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Intel to start making 64 bit ARM chips for Altera

Intel to start making 64-bit ARM chips for Altera

By Anupam Saxena | Updated: 30 October 2013 18:17 IST

It's a big day for Intel as it finally decides to join the ARM bandwagon, albeit for producing highly specialised chips.

Altera, Intel's partner, announced at the ARM developers' conference that the leading chip maker will fabricate its ARM-based 64-bit chips starting next year. The move indicates Intel's intent to capture the mobile device market which it's been trying to address with its x86 Atom processors including Medfield, and Clover Trail.

For now however, Intel has not announced its intentions to make Intel-branded ARM-based chips (whether for mobile or other specialized applications), and its current fabrication plan is only on contract with a single partner, Altera.

Altera announced that its Stratix 10 system-on-a-chip (SoC) will be manufactured on Intel's 14nm 3D Tri-Gate transistor technology and will feature a high-performance, quad-core 64-bit ARM Cortex-A53 processor. The chip will go into production in 2014.

However, the Altera chip is only for use in high-end networking and communication equipment, and other specialised applications. So the move doesn't really indicate Intel's entry into the ARM based mobile device chip segment and Intel won't be directly competing with other chipmakers at this point in time.

A Forbes report on the issue, however, speculates that Intel could compete with TSMC, which makes ARM chips for major corporations like Nvidia and Qualcomm, which means it's possible that it will eventually make chips for its own competitors. It also means that companies like Apple will also get a new alternative - Apple can get its new chips made by Intel instead of depending on its rival Samsung or TSMC, the report suggests.

As the report further speculates, chip prices could fall, as the other foundries including TSMC, UMC, GlobalFoundries, Samsung, IBM or SMIC, feel the heat of the competition.

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