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Qualcomm Wants to Buy Intel
- LarsDu88 2y agoThis would not be good for either party. And Qualcomm would only do this to kill x86 prematurely which I'm sure AMD will pick up on.
- osnium123 2y agoChina will block this deal from ever happening.
- electronbeam 2y agoWhat would motivate this
- Arn_Thor 2y agoWhat’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.
- osnium123 2y agoYes. This would also give more volume for the existing Intel factories.
- qwytw 2y ago> 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.
- Arn_Thor 2y agoI did say “the optimistic scenario”, not “the only/likely scenario”
- electronbeam 2y agoIf that were true they’d denial-of-service every possible merger
- kube-system 2y agoGeopolitically you can't ixnay everything, you've got to pick your battles.
- pwython 2y ago"So, why is Qualcomm under so much pressure? China is one significant reason. China is one of their critical worldwide markets and both the US and China governments seem to be increasing pressure on various US companies, including Apple, Qualcomm and Google." https://www.rcrwireless.com/20230911/uncategorized/kagan-how-qualcomm-is-dealing-with-growing-china-problem https://www.rcrwireless.com/20230911/uncategorized/kagan-how...
- quantum_state 2y agoFrom some perspective, governments of the big markets are like gangsters…
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ectospheno 2y agoHow exactly would a foreign power block two US companies from merging when it has no significant stock holding in either?
- osnium123 2y agoChinese regulators have a say because both companies do business in China.
- onepointsixC 2y agoSame way China blocked Intel from acquiring Tower Semiconductor.
- wahern 2y agoTIL: https://www.reuters.com/technology/intel-walk-away-54-bln-acquisition-tower-semiconductor-sources-2023-08-16/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/intel-walk-away-54-bln-ac...
- mlyle 2y agoSame way Europe exercises outsized antitrust influence in the US: threatening to fine US entities, and if necessary deny them access to the European market. It would be tricky, though, because my sense is that China still needs Intel/Qualcomm more than they need China. At the same time, it would be pretty deadly to be denied access to that market and your products subject to excess tariffs if imported by others.
- shortsunblack 2y agoTo the poster, Europe does not exercise outsized antitrust influence in the US. Many of these companies have their tax residency in the EU. There is no need to "deny" anything. If the company gets fined and it refuses to pay the fine, EU seizes the money in one of many bank accounts in Europe.
- mlyle 2y ago
- melling 2y agoYeah, Intel is really cheap. It would be a steal.
- jovial_cavalier 2y ago>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.
- qwytw 2y ago> flagging chips business Is it "flagging", though? Intel still seems to be pretty good at designing chips and their next gen laptop chips (made at TSMC) are allegedly more power efficient than the Snapdragon Elite (of course remains to be seen). It's the foundry that's dragging down.
- zeusk 2y agoIf 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.
- onepointsixC 2y agoIFS has just announced Amazon as a customer with a design on 18A. Microsoft is also expected to tape out one design. They’re not going to challenge TSMC this decade, but becoming the #2 fab 2030 is achievable.
- jovial_cavalier 2y agoThe 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.
- 015a 2y agoWasn't there some clause in the Intel/AMD x86-64 cross-licensing deal which voids it if either company changes ownership? I have some recollection of that being a thing. But to be fair, Qualcomm might not care.
- electronbeam 2y agoDeals can be amended for $$ The idea is to keep the number of x86 suppliers low, but enough patents are expired already you could probably make an x86_64 avx2 era cpu without asking
- geerlingguy 2y agoQualcomm still hasn't shipped any of the Snapdragon X dev kits, two months and counting. If they can't deliver on their promises (that and CoPilot PCs having very disappointing sales), how could they do anything besides further drag down Intel? Not only that, it sounds like a major customer (Apple) is close to finally ditching Qualcomm's wireless chips? (At least that's been rumored [1]) [1] https://appleinsider.com/articles/24/07/24/apple-has-reportedly-dropped-qualcomm-modems-on-two-2025-iphones https://appleinsider.com/articles/24/07/24/apple-has-reporte...
