James Delahunty
26 May 2011 16:31
Intel CFO reveals firm would consider producing non-Intel silicon chips for selected customers.
Speaking to journalists after an investor event in London, Intel chief financial officer Stacy Smith said a proposal to use the company's manufacturing capacity to produce chips that were not based on Intel processor cores would trigger an in-depth discussion, depending on the specifics.
"There are certain customers that would be interesting to us and certain customers that wouldn't. If Apple or Sony came to us and said: 'I want to do a product that involves your IA (Intel architecture) core and put some of my IP around it,' I wouldn't blink. That would be fantastic business for us." Smith said.
"Then you get into the middle ground of 'I don't want it to be a IA core, I want it to be my own custom designed core,' and then you are only getting the manufacturing margin, and that would be a much more in-depth discussion and analysis."
Architecture developed by Intel is at the core of the vast majority of all PCs in the world, and Intel remains far ahead of its competition in that area, having just announced its new "3D" transistor technology that will let it produce faster chips that consume less energy.
In the growing market for portable gadgets such as smartphones and tablet computers however, Intel has fallen far behind, while architecture developed by ARM dominates the market.