Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan has raised the prospect of cooperation with AMD, the company's fiercest rival for decades — without saying what the two might actually work on together.

According to TechRadar, Tan discussed the potential partnership while laying out Intel's push into customized processors, advanced manufacturing, and the hunt for additional foundry customers. The possibilities span a wide range: a software collaboration, joint CPU work, or — most intriguingly — AMD as an Intel Foundry customer.

The foundry angle is the one with real strategic weight. Intel has bet its future on becoming a manufacturing hub for other chip designers, and landing AMD — which fabs its chips at TSMC — would be a landmark validation of that strategy. It would also mark a remarkable turn in one of tech's longest-running rivalries.

For now, it's a hint rather than a deal. But the fact that Intel's CEO is publicly floating cooperation with AMD at all says plenty about how the chip industry's old battle lines are being redrawn by the economics of advanced manufacturing.