In this year's Intel developers conference, but mixed reality equipment Alloy, the most striking message than Intel announced authorization agreement with ARM, I'm afraid. As is known to all, the PC era of Intel processor chips occupied most of the PC market, the market share, and now the traditional PC industry overall decline, affected by the Intel are beginning to panic.
Intel in the second quarter of 2016, according to the results of Intel's second-quarter net profit was $1.33 billion, compared with $2.706 billion over the same period last year dropped 51% - shrinking PC market for Intel had to seek a new breakthrough. In chips, announced in collaboration with the ARM is not without reason. Intel's x86 architecture chip PC domain, and ARM chips in the mobile market in one side, has not come on Intel architecture of chip design competition. According to market research firm Strategy Analytics data, by the end of last year, Intel in the global market share of only 1% of mobile phone chips, compatibility and question let cooperation manufacturers also gradually began to give up the power consumption of Intel's mobile chip purchasing. Not long ago, Intel announced that halted the code-named Broxton and Sofia two Atom series chip product line development, which means Intel architecture has not much competition in the mobile market.
A strong incoming generation of labor market
Give up research and development for mobile chips, however, does not mean that Intel is going to give up this huge mobile market cake. In the previous CEO Paul otellini's planning, in order to keep up with the PC era demand huge chip demand, Intel to built several factories around the world in order to solve the problem of insufficient capacity. And shrinking PC market let most factories is unsustainable and Intel had to seek spare resources way out. CEO Brian found Nick is born by Intel production department, so he made the decision to a large extent is in order to solve the excess capacity. Choose baseband chips and SoC chip foundry is higher margin choice, for the two types of components for foundry can bypass the ARM the authorization problem, Intel will naturally find ARM seek cooperation.
Since the chip industry is introduced into the fin type field effect transistor (FinFET) after each wafer foundry companies such as samsung name on their process was no longer meet the objective measurement of the gate line width of a single crystal. From a semiconductor manufacturer Linley Group and Techinsights actual analysis, Intel, TSMC with samsung in the 14th and 16th nano process on the actual gate 2 line width of actually didn't reach its call number. According to the data showed that 16 nm TSMC process of gate line width is 30 nanometers, samsung, the actual measurement of the second generation of 14 nm process gate line width is 20 nanometers, Intel 14 nm process measurement results in the two institutions of 20 to 24 nano respectively.
We can see that Intel transistors process on the 14 and 16 nano process compared with other two OEM companies have certain advantages, can foresee in the "against" 10 nanometers, Intel was able to continue to lead. Intel announced in collaboration with the ARM at the same time, also means that South Korea's second-largest mobile phone maker LG as its first cooperation manufacturer, will use the company's contract manufacturing 10 nm process of mobile phone chips, has opened a good start.
The possibility of a contract
Earlier, Japan's softbank technology giant paid $31 billion for the UK mobile ARM chip design company, softbank chief executive masayoshi son at explain buy reason when it comes to the ARM of the Internet of things in the future development opportunities. ARM movements have already in the field of Internet of things, from 2013 ARM's acquisition of Finland iot software startups Sensinode began, in the year to spend $350 million to buy the UK startup Apical, ARM has made steady progress in the Internet of things industry every year, and the ARM chip, the advantage of low power consumption and the Internet of things intelligent device have higher fit.
In mobile chip market after losing to Intel for the development of the Internet of things, you need to such an ally. Intel microprocessors Quark and released earlier on the Internet of things device operating system began to fade out the status of x86 architecture, to turn to the ARM architecture, and Intel has admitted the ARM chip is more suitable for smart devices. After rival ARM to ally now, be helpful for the further integration of technical resources, also paved the way for Intel to send LiWei processor.
Not only that, the ARM after unified mobile chip architecture market territory, ARM to push into server market. Before but not very well, the way of the partnership with Intel, not only can optimize their through patent cross-licensing chip architecture, also benefit into enterprise chip market, ARM processor can be further improved in the server market competitiveness. It is expected to enter the personal computer market plan, also is likely to be the ARM on the agenda.
Seems this cooperation is a win-win business, but has been controlled most of the market share of Intel server chip will answer the depth of cooperation, the market of this kind of threat to their own is still questionable. If the ARM in turn threaten their main business, Intel may cooperation will become a flash in the pan. But for now, the two together can integrate the r&d and patent resources, is helpful to promote the development of technology of semiconductor industry.
