Intel Corp. said it will halt spending on new fab and facility expansion programs in Poland and Germany temporarily and establish a separate board of directors for its foundry operations in continuation of its reorganization plans and as part of efforts to revitalize the business.

The company also intends to conduct an initial public offering for Altera, the FPGA business it acquired years ago, and sell some of its shares in the business in an operation similar to the floating of Mobileye, the advanced driver-assistance systems and autonomous driving division.

The details, laid out in a message to employees but which was simultaneously sent out as a press statement from CEO Patrick Gelsinger, included many of the actions observers said the company was likely to take following news the board of directors had held a special meeting last week. Some observers were expecting Intel to split into separate independent businesses.

By Bolaji Ojo

Intel Corp. says its acquisition plans for Tower Semiconductor have been cancelled.

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
The world’s biggest automotive chip suppliers – Robert Bosch, Infineon Technologies, Nordic Semiconductor, NXP Semiconductors, and Qualcomm – have banded together to “invest in a company aimed at advancing the adoption of RISC-V globally by enabling next-generation hardware development.” Why now and what does it mean for the future of Arm.

RISC-V scored a major coup with the announcement that some of the electronics industry’s biggest suppliers of automotive semiconductors have teamed up to set up a joint venture focused on the open standard instruction set architecture.

Infineon Technologies AG, Nordic Semiconductor, NXP Semiconductors, Robert Bosch and Qualcomm said the the JV, based in Germany, would be equally shared among them as a “single source to enable compatible RISC-V based products, provide reference architectures, and help establish industry standards,” according to the group’s spokesperson.

The company will focus initially on automotive applications while apparently leaving room for further expansion into other product areas, including mobile and IoT.  Nonetheless, the announcement’s seismic impact will likely affect, first and foremost, automakers and tier ones.