Intel's forcing its chip designers to pay market rates not mate's rates at its own fabs

pcgamer.com:

Intel's announced a new switch to an «internal foundry model» which creates more separation between the products it designs and the fabs it uses to manufacture them. And there are some really good reasons for this. One, it creates a clear, secure distinction between the Intel that is designing new chips and the Intel that wants other people who also design new chips to come and manufacture them in its fabs.

The other reason is that it's going to force the designers of the various server and consumer CPUs and GPUs to interact with the company's manufacturing facilities as other fabless chipmakers do with external foundries. The upshot of that is that if they're getting charged market rates instead of mate's rates to use those facilities, the designers are likely to be less wasteful with testing and sampling during the pre-production process.

That will potentially save Intel up to $5 billion and could expedite the process of actually creating new processors. 

It might also mean Intel's designers are maybe less ambitious in terms of how aggressive they are on densities of new process nodes, but that could be a good thing. 

Intel's previous tardiness in getting new chip generations out the door has been linked to it tying processors to process nodes, and being overly ambitious on those new nodes. If, instead, it's more realistic in the design process it might stand a better chance of delivering on its promised targets.

We've already seen potentially good progress in Intel's target of five nodes in four years, and disconnecting chip generations from that process has certainly helped.

So, from the perspective of Intel's own chips this seems like a smart reorganisation of its business. Forcing its different departments to be a