- inquirerGeneral 2y ago[dead]
- cowmix 2y agoWhen this platform was heralded as the “AI” desktop, I pre-ordered both the dev kit and a laptop. Like many of you, I’ve experienced a months-long delay in the delivery of the dev kits. Although I STILL don't have my devkit, I received my laptop pretty much on time. -- and I quickly discovered that despite Windows on ARM (WOA) being over a decade old, the support for open-source tooling is as complete as Swiss cheese. Key Python modules are missing, and even the Git command-line (git bash) client isn’t functional yet! I mean, forget about basic open-source development, let alone performing AI inference work on your new Snapdragon laptop. After some digging, I’ve learned that just four overworked developers in Prague make up the core team unclogging this tooling dependency log-jam. Gah! For what it’s worth, WSL2 (Linux on Windows) actually runs quite impressively on the Snapdragon X.
- nine_k 2y agoWhy run Windows on ARM, when Linux on ARM is so.much more mature? Or are you buildings a Windows-specific product?
- cowmix 2y agoMy plan was to run the laptop Windows and the 'devkit' Linux. This first batch of laptops (AFAICT) can NOT dual boot. My thinking is this, if Windows ARM is a success -- there will be more units out there that can ALSO run Linux too. If Windows ARM is a failure, then Linux will suffer too.
- Narhem 2y agoIs there a patent or something Qualcomm is trying to get from Intel? Seems like an odd acquisition otherwise. As far as chip manufacturing they target different markets, I’d bet most IP isn’t transferable between the orgs anyway, especially since Apple bought Intels modem patents already.
- klyrs 2y agoA... single patent? No, there are licensing agreements for that.
- WheelsAtLarge 2y agoIntel has focused on manufacturing efficiency for years now. Their innovation abilities have been lacking. A combination of Qualcomm and Intel will be a powerhouse. Intel as an entity will disappear but Qualcomm will be the stronger for it. I doubt Intel will go for it but I hope it happens.
- qwytw 2y ago> Their innovation abilities have been lacking And Qualcomm's haven't? What did they really design besides the Snapdragon X Elite in the last 10+ years? > but I hope it happens So more industry concentration and even less competition would somehow be a good thing?
- mewse-hn 2y ago> What did they really design besides the Snapdragon X Elite in the last 10+ years? The Snapdragon 8 series have been the flagship SoCs for non-Apple phones for years, that's why people had high hopes for the Snapdragon X on PCs
- qwytw 2y ago> The Snapdragon 8 series They "just" are just using standard ARM cores which is hardly comparable to what Intel and Apple are doing (and they have been lagging behind Apple by a few years since forever; arguably Intel is closer to the M series than Qualcomm is to A series). > Snapdragon X I thought it's because they finally designed their own core, since ARM has been completely ignoring the laptop market and couldn't really offer anything?
- silisili 2y agoSnapdragons have mostly been reference ARM designs with Adreno bolted on being the big selling point, since it blows away Mali or whatever the reference design is today. They got that from AMD of all places, hence the name being an anagram of Radeon.
- packetlost 2y ago
- ChrisArchitect 2y ago[dupe] Some more discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41604817 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41604817
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- MattGrommes 2y agoQualcomm consists of at least 4 lawyers for every engineer. If this happens expect a lot more lawsuits making anything involving hardware much more expensive for everybody.
- Narhem 2y agoQualcomm makes lots of their money by holding a monopoly on wireless chip patents. They use lawyers to bully other companies out of the space. You can compare this with the patent wars of the companies in Silicon Valley which came to halt when the orgs realized they were effectively giving money to lawyers instead of innovating. Qualcomm doesn’t really have real competition in Southern California. It’s cheaper for them to bully smaller companies with lawyers than employ more engineers (not sure if it’s possible to employ more engineers in the wireless space regardless). You could also argue Qualcomms success is related to the other companies which reside around them. They have effectively built an “office moat” with their wireless patents.
- slt2021 2y agoso Qualcomm is basically Oracle?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Narhem 2y agoSort of, in Northern California there was a lot of office space. In San Diego most of the land zoned for office space is owned by the Jacob brothers (although not directly connected to Qualcomm anymore). Imagine if Google and Apple had to rent their campuses from Oracle.
- refulgentis 2y agoNo way, 4x?!
- jjtheblunt 2y agoNot plausible. I worked at Qualcomm for several years in engineering and office of the chief scientist, and that would be insane inversion of division headcounts.
- gunalx 2y agoI really don't see it. Maybe a merger of some sort but still. Has Qualcomm anything to gain from taking intel, and likewise intel from being merged in?
- lagadu 2y agoThey might just split and sell off the cpu and gpu divisions and keep the rest of Intel's (very wide) portfolio. Of particular interest might be the Intel foundries.
