One company climbed, the other fell. The crossing was around 2018.
In 2008 Bob Mansfield called Johny Srouji in Haifa. Twelve years later Apple shipped the M1 — designed in Cupertino, fabricated in Hsinchu, beating Intel on per-watt performance by margins x86 could not close. Meanwhile, Intel's 14nm slipped a year, 10nm slipped four, and on June 4, 2024 Pat Gelsinger held up Intel's flagship laptop chip in Taipei and admitted, on Taiwanese soil, that it had not been made in an Intel fab.
Below: process node trajectories at Intel, TSMC (with key Apple silicon launches), 2010-2026. Note the visible node-skip at Intel after 2014 as Cannon Lake collapses.
FIG. 05 / NODE LEADERSHIP CROSSOVER
log scale · nm
CUPERTINO · CLIMBING
Apple Silicon, 2008-2024
From a 40-person chip team built around the P.A. Semi acquisition to a multi-thousand-engineer organization spanning Cupertino, Austin, Munich, and Haifa. Designs taped out by Apple, manufactured exclusively at TSMC since 2016.
16 B
Transistors, M1
8-wide
Decode, Firestorm
~25%
of TSMC revenue
Apr 2008Acquires P.A. Semi for $278 M; Dobberpuhl, Keller team join+team
Jan 2010A4 ships in iPad — first Apple SoC45 nm
Sep 2012A6 / Swift — first custom Apple core32 nm
Sep 2013A7 / Cyclone — first 64-bit smartphone chip28 nm
Sep 2017A11 / Bionic with Neural Engine for Face ID10 nm
Sep 2018A12 — first 7 nm consumer chip, EUV-assisted7 nm
Nov 2020M1 launches Mac transition off Intel5 nm
Sep 2023A17 Pro — first 3 nm phone chip3 nm
SANTA CLARA · SLIPPING
Intel Manufacturing, 2013-2024
Tick-tock cadence breaks at 14nm in 2013. The 10nm node, planned for 2016, ships only in a single Lenovo SKU in 2018 with the GPU disabled. By 2020 Bob Swan tells analysts Intel will use TSMC for some products. By 2024, Pat Gelsinger does it on stage in Taipei.
~4 yr
10 nm slip
$7 B
Foundry loss, 2023
$10 B
2025 paid to TSMC (est.)
Oct 201314 nm Broadwell delayed — "defect density"+1 yr
2016 plan10 nm Cannon Lake to shiptarget
Spring 2018Cannon Lake ships in one Lenovo laptop, GPU disabled+2 yr
Jun 2018CEO Krzanich resigns over fraternization policy−CEO
Jul 2020Bob Swan: 7 nm slipping another year; will use third-party foundry+12 mo
Jan 2021Pat Gelsinger returns; "five nodes in four years"reset
Apr 2024Foundry losses disclosed: $7 B on $19 B revenue−$7 B
Jun 2024Lunar Lake compute tile fabbed at TSMC N3B−leadership
Dec 2024Gelsinger retires; Lip-Bu Tan named CEO Mar 2025−CEO
When you have control, you can do things you cannot do by buying merchant silicon.
Johny Srouji · Apple SVP, Hardware Technologies · M1 launch, Nov 10, 2020