Intel’s chief executive has held talks with AMD’s about where the two chipmakers might cooperate, according to reporting on a recording of a fireside chat he gave in San Francisco on October 24.
The executives did not disclose which areas were under discussion. But the conversation is a measure of how far Intel has shifted from a strategy built entirely around its own processor roadmaps toward one that adapts silicon to whatever a particular customer wants.
Speaking at the annual dinner of a Chinese-American semiconductor professionals association, the Intel executive argued the market is large enough for rivalry and partnership at once, and that no company can build everything alone.
He described a business that should tolerate more than one bet. He wants two or three future lines, among them custom silicon for specific workloads, packaging and physical AI, to each reach roughly a tenth of revenue. Photonics and advanced packaging sit inside that push.
On process, he said the company’s 18A node is in volume production and that work on 14A is running ahead of schedule. Design kits are the yardstick the market watches most closely, because customers cannot tape out without them. Version 0.5 is already out, 0.9 comes next, and a full 1.0 release is due early next year.
He also said Intel must win back leadership in server processors, a position it lost to AMD over several product generations.
The company reports third-quarter results on October 29, when investors will be looking for evidence that external foundry customers are actually signing up rather than merely testing.
