Intel is the largest supplier of x86 based processors. The company has been, unsuccessfully, trying to enter the mobile market with its lower power Atom processors. 

Now, in a highly ironic move, Altera – Intel’s partner – announced at the ARM conference that the largest semi-conductor company in the world will be making its quad-core 64-bit ARM chips from next year.

“Altera and Intel are pleased with the early results of the relationship between the companies and this announcement from Altera is consistent with the agreement we announced earlier this year. We have said that we will be open to manufacturing competitive architectures and would evaluate them on a case by case basis,” said Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy.

Intel has always been ahead in the fabrication process compared to its competitors. While Qualcomm, Nvidia, and Samsung are using TSMC’s 28nm HKMG process for building their latest ARM chips, Intel is already using the 22nm fabrication process for its Haswell processors.

The bigger deal is that Intel is looking to open its factories to build chips for Apple, Nvidia and others to compete with its chief competitor – TSMC.

The chip that Intel will be making from next year won’t be used in smartphones or tablets, but in a device called field-programmable gate array. So, Intel won’t be directly competing with Qualcomm, Samsung and others directly, at least next year.

Via – Wall Street Journal