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Intel sells stake in chip designer Arm Holdings
- dudeinjapan 2y agoBummer this was the most valuable part of Intel.
- lbourdages 2y agoI feel like this is the exact opposite of what they should be doing. They should start producing ARM chips. They could finally get a piece of the smartphone market, which would not cannibalize their x86 sales (which I assume is the reason why they have refused to use ARM since the sale of xScale).
- mepian 2y agoFirst, how does selling stock prevent them from doing that? Second, switching to Arm doesn't automatically give them a competitive microarchitecture for smartphones.
- lbourdages 2y agoI agree it doesn't prevent them, but if they were to join the ARM train, I don't think they would have sold. Does Intel have a competitive microarchitecture in Pc chips at the moment? Arguably, no, they stay afloat with brand recognition and OEM deals.
- ksec 2y agoMay be they are simply selling the ARM stock now because it is over priced?
- high_na_euv 2y ago>I don't think they would have sold. Because?
- ffgjgf1 2y ago> Does Intel have a competitive microarchitecture in Pc chips at the moment? Arguably, no Their last gen laptop chips seem to be pretty competitive both with AMD and Qualcomm. They moved some of the manufacturing to TSMC though… Intel seems to be pretty decent at designing chips but not very good at making them these days.
- asplake 2y agoLet Intel and ARM be Intel and ARM. Investors can diversify or hedge without Intel’s help.
- Ozarkian 2y agoThe problem is that the barrier to entry to producing ARM processors isn't that high. ARM will allow anyone who is paying the licensing fee to become a licensee, and then you can build at TSMC or Globalfoundries or any other fab that will take you. Intel can't compete in that market. The margins are too low: they're organized and staffed to a higher margin business. They're used to the high operating margins of x86. Now that their competition (mainly AMD) has become competent in the past ten years and x86 is decreasing in importance, they're losing their main competitive advantage.
- lbourdages 2y agoWhat's their way out then? Pray that AMD messes up and stops making competitive chips?
- jaredhallen 2y agoWhat if they used their resources and expertise to push RISC-V into a position that it could compete in the mobile and datacenter markets?
- dartos 2y agoYou mean intel? Then they’d be moving into an even lower margin business. If you mean ARM… then they’d be helping the competition
- farseer 2y agoThey can do that with ARM as well, the license cost won't bother Intel. The parent argument regarding lack of margins stands.
- ffgjgf1 2y agoWhat would they ever gain by that? If they can’t build decent x86 chips when they only have a single competitor switching to an inferior architecture (in the sense that it would require massive investment for it to catch up with x86) with no entry barriers for new competitors would be one of the most absurd things they could ever do.
- mojosam 2y agoA lot of people don’t remember that Intel was a huge early ARM licensee. If you were building a smart mobile device 25 years ago, you were probably seriously considering the Intel StongARM SoC. They then followed up on this with the more advanced ARM XScale family of SoCs, which you’d likely use if wanted to build a ARM battery-powered smart device in the early 2000s. Background per Wikipedia: > The StrongARM is a family of computer microprocessors developed by Digital Equipment Corporation and manufactured in the late 1990s which implemented the ARM v4 instruction set architecture. It was later acquired by Intel in 1997 from DEC's own Digital Semiconductor division as part of a settlement of a lawsuit between the two companies over patent infringement. Intel then continued to manufacture it before replacing it with the StrongARM-derived ARM-based follow-up architecture called XScale in the early 2000s. However, after developing and manufacturing these for nine years, Intel exited this business by selling their ARM unit to Marvell. Intel was developing its own “low power” x86 chip, the Atom, and decided to put all its mobile eggs in that basket, which unfortunately was never as low power as comparable ARM designs. I suspect Intel also saw that the number of licensees in the ARM market was growing and competition along with it, their value-add wasn’t that great, and their margins were necessarily smaller due to the ARM licensing fees.
- rbanffy 2y agoI remember they, at some point, sold their perpetual license (was it with the Marvel deal?). Before that, IIRC, they didn’t need to pay volume-based licensing to make their ARM variants.
- childintime 2y agoIntel is not under the impression that ARM is winning the architecture battle, you are. But did you know there are many new core designs every year, and that very few of them are from ARM? Second, it's very likely that your smartphone won't be ARM starting in the next few years. You'll notice when your battery suddenly lasts longer.
