In an announcement made at the Intel Developer Forum held in San Francisco on Tuesday, bigwig chip manufacturer Intel said that it has signed a new licensing agreement with rival ARM Holdings, for producing ARM-based chips in Intel factories.

According to the announcement, the licensing agreement reached by Intel and ARM will pave the way for the production of 10-nanometer (10nm) ARM chip designs at Intel’s advanced fabrication facilities. The agreement underscores Intel’s strategy aimed at smartphone chipmakers.

In their joint press releases announcing the collaboration, Intel and ARM said that the agreement will enable Intel Custom Foundry to use its forthcoming 10nm FinFET platform for the fabrication of chip designs based on ARM's Artisan Physical IP.

The Intel-ARM partnership will evidently unfold new foundry options for chipmakers like Qualcomm -- and potentially Apple -- beyond current industry bigwigs Samsung and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC).

Meanwhile, about the licensing agreement with Intel, ARM said: "The initial POP IP will be for two future advanced ARM Cortex-A processor cores designed for mobile computing applications in either ARM big.LITTLE or stand-alone configurations.”