Last year, Intel and ARM reached a collaboration agreement, where both companies shared their processor manufacturing technologies to accelerate the development of ARM chipsets. Now, the results of this joint effort are about to be revealed, as Intel announced at the ARM Tech Con 2017 conference that the first ARM chip developed in collaboration will be launched to the market by the end of 2017.
In fact, the Cortex-A55 architecture released by ARM in mid-2017 is already based on Intel’s 22nm FFL, achieving a main frequency of 2.35GHz (at 0.45V) on smartphones.
The first ARM chip developed in this collaboration uses the new generation Cortex-A series processors, which are manufactured using Intel’s new 10nm HPM process. The new generation ARM chip will have a main frequency of up to 3.5 GHz with a power consumption of 0.875W. According to foreign media TPU, the ARM architecture SoC based on Intel’s 10nm HPM process will be available by the end of this year.
Currently, Intel’s 14nm process is already used in Spreadtrum’s x86 mobile chips, but the x86 architecture has constrained Intel, making it difficult for them to expand in the consumer market. However, this time Intel will not sell the new ARM chip themselves but will only manufacture it for OEM manufacturers. According to current information, LG will be one of the first companies to use the ARM chips manufactured by Intel.
It seems that Intel is still wary of the previous collaboration between Qualcomm and Microsoft, where the Snapdragon 835 and Windows 10 formed a perfect union, which could impact Intel’s desktop processor production line. If they do not act soon, they might miss out on opportunities. Intel’s ambition to enter the mobile processor market has not yet been realized, so they are trying to collaborate with Apple for significant projects while ensuring that their leading desktop processor market remains unaffected, thus they have to leverage all their expertise.
It is unclear why Intel’s 10nm process suddenly matured 
, and the same concept process is three years ahead of Samsung and TSMC. While this sounds impressive, everyone knows that real progress in technology must be reflected in product performance. Therefore, Intel understands that without tangible products, all news is just speculation, and they must work closely with ARM to quickly produce products to further expand their market in the mobile sector.
However, for Intel to truly dominate various consumer markets, they first need to eliminate their habit of incremental improvements and consider how to collaborate with Apple to challenge Qualcomm’s monopoly.
