Intel Opens Doors To Rivals, Maybe

Rambo Tribble writes "In what appears to be a major reversal of policy, Intel's new president, Renee James, has indicated that Intel will be open to manufacturing chips based on rivals' designs. While the language is a bit tentative, this appears to open an opportunity for such as ARM to benefit from Intel's manufacturing expertise and technology." From the article: "James said Intel will evaluate prospective foundry clients on a 'deal by deal basis, not on an architecture by architecture basis.' That applies, James said, 'even in areas where there may be some competition with businesses that we’re in.'" Intel is already manufacturing FPGAs for Altera that include 64-bit ARM cores.

Comments

Re:Probably Apple

[jcr]

I would hope so. Friends in the chip design world have told me that Apple could save about 20% of the power draw on their A-series CPUs if they had access to intel's fab process.

-jcr

Re:Probably Apple

[Rockoon]

There is no chance that Intel would rent out its best fabs.

The reality is that Intel has a growing number of out-dated fabs that are not utilizing full capacity, and it wants to sell time on those.

AMD may benefit

[Forever Wondering]

This forces Global Foundries to be more competitive with Intel, which benefits AMD.

GF, TMSC, etc. have been riding the [profitable] curve of being a generation back. That is, Intel is always a generation [or two] ahead, but also incurs significant R&D costs to do so. The competitors could wait and get the same results for far less investment in R&D. They could do this because Intel wasn't competing with them [by producing ASIC's, FPGA's, etc.]

This forces the non-Intel foundries to produce cutting edge stuff sooner. AMD was a big chagrined after spinning off GF and seeing it fall back into the TMSC model [making AMD less competitive against Intel].

The benefit for Intel is trifold:
- More ROI for their expensive fabs. Previously, costs were always recovered because the PC market was always expanding. With this now shrinking, a nextgen Intel fab may need to do piece work to stay profitable.
- Forcing the competition to compete head on [with the increased costs of being first generation], weakening them in the process [pun intended].
- A toe-in-the-water with ARM and mobile space [Atom notwithstanding] as a hedge against x86 arch going the way of the dinosaurs [without the stigma to x86 of a full fledged announcement of direct ARM support].

Re:AMD may benefit

[Forever Wondering]

ARM is starting to encroach on x86 in the server space:
- lower data center power requirements
- they're coming out with a 64 bit version
- ARM has a much smaller die footprint.
Intel must do ARM to stay in that game.

ARM would not be Intel's first foray into alternate architectures for x86 [8080, 8085, 8086, 80186, 80286, 80386, 486, 586, 686]. Remember Itanium [;-)] but also the 432. The Itanium and 432 didn't pan out because [the market for] x86 was so strong, but this indicates that while Intel is wedded to x86, it isn't slavish to it either. They care about making chips at a profit more than they do a given processor architecture. x86 has been a great tool to allow them to do that. But, x86 is just a means to an end for them.

When x86 ceases to be the asset it currently is, Intel will adopt whatever the market demands. The trend for this is ARM (vs. sparc, mips, etc.). At this point, [even] Intel can't kill ARM. ARM has too much demand for it now [it's a better solution for mobile and embedded/hybrid systems and will surpass in the server space in the near future]. Intel is adapting/reacting now, while it has time to do so on its terms instead of waiting 10 years and being forced to do it in a panic.

Contrast this with MS and Windoze. MS lost the mobile space race because of its insistence on Windoze. Intel won't make the same mistake, if for no other reason, they saw what it did to MS.

As to MS, most likely, in 10 years, we'll see MS/Office running on OSX/iOS, Linux, and Android with Windows just a fond memory.

Long term, Intel must become a foundry because it will lose its process generation edge (e.g. 22nm->14nm, but after 6(?)nm there isn't much room left. Others will catch up).

Intel will make money on this. In the mid 80's, Intel was selling its first generation 386 chip for $750. An Intel engineer told me that the same chip was designed to be profitable even if it sold [had to be sold] for $35.

Re:Probably Apple

[whistlingtony]

Intel has a "copy exactly" policy. Every fab is Intel's "best fab", mainly because maintaining different processes across sites would be a logistical nightmare. Also, I'm sitting in Intel's "best fab", and we run this stuff. So. Nope.