Intel's plan to license x86 cores for chips with Arm, RISC-V and more inside

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www.theregister.com, Feb. 14, 2022 – 

Intel has shed some light on how it hopes customers will create single-package processors in which x86, Arm and RISC-V cores work together.

For that, Intel will license its most important asset, the x86 architecture, to those who want to make custom silicon. Depending on the application, customers will be able to mix up x86, Arm and RISC-V CPU cores as well as hardware acceleration units in a custom-designed chip that Intel fabricates.

"We have what we call a multi ISA strategy. That's the first time in Intel's history we'll license x86 soft cores and hard cores to customers who would like to develop chips," Bob Brennan, vice president of customer solutions engineering at Intel's Foundry Services, told The Register.

A soft core being a CPU core that can be implemented in programmable logic, such as an FPGA, or in a specific application chip you're designing, whereas a hard core is a black-box design placed within a custom chip. Simply put, a soft core is useful for prototyping and special circumstances, and a hard core is most useful when you want to make a production-grade part.

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