The company is trying to revitalise its chip manufacturing business and become a serious player in the booming foundry industry.
In April, it signed up to Elon Musk’s Terafab AI chip project to create processors for orbital data centres and robots.
The post Intel pumps €5B into EU AI fab capacity appeared first on Mobile World Live.
US President Donald Trump (pictured) stated Apple has struck a deal with Intel to produce computer chips inside the US, a move which marked a significant moment in his administration’s push to reshore semiconductor manufacturing.
“I decided to help Intel because we need to design and build our Chips right here in America,” Trump wrote on Truth Social today (18 June).
He added Apple’s agreement was the latest in a series of wins for his domestic chip strategy, following similar commitments from Nvidia and Elon Musk’s TeraFab project with Intel.
The Apple agreement marks another significant win for Intel. CEO Lip-Bu Tan, who spent much of last year shoring up the company’s balance sheet through major external investments, now appears to be delivering on operational improvements which seemed unlikely just a year ago.
For Apple, the partnership offers a chance to diversify a supply chain which currently depends heavily on TSMC to produce the processors powering its iPhones, iPads and Mac computers.
Any agreement will likely be a foundry deal, since Apple already designs its own silicon.
Apple price increases
Apple CEO Tim Cook told the Wall Street Journal price increases for its products are now unavoidable, citing soaring costs for memory and storage chips driven by the AI boom. He stated Apple had absorbed rising costs for as long as possible, but the pressure has become too great to avoid passing increases on to customers.
A domestic chip supply deal from Intel could give Apple more flexibility in an increasingly constrained global market, though analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has previously suggested any production through Intel’s advanced 18A-P process node is unlikely to reach mass scale before late 2027.
Trump’s post also gave him an opportunity to tout the government’s earlier bet on Intel. Last August, his administration converted roughly $8.9 billion in federal funding into an equity stake of around 10% in the company.
He noted in his post Intel was worth around $100 billion when the government made its offer.
“Now they are worth over 600 BILLION DOLLARS! Nine months, and they’ve increased in value over HALF A TRILLION DOLLARS. America’s stake is now over 60 Billion Dollars.”
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The release of macOS 27 later this fall won't quite close the book on the Intel Mac. The last handful of models that could run macOS 26 Tahoe will be eligible for security and Safari updates for two more years, and elements of the Rosetta compatibility layer for running Intel code on Apple Silicon Macs will be with us in some form for some indeterminate amount of time after that.
But macOS 26 is definitely the last chapter of the Intel Mac story. Anything that happens after this is a coda or an epilogue.
Most of our WWDC coverage has been forward-looking, so indulge us if you will in a look backward at the full history of the Intel Mac, a partnership between two companies that made Macs dramatically better, until it started making them worse.
© David Paul Morris/Getty Images
O próximo processador de IA da Google terá uma arquitetura de fabrico dividida. A TSMC deverá produzir o núcleo computacional, cabendo à Samsung o fabrico do componente de interligação à memória. A Intel poderá também entrar na equação com a produção da TPU.
The post Google quer reduzir dependência da TSMC e negoceia a produção de um novo chip de IA com a Samsung e Intel appeared first on Tek Notícias.
The Framework Laptop 13 Pro is delayed. The new 13-inch Framework flagship was set to launch in June, but shipments from the first batch are now expected in July - and there's still a chance some shipments could slip to early August. If you're not in the first batch, your Laptop 13 Pro shifts from a July shipment to August, though some could be as late as early September.
Framework informed customers who preordered a Laptop 13 Pro of the delay via email, outlining the reasons for the extra wait. The main culprits are the new haptic trackpad and custom display. Mainboard preorders and any orders that didn't include these components are sti …
Alphabet’s Google reportedly placed an order with Intel to manufacture more than 3 million of its specialised AI chips in 2028, a move which increases pressure on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC).
The Information reported Google plans to use Intel to manufacture some of its tensor processing units (TPUs) after months of testing the chipmaker’s manufacturing capabilities.
Google Cloud’s TPUs are custom chips purpose-built for AI and optimised for training and inference of advanced AI models.
The news agency’s sources state the move reflects mounting strain on TSMC, which is struggling to meet surging demand for its foundry capacity, pushing customers to seek alternatives.
The deal marks another significant win for Intel after CEO Lip-Bu Tan, who spent much of last year shoring up Intel’s balance sheet through major external investments, now appears to be delivering on operational improvements which seemed unlikely a year ago.
In April 2026, Google expanded its long‑running partnership with Intel, committing to use multiple generations of the chipmaker’s CPUs in its AI data centres.
The same month, Intel revealed a plan to join Elon Musk’s Terafab AI chip project to build processors which would power the billionaire’s orbital data centres and humanoid robots.
Last month, the tech giant struck a joint venture agreement with asset management company Blackstone to create a US-based AI cloud company, giving a boost to its TPU manufacturing.
The Information also said Nvidia is evaluating Intel’s manufacturing technology for a forthcoming processor which could combine four graphics chips into a single unit.
The post Google taps Intel for 3M AI chips in 2028 appeared first on Mobile World Live.
