Before they absorbed Altera, they were Altera's contract fab for the 10 series. That was delayed by a lot because it turns out Intel's processes are so weird.

Before they absorbed Altera, they were Altera's contract fab for the 10 series. That was delayed by a lot because it turns out Intel's processes are so weird. Eventually, Altera switched its mid-range Arria products to TSMC and got a chip out the door, and we waited another 2 years (at least) for the high-end Stratix 10 to come out. Intel bought Altera during that fiasco. The last time they tried, it looked like it was a blatant move to try to prepare for an acquisition. They essentially screwed Altera into doing the work to port their chips to an Intel process while also tanking the value of Altera Inc. due to the delays. Do SoC companies want to risk chaining themselves to the Intel process? Do more of them want to be acquisition targets? Do competing CPU vendors want to give up their IP to Intel in exchange for fabrication? Until Intel spins out its fabs, which it probably should have done a long time ago, Intel will be facing an uphill battle to acquire customers for its fabs.