An ARM and a leg (up): Why Intel and AMD are now worried about the new kid on the block

Rivalries are a normal part of human life, and few examples are better than the competition between Intel and AMD.

- By RICO MOSSESGELD

Both companies build CPUs, the hardware that serves as the brain of many computers. Both have passionate fans, who are happy to argue endlessly online about why this billion-dollar company is better than that other billion-dollar company. Tech companies like Acer are playing it safe adopting tech from Qualcomm, AMD, and Intel. Soon we will see other ARM-based manufacturers like MediaTek join the chip race.

Thanks to strong marketing like the famous "Intel Inside" campaign, and groundbreaking advances, Intel became a household name in the 1990s as the CPU maker. Techie Filipinos were also proud of Intel's factories in Makati and Cavite (both of which closed down in 2009).

In the last decade, however, AMD innovated its way out of being, for the much less considerate, the shrinking CPU option. While Intel's CPU market share still doubles its rival's, most reviewers recommend AMD across-the-board, with Intel winning honorable mentions as a good budget option. It's as if Pepsi suddenly flipped the script against Coke.

Both trajectories have done nothing to curb the online flame wars, as posts highlighting Intel- or AMD-related developments still trigger non sequiturs and ad hominems, with a sprinkling of genuine discussion hidden somewhere.

Recently, however, both AMD and Intel announced that they were collaborating to form an "x86 advisory group."

What is this group, and why are two long-time rivals working together on it?

Children of the x86