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Qualcomm Wants to Buy Intel

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Re: Qualcomm Wants to Buy Intel

#51

Post by bfrog »

GeekyBear wrote: post #47

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.

Meanwhile x86 has maintained backwards compat for (checks calendar) yeah decades. Literally decades. With standards up the wazoo to avoid the disaster that is the Arm ecosystem without UEFI or something like it.

Every Arm SoC being a snowflake needing special attention by the OS is a huge hassle. There's a reason there's no simplified Arm installer for operating systems.

Re: Qualcomm Wants to Buy Intel

#52

Post by wmf »

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?

Snapdragon laptops have been available for a few weeks already. Although laptops cost more than this dev kit they're also more usable as a daily driver. If Qualcomm wants real adoption they'd send them out for free, not require devs to pay.

Re: Qualcomm Wants to Buy Intel

#53

Post by silisili »

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

Snapdragons have mostly been reference ARM designs with Adreno bolted on being the big selling point, since it blows away Mali or whatever the reference design is today. They got that from AMD of all places, hence the name being an anagram of Radeon.

Re: Qualcomm Wants to Buy Intel

#54

Post by ASalazarMX »

GeekyBear wrote: post #47

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.

Intel squandered its dominance on the CPU market for decades. Qalcomm sucking the remaining life of it would be a fitting end for a player that lost its way.

Wonder if the increasing backwards compatibility became too much to bear, but IMO it never really tried to tread new grounds for risk of losing a comfortable position.

Re: Qualcomm Wants to Buy Intel

#56

Post by dan-robertson »

bfrog wrote: post #51
GeekyBear wrote: post #47

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.

Meanwhile x86 has maintained backwards compat for (checks calendar) yeah decades. Literally decades. With standards up the wazoo to avoid the disaster that is the Arm ecosystem without UEFI or something like it. Every Arm SoC being a snowflake needing special attention by the OS is a huge hassle. There's a reason there's no simplified Arm installer for operating systems.

Historically this backwards compatibility was a competitive moat for intel – having a large supply of weird instructions with some undocumented behaviour thrown in makes it more expensive to make competing chips.

Re: Qualcomm Wants to Buy Intel

#58

Post by overstay8930 »

mlyle wrote: post #37
shortsunblack wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the poster, Europe does not exercise outsized antitrust influence in the US. Many of these companies have their tax residency in the EU. There is no need to "deny" anything. If the company gets fined and it refuses to pay the fine, EU seizes the money in one of many bank accounts in Europe.

Europe absolutely exercises significant antitrust influence upon US firms. In practice, yes, as you point out: US firms must have assets in Europe to compete effectively. But even if they didn't, Europe could deny access to the European market. So there is no reason to try and minimize surface in Europe. e.g. Apple has to comply with European antitrust rulings about app store access, even if Apple were to just sell t…

> Europe could deny access to the European market

Not really, Apple would just get customers the same way they’re sold in any other part of the world that doesn’t officially have iPhones (i.e. Russia), the EU doesn’t have the authority to seize shipments purely based on a violation of the DMA.

Re: Qualcomm Wants to Buy Intel

#59

Post by jprd »

Wytwwww wrote: post #44
packetlost wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

I imagine Apple would disagree.

Re: Qualcomm Wants to Buy Intel

#60

Post by onepointsixC »

zeusk wrote: post #49
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.

IFS has just announced Amazon as a customer with a design on 18A. Microsoft is also expected to tape out one design. They’re not going to challenge TSMC this decade, but becoming the #2 fab 2030 is achievable.
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