Intel to licence x86?

[PeachGr]

Summary

 Intel is thinking to licence x86 for the first time since... almost forever it seems. Even counting AMD as the first and only, it's been more than 50 years (I think)

The approach will be different than arm's, that is giving blueprints, but more of a Lego approach (as the article suggests), for whatever that means

 

Quotes

Quote

Intel is making it easier for customers to create silicon in which x86, Arm and RISC-V cores will work together in a single processor.

...

Intel is taking a Lego-like approach to chip making in which customers will be able to create custom processors by mixing and matching Arm and RISC-V cores with licensed x86 cores, as an application warrants

...

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger is pursuing a manufacturing future, and licensing x86 could be a critical part of that transformation.

 

My thoughts

 I don't really know what a licence means, but it seems like we will have more players on the PC market. I can't imagine something like that to happen any time soon, because for a consumer standpoint, you will need to buy many components than a CPU, but the whole strategy, as the article suggests, is unclear for the time being.

I think that apple's M1 have shift a big margin of x86 market, to arm, and the Nvidia is also getting into the CPU game fast. Nvidia's stock market value is about 600 bln, compare to Intel's 193 bln. So I guess that the threat from ARM and risk-V architectures, have put some pressure to Intel.

 

Sources

 https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/14/intel_x86_licensing/

[da na]

...and companies will have to pay Intel annually, or once to use it? If it's annually that'll be incredibly profitable for Intel in the long run. 

[PeachGr]

7 minutes ago, Mel0nMan said:

...and companies will have to pay Intel annually, or once to use it? If it's annually that'll be incredibly profitable for Intel in the long run. 

Article suggests that the plan is to use their fabs to make their CPU, but they haven't finalize a plan from my understanding

[BabaGanuche]

How will Intel deal with the 64 bit stuff that they licensed from AMD?

[svmlegacy]

That explains the acquistion of VIA's x86 license a few months ago.

[Arika]

31 minutes ago, PeachGr said:

x86, Arm and RISC-V cores will work together in a single processor

that could be very interesting

[leadeater]

Just remember x86 and AMD64/x86_64 are different things, Intel can only issue licenses on x86 i.e 32bit, AMD own 64bit.

[GDRRiley]

will this mean intels Itanium will come back. if so I'm sure everyone will love that

 

[porina]

It hasn't been clear ever since Intel announced this last year exactly what would be included or not. My best guess is that Intel will allow you to include an existing Intel core design in a silicon design which may also include other stuff such as other architecture cores. The Intel cores are building blocks so presumably would be covered under whatever existing cross-license deal they have with AMD. It is not a new architecture design offering. It might be like semi-custom x86, in that you can configure LLC sizes a bit, or the IO.

 

2 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

will this mean intels Itanium will come back. if so I'm sure everyone will love that

I still wonder what computing would be like today had we got a native 64-bit implementation as standard rather than the extension approach.

[porina]

 

Must have read this at the time but forgot.

[Brooksie359]

10 hours ago, leadeater said:

Just remember x86 and AMD64/x86_64 are different things, Intel can only issue licenses on x86 i.e 32bit, AMD own 64bit.

Doesn't that make this pretty useless then? I guess if they could somehow get the license from amd as well for 64bit they could make something out of it. 

[leadeater]

4 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

Doesn't that make this pretty useless then? I guess if they could somehow get the license from amd as well for 64bit they could make something out of it. 

Depends who's doing what etc, not much different to TSMC if you are just a 3rd party fab customer. But that said 32bit isn't useless, you can use x86 cores in SoCs etc for things just fine, it's all really down to what is the SoC for, what the x86 core are for etc.

[porina]

6 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

Doesn't that make this pretty useless then? I guess if they could somehow get the license from amd as well for 64bit they could make something out of it. 

Presumably this is covered by the existing agreements thus no new agreement is needed. Intel remains the designer and manufacturer of those x86 cores. The minor difference being instead of selling cores as part of a stand alone CPU package, they're selling cores as part of a silicon offering. The contacting party is not designing x86 cores, more like integrating them into their use case at a silicon level.

 

It is probably more legally complicated than I made out above, but you can be sure if there was even the slightest question of legality about it, lawyers would be deployed.