EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT NVDA + INTC DEAL
There are plenty of details still missing on timing, bandwidth & packaging, but Nvidia just gave Intel a $5B lifeline and rewrote where CPUs sit in the AI stack.
For years, Intel was treated like the boring middleman --just the chip you needed to get GPUs online. Now, with Nvidia co-developing NVLink-capable x86 CPUs, the CPU stops being a toll and starts being part of the engine. If you own the world’s most entrenched software ecosystem -- Windows and x86 -- and suddenly those chips plug directly into Nvidia's GPU mesh, you are back in the game in a very real way.
$Advanced Micro Devices(AMD)$ Data Center Role Gets Undermined
For years, AMD’s EPYC carved out its role in AI data centers by being the cheapest and most capable “host CPU” for Nvidia GPU clusters. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was highly profitable because every GPU server still needed a CPU socket, and AMD could undercut Intel on price and deliver more PCIe lanes. That attach revenue has been a quiet but critical driver of AMD’s growth story in cloud and HPC.
$ARM Holdings(ARM)$ Customers Have Less Reason to Jump
Hyperscalers have been tempted by Arm’s efficiency story -- Grace CPUs and other ARM server designs offered a clean slate for scaling AI clusters. But if you can stick with x86, keep all your enterprise software compatibility, and still get NVLink bandwidth into HBM memory, the incentive to jump ship just collapsed. This deal makes customers far less likely to take the risk of migrating critical workloads onto ARM when x86 now offers the same scaling path inside Nvidia’s platforms.
The Long-Term Prize: Intel Foundry
But the long-term implications are much bigger: this partnership plants seeds for Intel Foundry. Right now, Nvidia is clear -- this isn’t a GPU manufacturing deal. But once you’re co-developing CPUs and SoCs with NVIDIA engineers, you’re halfway to running their designs through your fabs. Nvidia doesn’t need to give up $Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing(TSM)$ overnight. But it absolutely wants a second source long term, especially if geopolitics or capacity tighten. Intel Foundry, with enough investment and proof of execution, could become that safety valve.
TSMC’s Grip Weakens, $ASML Holding NV(ASML)$ & $Synopsys(SNPS)$ Strengthen
TSMC remains indispensable for now -- every Blackwell GPU and NVSwitch that powers NVLink still runs through their lines -- but their chokehold is weaker today than it was yesterday. $ASML and $SNPS stand to benefit too, because the complexity of chiplet-based designs, multi-node packaging, and new interconnect standards only increases demand for their tools.
Nvidia now gets to own the interconnect standard, Intel gets a seat back at the AI table and a pathway for Foundry relevance, AMD and Arm get boxed in, and toolmakers like ASML and Synopsys become even more essential as these systems get stitched together.
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