Apresentada durante a Computex 2026, a nova consola portátil da MSI é a primeira com o processador Intel Arc G3 Extreme, que promete melhor desempenho e maior eficiência energética que os modelos equipados com processador AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme.
The post MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ é a primeira consola portátil equipada com o novo processador Intel Arc G3 Extreme appeared first on Tek Notícias.
Intel is invading the physical AI space with a reentry into the robotics market it quit many years ago amid financial struggles.
The robotics strategy is part of the company’s larger plan to establish AI on the “edge,” in which devices have the computing capability to run AI locally. Many devices lack AI capabilities and have to offload processing to the cloud.
The chipmaker said its Intel Series 3 processors are now in 130 edge AI and robotics designs. It also had a design win with SensoryAI, which provides technology for robots that include Ella, a robotic barista made by Crown Digital.
The company’s Core Ultra Series 3 processors are derivatives of chip designs intended for laptops. But Intel has achieved a level of power efficiency for long battery life that allows those chips to be adapted for handheld devices and laptops.
Intel also said it can build advanced robotics chips thanks to its latest manufacturing technologies.
For example, many robotic functions, such as computer vision and real-time controls, can be integrated into a single chip. Previously, functions like graphics and movement and control were distributed among different cores in a chip.
SensoryAI, for example, has a chip architecture that provides the robotic barista — which is more like a robotic arm — with AI capabilities, Intel said.
The main “Avatar” agent handles customers as the main “Ella” agent reasons and executes the task. If Ella encounters errors, it passes on the issue to a Guardian agent, which helps with the recovery. Some issues could include making sense of an order, or cups that might be stuck.
The three agents are embedded in a single piece of Core Ultra Series 3 silicon.
Intel is displaying some of those robots at the Computex trade show in Taiwan. The company shared a video of a humanoid-style robot from the floor in a X.com post
This is not Intel’s first attempt at the robotics market. Intel sold robotics chips and kits when it was a dominant chip player in the field, but curtailed efforts in 2021 after Pat Gelsinger took over as CEO and restructured the company to focus on manufacturing.
Robotics is now back on the menu under new Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, who replaced Gelsinger last year. He has restructured to company to focus on high-growth areas that can generate high returns.
A Morgan Stanley study last year indicated the robotics market could be worth $5 trillion by 2050 — and more than 1 billion humanoid robots could be in operation.
Robots are seen to improve human productivity and manufacturing output. For example, they could help factories that are facing labor shortages or be used to complete tasks that are dangerous.
However, challenges remain. There isn’t yet enough real-world data to train robots to do targeted work. And the AI models — generally called world models — they will need are still under development.
Training robots to do a specific job requires a sequence of events to happen in succession without any errors. Companies are still training robots to spot and understand errors, analyze possible resolutions, and take the right corrective action.
Most of the Steam Deck imitators on the market right now use AMD silicon, specifically the Ryzen Z-series chips. These are the same chips AMD makes for regular laptops, but with different power settings better suited to a compact handheld system. There are handhelds based on Intel silicon (MSI’s Claw is the main one), but Intel hasn’t yet tried making silicon marketed specifically for that purpose.
Today, the company is throwing its hat in the ring with two Intel Arc G-series processors, which will allow gaming handhelds to leverage the company's genuinely quite good Arc B-series integrated GPUs. Intel says that several Arc G-series handhelds will arrive "starting in June 2026, with broader availability throughout the year." These systems will include a new MSI Claw model, a Predator Atlas 8 from Acer, and a device from OneXPlayer.
Intel normally uses its "Arc" branding for integrated and dedicated GPUs, but in this case, the "Arc" brand encompasses the entire chip, including the CPU, GPU, NPU, and other components.
© Intel
It seems fair to say that Apple's MacBook Neo took the rest of the PC industry by surprise. Companies are used to competing on price and features with $1,000-and-up Apple laptops like the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, but their $600 and $700 models usually come with cut corners and compromises that are more noticeable than the Neo's. The CEO of Asus admitted to being surprised by the laptop's price (while simultaneously trying to downplay the Neo's value); a Microsoft-backed study comparing PCs to the MacBook Neo included several laptops that can't compete with the Neo's price unless they're deeply discounted.
In the last couple of weeks, we've started to see a more intentional and targeted response to the MacBook Neo from PC makers. These mostly seem to revolve around Intel's low-end Core Series 3 processors, codenamed Wildcat Lake; while Intel's last few generations of low-end chips have mostly been rebrands of older and less power-efficient parts, Wildcat Lake is a new purpose-built budget chip that benefits from Intel's latest CPU and GPU architectures and its 18A manufacturing process. This should help these chips compete better with the Apple A18 Pro in the MacBook Neo.
Many early Wildcat Lake systems have already been announced, though not all have included a price tag, and several have only been announced for the Chinese market as of this writing. Lenovo is planning to launch some IdeaPad Slim models with the new processors, with some optional spec upgrades including 16GB of RAM and a 120 Hz high-refresh-rate display. Asus and HP have also announced some early products.
© Intel
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