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At that point if it will be trouble for Intel it would be a death sentence for AMD... Intel has fabs, yes it’s what maybe holding them back atm but it also a b

At that point if it will be trouble for Intel it would be a death sentence for AMD... Intel has fabs, yes it’s what maybe holding them back atm but it also a big factor in what maintains their value. If x86 dies and neither Intel nor AMD pivot in time Intel can become a fab company they already offer these services, yes no where near the scale of say TSMC but they have a massive portfolio of fabs and their fabs are located in the west, they also have a massive IP portfolio related to everything form IC design to manufacturing.

skohan 6y ago
AMD also has a GPU division.
- dogma1138 6y ago
  Intel makes more money selling their WiFi chipsets than AMD makes on selling GPUs heck even including consoles...
  - shrewduser 6y ago
    got a source for that? sounds hard to believe.
    - dogma1138 6y ago
      Computing and Graphics which includes the Radeon technology group revenue for AMDs last quarter was £1.67B industry estimates are that $1.2-1.3B were from CPU sales. Intel’s Internet of Things group alone revenue last quarter was $680M and they hit $1B IOTG revenue previously https://www.statista.com/statistics/1096381/intel-internet-of-things-group-revenue/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1096381/intel-internet-o...
nickik 6y ago
AMD makes great designs, switching to ARM/RISC-V would make them lose value but not kill them.
- dogma1138 6y ago
  And Intel doesn’t?
api 6y ago
How hard would it be for AMD to make an ARM64 based partly on the IP of the Zen architecture? Seems like AMD could equal or beat M1 if they wanted.
- moonbug 6y ago
  "Seattle". tried it, couldn't meet perf targets, canned it.
- phkahler 6y ago
  >> Seems like AMD could equal or beat M1 if they wanted. Sometime around 5? years ago AMD was planning to have an ARM option. You'd get essentially an ARM core in an AMD chip with all the surrounding circuitry. They hyped it so much I wondered if they might go further than just that. Further? Maybe a core that could run either ISA, or a mix of both core types. I dunno, but they dumped that (or shelved it) to focus on Zen, which saved them. No doubt the idea and capability still exist within the company. I'd like to see them do a RISCV chip compatible with existing boards.
- Joe_Cool 6y ago
  They already have that: https://www.amd.com/en/amd-opteron-a1100 https://www.amd.com/en/amd-opteron-a1100 Didn't sell very well.
oldgradstudent 6y ago
> Intel can become a fab company Not unless they catch up with TSMC in process technology. Otherwise, they become an uncompetitive foundry.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  The point is Intel can't compete as a fab or as a design house. It's doubtful if Intel would have been able to design an equivalent to the M1, even with access to TSMC's 5nm process and an ARM license. Which suggests there's no point in throwing money at Intel because the management culture ("management debt") itself is no longer competitive. It would take a genius CEO to fix this, and it's not obvious that CEO exists anywhere in the industry.
  - altcognito 6y ago
    AMD looked just as bad not so long ago.
    - oblio 6y ago
      Plus even though Intel has been super fat for 3 decades or so, everyone has predicted their death for at least another 3 decades (during their switch from memory to CPUs and then afterwards when RISCs were going to take over the world). So they do have a bit of history with overcoming these predictions. We'll just have to see if they became too rusty to turn the ship around.
    - dogma1138 6y ago
      AMD looked far worse... if Intel is “dying” with a yearly revenue of ~$70B or so AMD should’ve been bankrupt 10 times already. Intel is managing to compete in per core performance while being essentially 2-3 nodes behind, and generating times the revenue of their competitor. Zen is awesome and we need more competition but Intel isn’t nearly as far behind as it was during the P4 days and it’s revenue is nearing ATH and it’s business more diversified it ever been, if you exclude the datacenter and client computing groups it still is bringing in more revenue than AMD.
  - 6y ago

skohan 6y ago

AMD also has a GPU division.

dogma1138 6y ago
Intel makes more money selling their WiFi chipsets than AMD makes on selling GPUs heck even including consoles...
- shrewduser 6y ago
  got a source for that? sounds hard to believe.
  - dogma1138 6y ago
    Computing and Graphics which includes the Radeon technology group revenue for AMDs last quarter was £1.67B industry estimates are that $1.2-1.3B were from CPU sales. Intel’s Internet of Things group alone revenue last quarter was $680M and they hit $1B IOTG revenue previously https://www.statista.com/statistics/1096381/intel-internet-of-things-group-revenue/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1096381/intel-internet-o...

nickik 6y ago

AMD makes great designs, switching to ARM/RISC-V would make them lose value but not kill them.

dogma1138 6y ago
And Intel doesn’t?

api 6y ago

How hard would it be for AMD to make an ARM64 based partly on the IP of the Zen architecture? Seems like AMD could equal or beat M1 if they wanted.

moonbug 6y ago
"Seattle". tried it, couldn't meet perf targets, canned it.
phkahler 6y ago
>> Seems like AMD could equal or beat M1 if they wanted. Sometime around 5? years ago AMD was planning to have an ARM option. You'd get essentially an ARM core in an AMD chip with all the surrounding circuitry. They hyped it so much I wondered if they might go further than just that. Further? Maybe a core that could run either ISA, or a mix of both core types. I dunno, but they dumped that (or shelved it) to focus on Zen, which saved them. No doubt the idea and capability still exist within the company. I'd like to see them do a RISCV chip compatible with existing boards.
Joe_Cool 6y ago
They already have that: https://www.amd.com/en/amd-opteron-a1100 https://www.amd.com/en/amd-opteron-a1100 Didn't sell very well.

oldgradstudent 6y ago

> Intel can become a fab company Not unless they catch up with TSMC in process technology. Otherwise, they become an uncompetitive foundry.

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
The point is Intel can't compete as a fab or as a design house. It's doubtful if Intel would have been able to design an equivalent to the M1, even with access to TSMC's 5nm process and an ARM license. Which suggests there's no point in throwing money at Intel because the management culture ("management debt") itself is no longer competitive. It would take a genius CEO to fix this, and it's not obvious that CEO exists anywhere in the industry.
- altcognito 6y ago
  AMD looked just as bad not so long ago.
  - oblio 6y ago
    Plus even though Intel has been super fat for 3 decades or so, everyone has predicted their death for at least another 3 decades (during their switch from memory to CPUs and then afterwards when RISCs were going to take over the world). So they do have a bit of history with overcoming these predictions. We'll just have to see if they became too rusty to turn the ship around.
  - dogma1138 6y ago
    AMD looked far worse... if Intel is “dying” with a yearly revenue of ~$70B or so AMD should’ve been bankrupt 10 times already. Intel is managing to compete in per core performance while being essentially 2-3 nodes behind, and generating times the revenue of their competitor. Zen is awesome and we need more competition but Intel isn’t nearly as far behind as it was during the P4 days and it’s revenue is nearing ATH and it’s business more diversified it ever been, if you exclude the datacenter and client computing groups it still is bringing in more revenue than AMD.
- 6y ago