- runjake 2y agoWhat are these new core designs, if not ARM? What will be replacing ARM in smartphones in the next few years? If you’re going to say RISC-V, what leads you to believe that huge performance and power leaps will take place from what RISC-V is today?
- rwmj 2y agoSo Qualcomm's Arm-based laptops that last 2-3 times longer than the equivalent x86 laptops is just a figment of everyone's imagination?
- ffgjgf1 2y ago> So Qualcomm's Arm-based laptops that last 2-3 times longer than the equivalent x86 laptops Do they though? Anything to back this up? They seem to last 10-20% than Meteor Lake chips with somewhat better CPU performance and worse GPU.
- ffgjgf1 2y ago> But did you know there are many new core designs every year, and that very few of them are from ARM? Really? It took years for Qualcomm to become competitive with ARM’s cores again. Besides them and Apple what else is there? (Ampere I guess, but they are still insignificant and in an entirely different segment)
- rbanffy 2y agoMaking ARM would make very little sense. In x86 they have to differentiate against AMD. With ARM they need to differentiate and compete with the whole rest of the industry. It’s also symbolic - Intel’s goal is to outcompete ARM (and AMD, Nvidia) in personal computers and the datacenter market. Divesting from ARM Holding sends a signal there is no upside for Intel coming from ARM’s progression up the processor chain.
- ffgjgf1 2y agoToo late for that. Smartphone SoCs is a low margin business that controlled by Qualcomm (or in-house like Apple, Google and Samsung to some extent) on the high-end and it would absurd for Intel to try and compete for the low-end/budget market. Yeah, they had the chance to dominate the ARM market with XScale but that ship has long sailed. Also how is having a small, insignificant stake in ARM itself related to this anyway?
- late2part 2y agooutsource core competencies, sell good investments, deliver flawed projects, ride the hype that your CEO once was involved in a historical CPU. Maybe it's time to buy puts on INTC.
- shiroiushi 2y agoIntel just keeps going farther down the drain, much like another American mainstay, Boeing. At least Intel isn't killing hundreds of people in fiery crashes, or having pieces of their CPUs falling off during use.
- yourusername 2y ago> or having pieces of their CPUs falling off during use. Instead they were commiting suicide by requesting 1.6 volts so they can push 250 watts to win some benchmarks and die in 6 months.
- datavirtue 2y agoJudging by some of the CPU issues coming out of Intel these days, the fiery crashes are not far off. I remember learning about CPU design and manufacure as a kid and was absolutely astounded that any of this shit could be made to work in a practical way. In my eyes Intel was immaculate perfection.
- dartos 2y agoI felt the same way about car engines
- DebtDeflation 2y ago> outsource core competencies I was shocked when I learned that the majority of the Meteor Lake CPU is made by TSMC and that for the next gen Lunar Lake due in September EVERYTHING except the base tile (which is just a 22nm PCB) will be made by TSMC.
- ajb 2y ago
- 2809 2y agoThis isnt to surprising. They need money to continue their transition to their new Royal CPU baseline and frankly everyone and their dog is now in the ARM market, if they want to see growth its time to move onto something else.
- cedws 2y ago[flagged]
- high_na_euv 2y ago>x86 needs to die. Because?
- Two4 2y agoIt's an ISA designed last century. It's time to stop tacking on extensions and build something better.
- high_na_euv 2y agoName traits that new ISA would need to have that would bring significant improvements
- sieabahlpark 2y ago[dead]
- mepian 2y agoArm was also designed last century.
- Two4 2y agoI'm not criticizing ARM, I'm criticizing x86.
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- underlogic 2y agoYou know, I do believe this ship may sink.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- klelatti 2y agoDon’t read too much into this. Tiny stake that’s not material in terms of Intel’s finances. Bought at the time of Arm’s float to show confidence in Arm and that Intel is a key partner - which it wants to be in the shape of Intel Foundry. Changes nothing material in the relationship. More of a tidying-up exercise with a small profit than anything else. Edit: This is a much more interesting story on the development of the Softbank / Arm / Intel relationship. SoftBank scraps AI chips tie-up plan with Intel. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41265804 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41265804
- blotterfyi 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- whiterknight 2y agoHN often gets caught up in emotional highs and lows. Remember the talk here about Facebook in 2021? I’m feeling bullish.