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Qualcomm Wants to Buy Intel

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Re: Qualcomm Wants to Buy Intel

#41

Post by qwytw »

mewse-hn wrote: post #31
qwytw wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their innovation abilities have been lacking And Qualcomm's haven't? What did they really design besides the Snapdragon X Elite in the last 10+ years? > but I hope it happens So more industry concentration and even less competition would somehow be a good thing?

> What did they really design besides the Snapdragon X Elite in the last 10+ years? The Snapdragon 8 series have been the flagship SoCs for non-Apple phones for years, that's why people had high hopes for the Snapdragon X on PCs

> The Snapdragon 8 series

They "just" are just using standard ARM cores which is hardly comparable to what Intel and Apple are doing (and they have been lagging behind Apple by a few years since forever; arguably Intel is closer to the M series than Qualcomm is to A series).

> Snapdragon X

I thought it's because they finally designed their own core, since ARM has been completely ignoring the laptop market and couldn't really offer anything?

Re: Qualcomm Wants to Buy Intel

#42

Post by [deleted] »

freehorse wrote: post #40
wmf wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies should do what they say they're going to do, but these dev kits are an example of something that's relevant to HN but not to Qualcomm's business.

How can you expect your products to have good software support by developers then?

[deleted]

Re: Qualcomm Wants to Buy Intel

#43

Post by wahern »

onepointsixC wrote: post #14
ectospheno wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly would a foreign power block two US companies from merging when it has no significant stock holding in either?

Same way China blocked Intel from acquiring Tower Semiconductor.

TIL: https://www.reuters.com/technology/intel-walk-away-54-bln-ac...

Re: Qualcomm Wants to Buy Intel

#44

Post by Wytwwww »

packetlost wrote: post #32
qwytw wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their innovation abilities have been lacking And Qualcomm's haven't? What did they really design besides the Snapdragon X Elite in the last 10+ years? > but I hope it happens So more industry concentration and even less competition would somehow be a good thing?

> What did they really design besides the Snapdragon X Elite in the last 10+ years? Lots of 5G modems

It's pretty easy to design the best 5G modems when you're are almost (effectively) the only company that's legally allowed to make them. They are basically a monopoly...

Intel would be doing much better as well if they didn't have to share x86 with AMD and could sue ARM into oblivion...

Re: Qualcomm Wants to Buy Intel

#45

Post by fidotron »

I wonder if Intel still have a suitable Arm architecture license that would be transferable? It seems unlikely without Arm approval, but a bundle could offset some of the cost Qualcomm might be thinking about, as that lawsuit might be getting too expensive, even for them.

For context: https://www.reuters.com/technology/arm-qualcomm-legal-battle...

Re: Qualcomm Wants to Buy Intel

#46

Post by electronbeam »

015a wrote: post #9

Wasn't there some clause in the Intel/AMD x86-64 cross-licensing deal which voids it if either company changes ownership? I have some recollection of that being a thing. But to be fair, Qualcomm might not care.

Deals can be amended for $$

The idea is to keep the number of x86 suppliers low, but enough patents are expired already you could probably make an x86_64 avx2 era cpu without asking

Re: Qualcomm Wants to Buy Intel

#47

Post by GeekyBear »

After a decade of being assured that the short support window for Android devices had a root cause in the lack of support device makers received from Qualcomm, they are the last company that I want to see buy Intel.

Re: Qualcomm Wants to Buy Intel

#48

Post by cowmix »

wmf wrote: post #30
geerlingguy wrote: post #10

Qualcomm still hasn't shipped any of the Snapdragon X dev kits, two months and counting. If they can't deliver on their promises (that and CoPilot PCs having very disappointing sales), how could they do anything besides further drag down Intel? Not only that, it sounds like a major customer (Apple) is close to finally ditching Qualcomm's wireless chips? (At least that's been rumored [1]) [1] https://appleinsider.com/…

Companies should do what they say they're going to do, but these dev kits are an example of something that's relevant to HN but not to Qualcomm's business.

A large part of the success of this new platform is how fast devs can adapt / fix their apps to work natively. Apple, for instance, provided dev mules for OSX ARM --- and their rollout of Apple Silicon was smoother than anyone could have hoped.

Windows ARM -- still borked in SOOO many ways -- and its 10+ years old now.

Re: Qualcomm Wants to Buy Intel

#49

Post by zeusk »

jovial_cavalier wrote: post #7

>Is this how arm vs x86 ends? No... Intel isn't the only one that makes x86 processors and Qualcomm isn't the only one that makes arm. Separately, Intel should sell them the flagging chips business and keep the fledgling foundries business separate.

If you look at the financial statements, it's quite the opposite however?

Their chips made on TSMC process are doing quite well and IFS has failed to secure worthwhile external customers and is losing money in their expansion hand over first.

Re: Qualcomm Wants to Buy Intel

#50

Post by electronbeam »

Arn_Thor wrote: post #5
electronbeam wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would motivate this

What’s bad for US semiconductor manufacturing (I.e. a poor and cash starved Intel) buys China more time to catch up to frontier fab tech. If Qualcomm buys Intel, the optimistic scenario (for the US) is a stronger domestic player.

If that were true they’d denial-of-service every possible merger
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