Hell freezes over: Intel announces plan to fab ARM processors

As developments go, this one is a bombshell. For the first time, Intel has agreed to build ARM chips based on its prime competitor’s architecture, for another company. For decades, Intel was an Intel-only shop. When it announced plans to lease some fab space to companies several years ago, the deal was presented strictly as a low volume project to be used for a handful of small customers, with no significant impact on Intel’s bottom line. Even the news that Chipzilla would build FPGA’s for Altera on 14nm wasn’t a huge shift in this policy, though Altera was a bigger customer than Intel had previously signed.
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