Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Qualcomm Approached Intel About a Takeover in Recent Days

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 80 posts

Re: Qualcomm Approached Intel About a Takeover in Recent Days

#61

Post by icedchai »

Dalewyn wrote: post #38
chasil wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMD developed the 64-bit instruction set, so perhaps they could keep it. I'm sure there would be plenty of lawfare, though.

Intel and AMD literally cannot manufacture x86 CPUs without the other, their cross-licensing and dependencies go both ways beyond amd64. If Qualcomm somehow actually convinces Intel to sell, that means Intel is immediately out of business because all they (could) make are x86 CPUs. AMD would likewise become a zombie overnight with only their Radeon GPUs remaining on their catalog. It's far more likely for AMD to come…

You know agreements can be amended, right? Nothing is set in stone when big money is involved.

Re: Qualcomm Approached Intel About a Takeover in Recent Days

#62

Post by phonon »

NAHWheatCracker wrote: post #37
high_na_euv wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel has this many ppl because they are like AMD+TSMC 76k+26k=102k

AMD+TSMC revenue was almost $100 billion in 2023. Intel was $54 billion. They shouldn't have 20k more people with half the revenue.

It was $79 Billion in 2021...

Re: Qualcomm Approached Intel About a Takeover in Recent Days

#63

Post by phonon »

Dalewyn wrote: post #38
chasil wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMD developed the 64-bit instruction set, so perhaps they could keep it. I'm sure there would be plenty of lawfare, though.

Intel and AMD literally cannot manufacture x86 CPUs without the other, their cross-licensing and dependencies go both ways beyond amd64. If Qualcomm somehow actually convinces Intel to sell, that means Intel is immediately out of business because all they (could) make are x86 CPUs. AMD would likewise become a zombie overnight with only their Radeon GPUs remaining on their catalog. It's far more likely for AMD to come…

Patents on x86-64 are long expired....did Intel really use much else from AMD?

Re: Qualcomm Approached Intel About a Takeover in Recent Days

#64

Post by Dalewyn »

icedchai wrote: post #61
Dalewyn wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel and AMD literally cannot manufacture x86 CPUs without the other, their cross-licensing and dependencies go both ways beyond amd64. If Qualcomm somehow actually convinces Intel to sell, that means Intel is immediately out of business because all they (could) make are x86 CPUs. AMD would likewise become a zombie overnight with only their Radeon GPUs remaining on their catalog. It's far more likely for AMD to come…

You know agreements can be amended, right? Nothing is set in stone when big money is involved.

Whoever wants to buy out Intel needs to convince both Intel and AMD that the subsequent arrangement will be better than the monopoly-but-not-a-monopoly they enjoy today.

I'm willing to bet AMD would sooner spend money bailing Intel out to keep that going first before entertaining thoughts about sharing their cake.

Re: Qualcomm Approached Intel About a Takeover in Recent Days

#65

Post by EasyMark »

tazu wrote: post #18
synergy20 wrote: post #14

Intel is 1/3 of AMD by market cap but 6x the employee, that's 18x difference. If QCOM takes over INTC, they might need let a LOT go to revamp it, like 80% of them.

Letting 80% go seems to have worked for X.

Letting go of 80%of intel’s employees and the company is dead in weeks other than a skeleton crew of lawyers, bean counters, and top level execs stuffing their golden parachutes with maximum parachute.

Re: Qualcomm Approached Intel About a Takeover in Recent Days

#66

Post by mcphage »

tazu wrote: post #25
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If by worked you mean "the site isn't dead", yes. If you mean more "profitable", I don't think that's true, is it?

Setting aside the political reasons for less advertising revenue, it's still running and there are 200M DAU. Many ex-employees swore the servers would catch fire by now.

It really doesn’t work well. But it has the advantage in that, if some messages just don’t appear… well, you don’t really notice.

Re: Qualcomm Approached Intel About a Takeover in Recent Days

#67

Post by ksec »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #35
tazu wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Setting aside the political reasons for less advertising revenue, it's still running and there are 200M DAU. Many ex-employees swore the servers would catch fire by now.

Judging by how unreliable it has been ever since, there's likely constant firefighting going on.

Not my experience at all. It is faster and has slightly more feature since.

Re: Qualcomm Approached Intel About a Takeover in Recent Days

#68

Post by ksec »

Only mentioned it abut two weeks ago [1] it would be great if Qualcomm buy it as whole and not certain parts. And two months [2] ago about Intel being attractive as an acquisition target.

Qualcomm currently has close to zero Server revenue. And they have already failed twice to enter that market. Intel on the other hand has plenty of expertise and network. Potential synergy with GPU for a top to bottom mobile to datacenter GPU design. There isn't a single GPU vendor who does that currently. Qualcomm also has the expertise in both Digital and Analog custom chip design which is extremely useful for telling the Intel Fabs what they need to work and deliver on.

Qualcomm is probably the top 5 most hated company on HN. This skewed most opinions, but they were also the number 1 spot on spending R&D to revenue ratio in the tech sector for many years.

I would have been 100% supportive of the move if Steve Mollenkopf was still the CEO or at least Chairman of Qualcomm. But I guess he will now be very busy at Boeing. Not so sure about current CEO Cristiano Amon if he could lead the new Qualcomm + Intel.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41467574

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41144020

Re: Qualcomm Approached Intel About a Takeover in Recent Days

#69

Post by ywvcbk »

ksec wrote: post #68

Only mentioned it abut two weeks ago [1] it would be great if Qualcomm buy it as whole and not certain parts. And two months [2] ago about Intel being attractive as an acquisition target. Qualcomm currently has close to zero Server revenue. And they have already failed twice to enter that market. Intel on the other hand has plenty of expertise and network. Potential synergy with GPU for a top to bottom mobile to data…

> There isn't a single GPU vendor who does that currently

Nvidia technically? Of course Switch/Tegra is extremely outdated but they are developing a replacement.

Re: Qualcomm Approached Intel About a Takeover in Recent Days

#70

Post by ywvcbk »

tazu wrote: post #18
synergy20 wrote: post #14

Intel is 1/3 of AMD by market cap but 6x the employee, that's 18x difference. If QCOM takes over INTC, they might need let a LOT go to revamp it, like 80% of them.

Letting 80% go seems to have worked for X.

Twitter is just a relatively simple website, though. They aren’t doing anything particularly complex or innovative and aren’t releasing any new products.

It could survive for years in maintenance mode as long as people continue using it.

Post reply on HN