Intel to anchor rival chip designer Arm's IPO?

As Arm designs become more popular with enterprise, Intel could be eyeing an investment in its erstwhile rival.

techmonitor.ai/, Jun. 13, 2023 – 

Intel could be the anchor investor in the upcoming IPO of UK chip design giant Arm, it has been reported. The two companies produce competing semiconductor architectures, but have been working together in recent months.

Arm is expected to join the Nasdaq market in the US later this year, with parent company SoftBank hoping to raise $8-$10bn in the float. It decided to take the company public again after a proposed takeover by Nvidia was blocked by regulators.

Now Intel is said to be in talks with SoftBank about anchoring the listing, according to Reuters, which cites a source familiar with the discussions.

How Intel and Arm became best of pals The companies are two of the most important players in the chip design space, but traditionally operate in different sections of the market. While Arm's low-power, high-efficiency designs have underpinned the mobile revolution and now power the majority of mobile devices, including the iPhone, Intel's x86 architecture has remained dominant in PCs. However, the signs are there that this could be changing. Apple has switched away from Intel to its own in-house silicon, designed on Arm architecture, for its Macbook laptops, while Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon said in November he expects to see the company's Arm-based Snapdragon chips to be prevalent in Windows PCs by 2024. In the data centre, where x86 designs from Intel and AMD have traditionally reigned supreme, Arm chips are also making inroads. Amazon's AWS has its own range of Arm-based Graviton processors which are used to power a large chunk of its cloud servers, while its hyperscale rivals Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud have been making silicon from Ampere Computing, based on Arm blueprints, available to their customers. As Arm designs thrive, Intel has been experiencing a series of bumps in the road as it transitions to its new IDM 2.0 business model, which will see it manufacture designs for third parties as well as its own chips. In April, it was announced Intel and Arm were teaming up to optimise Intel's 18A process technology for producing Arm-based chips.

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