AMD, Intel, and a slew of tech companies are teaming up to fend off ARM chips

Nothing brings rivals together like a common enemy, and in this case it’s the rise of ARM pulling Intel and AMD closer together than ever. The two chip makers — not exactly the friendliest frenemies — are the headlining members of a new x86 Advisory Group to try and defend the platform’s interests against ARM, which finally appears poised to challenge x86’s dominance.

The alliance includes a long list of other founding members including Microsoft, Google, and Meta, as well as Lenovo, the company that hosted the announcement at its Tech World 2024 conference in Bellevue, Washington. This morning’s keynote featured appearances by AMD CEO Lisa Su as well as Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, who unsurprisingly said that the x86 architecture is “alive and well.”

According to a press release, the stated goal of the advisory group is to “enhance compatibility, predictability and consistency across x86 product offerings.” The group intends to ask for input from x86 hardware and software developers and hopes to create “simplified architectural guidelines” to help standardize interfaces across AMD and Intel’s product lines.

That’s a worthwhile goal, but you also don’t have to read too hard between the lines to see the new group as an effort to reassure developers, customers, and (maybe mostly) investors that these companies — essentially the only two makers of x86 chips — are Doing Something about ARM. Integrated chips based on ARM architecture are on the rise: Apple fully transitioned from Intel chips to ARM-based Apple silicon midway through last year, and after a decade of failed attempts Qualcomm is finally proving that it can make a good ARM chip for Windows machines.