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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.
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
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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.
"His name was James Damore."
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.