[jdietrich]

Intel have historically been very good at fabrication, which represented a considerable competitive advantage. Outsourcing fabrication is much less capital-intensive and can be more flexible, but it's potentially less profitable because the foundry needs to make a profit. The relationship between a chip design company and their foundry partner is fairly complex (especially at cutting-edge nodes), with the foundry providing considerable expertise and design support.

Node size names have become fairly arbitrary, with no direct connection to any particular feature size. Intel's 10nm is effectively the same as everyone else's 7nm. In either case, the actual pitch between transistor gates is about 54nm. There are ostensibly standards set through the IRDS, but there's a clear marketing imperative to advertise a smaller node size.