Intel manufacured 32-bit ARMv5 chips via a unit originally acquired from DEC in '97. It was sold to Marvell 10 years ago. It's hard to see how any of this would help Intel create competitive ARMv8 server-class chips, but you're right, given their market hold of their x86 chips they clearly have the means to do it. However it would probably take a significant amount of time, and they would have real competition. Sadly, I don't think they'll be investing into server-class 64-bit ARMv8 chips, and that's a mistake. CPUs are a commodity now, and the architecture wars are largely irrelevant with a heavy push towards OSS stacks. It's a race to the bottom, and ARM chips are going to be simpler for the same amount of performance, and that means ultimately cheaper.