[dead]
Qualcomm Wants to Buy Intel
91–100 of 109 posts
Re: Qualcomm Wants to Buy Intel
#92[flagged]
Re: Qualcomm Wants to Buy Intel
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Apple … has been working on it in secret for years. I keep hoping Apple will release a MacBook with a 5G chipset. The rumors are saying their in house one will ready in 2026 at the earliest. It sure seems like a long road given they bought the intel RF division in 2019.
My understanding is that Intel's chips weren't great and making power efficient 5g chips is wildly difficult. Thus ends my understanding of these issues, though.
And Qualcomm patents. I just don't see how you can patent anything related to complying with a radio spec, there has to be limited ways to comply
Re: Qualcomm Wants to Buy Intel
#94Strange timing - Qualcomm just announced hundreds of layoffs literally yesterday:
https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/19/chipmaker-qualcomm-lays-of...
Re: Qualcomm Wants to Buy Intel
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> stronger domestic player Is it though? Qualcomm is more likely to just strip Intel for parts than to turn it around and we'll just end up with more market concentration and less competition.
I did say “the optimistic scenario”, not “the only/likely scenario”
Re: Qualcomm Wants to Buy Intel
#96Apple, c’mon. Get in there and just buy intel. Get the foundry working, spin out x86 into its own legacy, fabless business unit. Make your own chips, it’s only 100B!!
They already made the investment playing king maker for TSMC; I doubt they want to start that over for no real reason.
Re: Qualcomm Wants to Buy Intel
#97>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.
The federal government is clearly ok with supporting a TSMC transition to the states. Something tells me though that they are willing to throw a lot of money at Intel if Intel is willing to fill the same niche that TSMC does currently.
That the chips currently produce more return than foundries is expected - it’s an established business. The foundries require much more up front investment. However the chips side of business has recently begun to show some cracks.
The foundries side of the business is in a different phase of life. It currently needs some TLC but has the potential to be totally ascendant at some point in the future. Assuming snapdragon is more interested in a chips business than a foundries business… it would just make sense to split them. There is tension with both under one roof as it is.
Re: Qualcomm Wants to Buy Intel
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
nobody is a saint on this matter. both parties act the way they do to support their business position.
short-term support helps qualcomm sell more because their customers want to sell more phones to the same users. on the other hand, for the industrial partners there is an "LTS" model of support given (side effect being fairphone 5 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37320800).
long-term support through backwards compatibility helps intel because they can sell new chips with the assurance that the ancient, unmaintained industrial software continues to run in a shinier box.
Re: Qualcomm Wants to Buy Intel
#99as outlandish as it sounds, there might be a better chance of this happening than the arm deal. the only reason being that both companies are registered in the same country, where the other parties would have a harder time blocking things.
Re: Qualcomm Wants to Buy Intel
#100This is potentially bad news for open source kernels. They do lots of work there.