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The article quotes a mention of Intel getting into the foundry business - this seems like the most obvious good move to make, even if a little late, right?

Being able to operate a general fab for chips seems far more important now than the design of the chips, since design has been somewhat commoditized by ARM. Any big downside for this move?

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the downside is that the foundry process has to work properly, and by all reports, it hasn't started working properly yet.

Only report I saw on it was that Intel said they have tested working 18A chips.

They have to be able to mass produce on that node for it to save them. Samsung has been claiming technological leadership for that past few years with their 3nm node but nothing has come to market using it. IBM demoed a 2nm test chip in 2021, but has no ability to mass produce.

There was lots of talk at the last earnings about "clean sheet redesign" to achieve "world class foundary" and a "world class semiconductor. Sounds like getting the organisation ready to split in two to me.

That probably kills the vertical integration that made intel the world leader in the past though.

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