Is Japan Gunning for Intel?

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Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) finally has a rival not named Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD). Or does it?

Japanese business magazine Nikkei Business News reports that a mighty pack of household-name technology firms have joined forces to create a groundbreaking new microprocessor standard. The all-star list of contributors includes Toshiba, Panasonic (NYSE: PC), Hitachi (NYSE: HIT), and Canon (NYSE: CAJ) -- a list of adversaries that would strike fear into the heart of anybody, including the mighty Intel.

But I'm not so sure the Japanese are out for Intel's blood. The new chip architecture is targeted at "a range of consumer electronics, servers, robots and cars" and will include innovative power management features. The development team is headed up by Dr. Hironori Kasahara, a professor at Waseda University whose research specializes in parallel computing -- running a program on several processors at once to improve performance.

The Japanese government will contribute a modest $40 million or so to the chip project, and the rest is up to Hitachi, Panasonic, and their cohorts. By the end of 2012, we should see shipping products. But even then, Intel shouldn't panic. Japan isn't really attacking its territory.

Yes, Intel and AMD already sell multi-core processors that work like a gaggle of separate chips, and that profligacy will only increase over the next few years. But the pair of American innovators likes to focus on desktop, laptop, and server systems more than on controllers for robots, cars, and consumer electronics. If there is an obvious rival for the Japanese collaboration, it would be ARM Holdings (Nasdaq: ARMH), whose technology shows up in everything from smartphones to Blu-ray and DVD players.

And this is, after all, a new technology that probably won't be compatible with Intel's long-running x86 technology. I'd be surprised to see Toshiba selling laptops built around this new project, and you're not likely to get Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Windows running on it anyway. So rest easy, Intel investors. Japan is gunning for somebody else.

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