SoftBank has been preparing an anchor investment in Arm among its customers and partners for months, with Intel among them. At the recent Goldman Sachs Communacopia & Technology Conference, Stuart Pann, head of Intel's foundry business (IFS) department, confirmed that the company has officially become an investor in Arm because its technology is strategic for both Intel's foundry services and Altera FPGA divisions. importance.
"80% of TSMC's wafers use Arm processors. The fact that our IFS organization is embracing Arm at this level, investing in Arm, and establishing partnerships with Arm is a signal that we are absolutely serious about this. business. Because you can’t be a foundry supplier without working with Arm.”
When it comes to its own products, such as Core processors for client PCs and Xeo CPUs for servers, Intel says it plans to bet on its own x86 architecture and has laid out a years-long product roadmap . However, IFS needs to solve problems designed for other applications, and this is where Arm and RISC-V ISA will dominate in the coming years.
Pann revealed that their current focus will be more on ARM and RISC-V. "Because that's where our volume is, but expect more to come in the coming months."
Earlier this year, Intel Foundry Services and Arm also announced plans to jointly optimize the latter's upcoming smartphone IP to make it suitable for Intel's 18A process technology. Pann hinted at the meeting that the cooperation between the two parties may be further expanded, possibly to client PCs and server SoCs.
"For example, we announced our partnership with Arm and we will be working more with them, obviously because they have expanded their base. They have multiple interests in multiple areas and are a fantastic partner."