The CEO's quote doesn't suggest an "exit from manufacturing chips", contrary to the sensational headline. Rather, he talks about outsourcing production in exceptional situations. This is what he said:
> “To the extent that we need to use somebody else’s process technology and we call those contingency plans, we will be prepared to do that. That gives us much more optionality and flexibility. So in the event there is a process slip, we can try something rather than make it all ourselves.”
> Intel’s current best technology, known as 10 nanometer in the industry, was scheduled to appear in 2017 and is only now making it into high-volume production. And when the company reported results on Thursday, it said the next iteration -- 7 nanometer -- would be delayed by a year.
So a three year delay for 10 nm and an indeterminate one for 7 nm all while TSMC already has 7 nm in production and is working on 5 nm.
If Intel does start outsourcing EUV, given the very large investments needed for that technology, I don't see how they would ever recover their lead.
Also this isn't just about Intel. The US invented the semiconductor industry and has been at it's forefront since the beginning. It looks like that is no longer the case and that the only company in the world with a cutting edge semiconductor fab capability is headquartered in a country China claims as its own.
They mean to say "another" process slip, but they've said that so many times it's starting to look bad. (And if their leadership was less clueless, they'd realize their mistakes there, but I've digressed....)
Another place the marketers have taken over is in the naming. It's widely accepted that TSMC 7FF "7nm" is the peer to Intel P1274 "10nm", and general consensus is that TSMC 5FF "5nm" is the peer to Intel P1276 "7nm".
TSMC's original 7nm process 7FF did not use EUV. They did introduce EUV for certain layers in N7+, their "second generation" 7nm process. Don't confuse N7+ with N7P, the performance-improved version of 7FF....
(This is why I always try to give the full name of the process, in as much specificity as I know it; it's very easy to talk at cross purposes about N7+ and N7P despite them being quite different.)
> “To the extent that we need to use somebody else’s process technology and we call those contingency plans, we will be prepared to do that. That gives us much more optionality and flexibility. So in the event there is a process slip, we can try something rather than make it all ourselves.”