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I 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 ma

I 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 ago
First, 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 ago
  I 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 ago
    May 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 ago
Let Intel and ARM be Intel and ARM. Investors can diversify or hedge without Intel’s help.
Ozarkian 2y ago
The 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 ago
  What's their way out then? Pray that AMD messes up and stops making competitive chips?
  - jaredhallen 2y ago
    What 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 ago
      You 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 ago
      They can do that with ARM as well, the license cost won't bother Intel. The parent argument regarding lack of margins stands.
    - ffgjgf1 2y ago
      What 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 ago
A 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 ago
  I 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 ago
Intel 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 ago
  What 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 ago
  So 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 ago
Making 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 ago
Too 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?

mepian 2y ago

First, 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 ago
I 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 ago
  May 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 ago

Let Intel and ARM be Intel and ARM. Investors can diversify or hedge without Intel’s help.

Ozarkian 2y ago

The 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 ago
What's their way out then? Pray that AMD messes up and stops making competitive chips?
- jaredhallen 2y ago
  What 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 ago
    You 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 ago
    They can do that with ARM as well, the license cost won't bother Intel. The parent argument regarding lack of margins stands.
  - ffgjgf1 2y ago
    What 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 ago

A 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 ago
I 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 ago

Intel 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 ago
What 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 ago
So 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 ago

Making 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 ago

Too 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?