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

Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

tomshardware.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 638 posts

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#61

Post by baq »

fidotron wrote: post #37
Panzer04 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you wanted to acquire Intel you'd do it now. Maybe Intel's future products are garbage and they do worse - but the upside seems pretty high otherwise. This seems like a bit of a firesale price to acquire an advanced fab and CPU maker. Sure, it's Intel and they haven't been doing great, but companies with solid reliable outlooks don't trade this cheaply. Ofc I would kind of hope/expect antitrust to object given tha…

> If you wanted to acquire Intel you'd do it now. Intel still has to go through a lot of reorg (i.e. massive cuts) to get to a happy place, and this is what their succession of CEOs have been procrastinating over.

Judging by my linkedin feed the 'a lot of reorg' is underway.

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#62

Post by vjvjvjvjghv »

qzw wrote: post #31

Remember when Microsoft invested in Apple when Apple was down in the dumps? This is giving similar vibes. That deal was arguably what saved Apple near its nadir. I’m not a fan of Intel’s past monopolistic practices, but for the sake of sustaining competition in the CPU/GPU market, I hope this deal works out for them even half as well as the MS deal did for Apple.

All they need now is a CEO like Steve Jobs…

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#63

Post by tremon »

qzw wrote: post #31

Remember when Microsoft invested in Apple when Apple was down in the dumps? This is giving similar vibes. That deal was arguably what saved Apple near its nadir. I’m not a fan of Intel’s past monopolistic practices, but for the sake of sustaining competition in the CPU/GPU market, I hope this deal works out for them even half as well as the MS deal did for Apple.

I don't think that's an apt comparison, given that Microsoft and Apple were more direct competitors than Intel and Nvidia; the latter have a more symbiotic relationship. I think the rationale is closer to the competitor of my competitor is my friend -- they face two threats by AMD growing larger in the CPU market:

- a bigger R&D budget for their main competitor in the GPU market

- since Nvidia doesn't have their own CPUs, they risk becoming more dependent on their main competitor for total system performance.

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#64

Post by Retric »

imiric wrote: post #46
JonChesterfield wrote: post #29

I can think of _nothing_ with a better shot at unseating nvidia than a merger with intel. Fingers crossed for ever closer union between the two.

You can't be serious. Intel was well on its way to be a considerable threat to NVIDIA with their Arc line of GPUs, which are getting better and cheaper with each generation. Perhaps not in the enterprise and AI markets yet, but certainly on the consumer side. This news muddies this approach, and I see it as a misstep for both Intel and for consumers. Intel is only helping NVIDIA, which puts them further away from uns…

Mergers where one company is on the verge of failing can be a net positive for consumers. Most obviously this happens when banks fail and people’s bank cards still work etc and at least initially the branches stay open.

Intel isn’t at that point, but the companies trajectory isn’t looking good. I’d happily sacrifice ARC to keep a duopoly in CPU’s.

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#65

Post by JCM9 »

Intel is a strategically important company for the United States. This smells like a token investment to appease the US government. Not saying it’s bad, but very much looks like that.

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#66

Post by euLh7SM5HDFY »

Panzer04 wrote: post #15
ur-whale wrote: post #7

5B is a fairly tiny stake (Intel's market cap is around 120B), other than the "we're now working together" signal, why is this news?

tbf, If I were Nvidia and antitrust wasn't an issue I'd be tempted to buy the whole thing. Intel has a market cap just 2.5% of NVDA, so you could give away just 2.5% of your stock to buy the entirety of Intel. It's bonkers.

If that happened I would expect the same success story as with Boeing-McDonnell Douglas merger.

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#67

Post by geertj »

delfinom wrote: post #30
hvb2 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be 100% Trump to have Nvidia buy Intel and then announce how good of an investment decision he made by buying a slice of intel. USA, where the federal government is picking winners and losers by making risky stock bets with public money.

Not even the government at this point. The oligarchs are now in full control of the US and are dividing up their kingdoms. The plans for glulags for detractors are also being placed.

> The plans for glulags for detractors are also being placed.

This needlessly divisive and devoid of any factual basis. No gulags will exist and you know it.

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#68

Post by wheybags »

I wonder what this means for Intel's Arc lineup. Would be a bit crazy to have privileged access to a competitor's roadmap through just owning a chunk of them. I also have to admit I really hope they dont cancel them. A triopoly is at least better than a duopoly (or realistically, a monopoly as AMD's competitiveness in gpus is pretty questionable)

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#69

Post by voxadam »

nabla9 wrote: post #14
ur-whale wrote: post #7

5B is a fairly tiny stake (Intel's market cap is around 120B), other than the "we're now working together" signal, why is this news?

In terms of voting stock, they become the biggest owner after US Commerce Department. As customer they get better access to Intel Foundry and can offload some capacity from TSMC.

> In terms of voting stock, they become the biggest owner after US Commerce Department.

As I understand it the government's shares are non-voting.

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#70

Post by alex1138 »

I know AMD used to be lacking but these days I guess they're probably the go-to on Linux because they share changes with the community

I don't like the idea of using Intel given their lack of disclosure for Spectre/Meltdown and some of their practices (towards AMD)

Post reply on HN