- kev009 2y agoThe headline seems intentionally bombastic and false. The text specifies that they are interested in lines of business, for example consumer computing, not the entire entity.
- fidotron 2y agoI wonder if Intel still have a suitable Arm architecture license that would be transferable? It seems unlikely without Arm approval, but a bundle could offset some of the cost Qualcomm might be thinking about, as that lawsuit might be getting too expensive, even for them. For context: https://www.reuters.com/technology/arm-qualcomm-legal-battle-seen-disrupting-ai-powered-pc-wave-2024-06-10/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/arm-qualcomm-legal-battle...
- GeekyBear 2y agoAfter a decade of being assured that the short support window for Android devices had a root cause in the lack of support device makers received from Qualcomm, they are the last company that I want to see buy Intel.
- bfrog 2y agoMeanwhile 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.
- dan-robertson 2y agoHistorically 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.
- loeg 2y agoThe ISA isn't what makes x86 easier for operating systems to support than ARM SoCs. It's things like generic ACPICA instead of hardcoded devicetrees.
- gjsman-1000 2y agoSome ARM systems (mainly servers) do support ACPI; allowing for one image to run on multiple processors and devices. However… ACPI is apparently a pretty awful thing to implement. When it doesn’t work, or mistakes are made (looking at my own 13th gen HP laptop right now - borked ACPI tables means unpatchable broken sleep on Linux), then it’s pure frustration. Device trees on the other hand are much more binary. Either everything generally works or it doesn’t at all. It’s a valid approach.
- onepointsixC 2y agoA sale isn’t going to happen. Intel has had a rough quarter but their lunar lake launch looks promising, beating Qualcomm’s offerings on battery life and performance.
- snitty 2y agoThe issue long term is that Lunar Lake is built on TSMC, so Intel is netting a fraction per chip of what they'd make if they made it themselves. Intel is currently investing $7B a quarter into getting their foundries competitive again, and it's not clear yet that they'll be able to really do so at scale. And even if they do, it's not clear whether those foundries can effectively serve customers that aren't Intel. The reason people trust TSMC to make their chips is because TSMC isn't making a competing chip. If I come to an Intel Foundry with my design and work with them to spin up some new capability to get the features to work right, there isn't much of anything that stops Intel Chips from using that new capability to compete with me in a year.
- ginko 2y agoQualcomm should be broken up.
- xmly 2y agogood joke
- tippytippytango 2y agoApple, 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!!
- osnium123 2y agoIt’s very hard to get semiconductor factories to work. In almost all cases, it’s better to let the professionals at TSMC to do the fab than to rely on newbies to the foundry industry.
- monocasa 2y agoThey already made the investment playing king maker for TSMC; I doubt they want to start that over for no real reason.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- dzonga 2y agoselling intel to Qualcomm, would the equivalent of selling yourself to a vampire instead of selling blood. the reason Apple ended up making their own wireless chips is due to Qualcomm
- knowitnone 2y agoI want Apple to buy Intel so they can own their fabs. Instead of a billion going to TSMC, spend the billion to fix the fabs and the next several billion is profit.
- incognition 2y agoUS gov already put 20Bn into Intels fabs.
- nadist 2y ago[dead]
- nadist 2y ago[flagged]
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 2y agoStrange timing - Qualcomm just announced hundreds of layoffs literally yesterday: https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/19/chipmaker-qualcomm-lays-off-hundreds-of-workers-in-san-diego/ https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/19/chipmaker-qualcomm-lays-of...
- nativeit 2y agoThis doesn’t mean they’re broke, it just means they don’t value institutional memory and experience as much as they do cash and dividends.
- rldjbpin 2y agoas 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.
- icar 2y agoThis is potentially bad news for open source kernels. They do lots of work there.
- Woodi 2y agoHow are MS and Qualcomm finances related ? They look like good budies with no visible reason. And if they are close then MS can have their own cpus. Win4ever !!!11 :) But it's possible plain silicon is outdated and Intel stuff was splitted for a reason, eg. "photonics" part goes to "datacenter" division, fabs can be spun off and re-named any second. But it's USoA ! - if you win military contract you live OK for few years and do not sell out suddenly like Sun - they did it just instantly after loosing military contract. Or maybe they (Sun managers) was preparing it 2 years ahead when dey bought Mysql :) Just theoretising :)