The outfit could actually put the fear of God into Qualcomm as it pushes Intel's 14nm FinFET process technology, for both the low- and high-end mobile chips into China.

If you have never heard of them that is not exactly surprising -- the outfit company plans to launch in 2016. Spreadtrum's first chips will use ARM-based octa-cores. That processor will be made by using Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.'s 16nm process technology.

Leo Li, chairman and CEO of Spreadtrum, told EE Times that using Intel as its foundry has apparently superseded its potential adoption of Intel Architecture in future mobile chips.

Intel's $1.5 billion investment in Tsinghua Unigroup resulted in the Chipzilla owning 20 percent of China's combined Spreadtrum and RDA.
Li said that he was under no obligation to use Intel technologies unless they prove to be competitive on the market." But that's not to say that Li isn't interested in a war chest full of Intel's technologies, and it appears he is. Chipzilla does have some sexy tech in this area.

Li sees Spreadtrum's role as "an external force" to change Intel's culture and mentality. He believes Spreadtrum can help commercialise a lot of technologies that haven't gone beyond Intel's R&D lab.

Spreadtrum will use Intel's mobile chip SoPHIA to gauge "customer engagement" and if its customers like SoPHIA he will buy it.

But this does mean that the Intel Architecture-based SoCs that Spreadtrum and Intel were supposedly developing together which should be out this year slipped.