Arm is the technology company of the moment. Or at least one of them. The chip designer rose to great heights in the cell phone business, and now a number of license holders are trying to turn ARM processors into something more computer-like. Most notable among them is probably Apple, which is using the M1 chip in its MacBooks and new iMacs, but Amazon, Microsoft, and Nvidia, a potential buyer of ARM, are all in the game as well.

But Intel has a plan. It offers flexibility that has been largely ruled out because of oppressive x86 licensing and Intel's reluctance to share in the past. That is, after all, what Arm offers. It allows companies to design chips as they see fit and leave unneeded functionality on the cutting-room floor.

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger told shareholders at the most recent earnings call that offering customers and "Cummingle" chips could change opinions in the ongoing x86 vs. Arm debate. 5]

Intel is licensing x86 to design its own products, CEO Gelsinger responded, "The simple answer to the last part of your question is yes."

He added, "We are not going to be a party to the x86 debate, but we will be a party to the x86 debate.

"We believe that allowing our customers to leverage x86 in this way will be a meaningful shift in how people think about ARM and x86," Gelsinger continued (via Seeking Alpha). Gelsinger continues (via Seeking Alpha). One of the reasons is that, as I explained, they didn't offer a flexible design for comingle IP. So they were trying to do their own design. They did not have a good x86 option. We offered a standard product with a lot of features, but especially for cloud companies, they said, "We don't use that particular feature; we don't need that. We can really optimize it with a few other features in the network and memory hierarchy." And now we're definitely saying come in and we're opening the door for our IP, our leading process technology and packaging technology"

.

Intel announced last month that it will invest $20 billion in fab expansion and create an independent Intel Foundry Services to manufacture chips for its customers. This is a way for companies to gain access to x86 cores, which Intel once strongly advocated along with Arm and RISC-V chips.

As the strap says, "If you can't beat your enemy, join your enemy." The main advantage here is that customers also have access to Intel's manufacturing facilities.

This is certainly a shift for the company and may be just what it takes to keep the arm away from the door. Intel and AMD are feeling a bit of pressure from Arm, no doubt exacerbated by the potential acquisition from Nvidia.

"There are trillions of lines of code optimized for x86," Gelsinger explained.

"It's a strong ecosystem, and it continues to have very good innovation and capability."

So don't kick x86 to the curb just yet. After all, AMD has been in Intel's shadow for a long time and has just turned the performance pendulum back in its favor with Ryzen and EPYC chips. It may be some time before Arm gets serious attention, at least for us gamers, but as long as Nvidia is looking at that possibility, I wouldn't bet against Arm playing a more significant role in gaming.

Intel sharing more factory space would be good for the ongoing chip shortage. However, a quick solution is not expected.