4 ms·
Nvidia makes a lot more sense than AMD; it is better for the market (preserving some competition in x86), and at least Intel does something Nvidia doesn’t.
by bee_rider 2y ago
Nvidia makes a lot more sense than AMD; it is better for the market (preserving some competition in x86), and at least Intel does something Nvidia doesn’t.
- adventured 2y agoChina and the EU would never allow an Nvidia Intel merger, not under any scenario the US would find acceptable. They'll barely allow Nvidia to acquire anybody at this point, no matter how small. See recent EU response to Run:ai. Intel would be considered 100x worse.
- FredPret 2y agoWhy would China and the EU have input on a US merger?
- tiahura 2y agoDo they want to sell pentiums in China or EU?
- maeil 2y agoIf this is a rhetorical question, just make your point instead. If not, look up e.g. Microsoft 's purchase of Activision, both US companies.
- Cumpiler69 2y agoBecause Intel, AMD, etc have offices in EU and China, for sales, distribution and also R&D. If you intend to operate in those markets you need to comply with local regulations.
- adra 2y agoThe same reason as anything else. If the merger goes ahead with opposition from foreign markets, those markets can impose import tariffs or outright bans. Smaller markets may be ones these combined companies are willing to piss off, but not Europe. Their opposition is defacto a deal killer.
- corimaith 2y agoThey literally don't any serious homegrown alternative though, they'd be effectively forfeiting the AI race
- mnau 2y agoChina doesn't care. They are banned from buying western AI HW or making their own AI HW at TSMC/Samsung. They are pouring hundreds of billions to the semiconductor ecosystem. Huawei is trying to make establish domestic Ascend/MindSpore ecosystem, but they are limited by the SMIC process (~7nm). Amount of defects is allegedly rather high, but they are the only "official" game in town (other than smuggled NVIDIA cards or outsourced datacenters in Middle East).
- corimaith 2y agoThen the point about China trying to block a Nvidia merger doesn't really sense if they will be going their own path anyways. It would exist to try to harm Nvidia before their homegrown alternatives ramp up.
- mnau 2y agoNvidia is only one side of merger. The other is Intel. Intel does sell processors in China. Only AI is banned, not generic CPU (except HPC).
- Wytwwww 2y ago> Why Well they obviously would.. Also EU has promised various significant subsidies to Intel. They obviously has fabs in Ireland and building one in Germany and perhaps even Poland..
- lmm 2y agoThey wouldn't, but companies at this scale are global, regardless of where their nominal headquarters or stock listing is.
- CuriousCosmic 2y agoWhat do they do that Nvidia doesn't (and that Nvidia would care about)? They already do networking, photonics, GPUs, high speed interconnects, and CPUs. They are planning on selling their FPGAs (the Altera acquisition) to Lattice. The only things left are their fab ops, thunderbolt/usbc, wifi, and ble. Their fab ops would take over a decade of heavy investment to catch up to TSMC or Samsung and idk if even Nvidia is ambitious enough to take that on. Wifi and BLE could be good additions if they wanted to branch out their mellanox portfolio to wireless. Thunderbolt/USB C also might be worthwhile. But that IP is probably going to be cheaper to buy piecemeal so idk if it's worth it to buy the whole company outright.
- TheBigSalad 2y agox86 CPUs.
- mort96 2y agoYeah I wonder if maybe the x86 license is the most valuable art of Intel at this point...
- bee_rider 2y agoX86 cores remain pretty good at branchy, lightly threaded codes, right?
- CuriousCosmic 2y agoUnfortunately rights to the x86_64 license expire on the event of transfer of either company to a new owner.