Intel would consider making silicon for rivals, saying that any proposal to use its manufacturing capacity to make chips based on a non-Intel processor core would trigger an “in-depth discussion,” according to Reuters (http://macte.ch/LXUUO).
“There are certain customers that would be interesting to us and certain customers that wouldn’t,” Chief Financial Officer Stacy Smith told journalists after an investor event in London on Thursday. “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. 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.”
Smith said, however, that such a proposal was “not in the works today,” and the prospect of making chips for others was not driving Intel’s investment in capacity, notes “Reuters.”
