(Image credit: Qualcomm)

Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon says that Intel’s chipmaking tech still isn’t up to snuff — at least not for the Snapdragon X. In an interview with Bloomberg published September 5, Amon said that Intel “is not an option today,” but left open the possibility for a future partnership, adding “we would like Intel to be an option.”

It’s a short but pointed comment that lands hard in the middle of Intel’s planned foundry turnaround. The company has staked its future on becoming a contract manufacturer for other chip designers and has repeatedly said that its roadmap depends on securing a large external customer. Unfortunately for Intel, Amon’s remarks obliterate one of Intel’s most realistic prospects for building advanced client silicon for an outside firm, at least in the near term.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X chips are currently manufactured by TSMC on its N4 process. This is a dense, power-efficient 4nm-class node that TSMC has tuned for mobile SoCs with large GPU and NPU blocks. Qualcomm is shipping those chips today in a growing class of Arm-based laptops with power efficiency levels that rival and at times outstrip even the most modern Intel chips.

Performance is improving fast enough that Qualcomm is now a direct competitor to Intel in thin-and-light notebooks. This gives Amon’s statement some significant weight: One of the most promising companies in the PC space just publicly said that Intel isn't ready to deliver on its needs.

This also highlights an irony of Intel’s roadmap. The company’s upcoming Nova Lake products will allegedly be partly built using TSMC N2, with Intel 18A being reserved for lower-end parts. Intel is simultaneously competing with TSMC and relying on it, all while hoping to convince others — including Qualcomm — to become customers of its own process nodes.

Intel said in July that it might pause or abandon 14A development if it can’t win significant external business or achieve critical progress targets. Since then, questions have been raised about execution risk on 18A, the node the company has pitched as its return to industry leadership, due to yield issues. Amon’s comment doesn’t help.

Still, Qualcomm hasn’t slammed the door on Intel entirely. Amon said that his company would consider Intel if it could deliver on efficiency, and the two companies have previously signaled interest in working together. But for now at least, the Snapdragon X is staying with TSMC.

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