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.

What 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.

I mean, ARM designs have had some wins lately, but x86 still does quite well in single-thread performance, right? Excluding Apple, because they are magic—Amazon, Ampere, these ARM CPUs make a reasonable pitch for applications that use lots of cores well, but that isn’t every application.

x86 CPUs.

Yeah I wonder if maybe the x86 license is the most valuable art of Intel at this point...

X86 cores remain pretty good at branchy, lightly threaded codes, right?

Unfortunately rights to the x86_64 license expire on the event of transfer of either company to a new owner.

License for what? The patents have expired.

For the old stuff maybe, but they keep adding new stuff. AVX is from 2008, AVX2 from 2013.

How do you know those are encumbered? Intel invented them, after all....

The colliquial "x86 License" is the AMD-Intel Patent cross-licensing agreement. i.e. All patents related to x86 or any extensions of the ISA are automatically cross-licensed between the companies. While in the past the ISA patent story mostly was leaning in Intel's favor, since AMD64/x86_64 really took off, ISA innovation really became a delicate stack of cards interwoven between Intel and AMD.

So if Intel sells, everyone is fucked until whoever buys can renegotiate the terms of the agreement. And if that's Nvidia, they could just sit dead on the IP and starve AMD of the bulk of their CPU revenue (which is what is keeping the company solvent). And requiring they keep the agreement they currently have would mean requiring AMD to give Nvidia a pretty detailed look at the AMD secret sauce which would increasingly push AMD into the red until they become insolvent, again leading to a Nvidia monopoly.

The US government as well as the EU will not allow that to happen so however things slice, ownership of the x86 ISA patents would not be going to Nvidia.

So for the 2009 cross licensing agreement, change of control terminates the cross licensing for both parties[0]. Since there are far more Intel x86 patents in the last 20 years than AMD, sounds like AMD would be the one more at risk, which I think agrees with what you say. In practice, any anti-trust review if Nvidia is the buyer would prevent Nvidia from using it to harm AMD's business.

[0]https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-clar...

China 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.

Why would China and the EU have input on a US merger?

Because 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.

The 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.

They literally don't any serious homegrown alternative though, they'd be effectively forfeiting the AI race

China 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).

Then 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.

Nvidia 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).

> 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..

If this is a rhetorical question, just make your point instead.

If not, look up e.g. Microsoft 's purchase of Activision, both US companies.

Do they want to sell pentiums in China or EU?

They wouldn't, but companies at this scale are global, regardless of where their nominal headquarters or stock listing is.

Maybe they'll sell Intel to Northrop Grumman /hj

Boeing should buy Intel the way they bought McDonald Douglass. It's gonna be a success, trust me.

Hey I mean two negatives make a positive right? Can't possibly go any worse than it already is.

Probably should add GMC in there.

I heard they’re building a iOS / android replacement. Think of the vertical integration!

I’m picturing a boot-looping cargo plane full of hummers dropping like a stone — doesn’t get much more vertically integrated than that. Think of all the layers they can eliminate.

"Vertical velocity" is the new buzzword in professional businessing

What other US companies are equipped and interested in running a giant chip design/fab? NVIDIA and AMD are likely the only two candidates.

I do not at all think it will happen, nor does it make any sense at all but the rumours of Apple seemingly being interested in buying out Intel dont seem to be going away.

I can see them wanting certain parts of the business (GPU mainly) but on a whole it doesn't make a lot of sense.

I don't see Intel as a single entity being valuable to any US business really. You're essentially buying last years fall line, theres very little use for Intel's fabs without a huge amount being spent on them to get them up to modern standards.

It'll all come down to IP and people that'll be the true value.

Apple is interesting. They certainly have the money and I think the idea of fabricating their own chips appeals to Apple, but at then end of the day I don't really think it makes sense. Apple won't want to fab for others or design chips for others.

The only way it happens is if it is kept separate kind of like the Beats acquisition. Apple lends some chip designs to Intel and Apple starts fabricating their chips on Intel fabs, but otherwise the companies operate independently.

Micron Technology is the only one that comes to mind, but they are more on the memory side of things - the last time they were on level with Intel was in the 90s when they both made DRAM but intel pivoted to processors and networking

Apple is the obvious one. Essentially the only place with both the capital to do it and the extreme vertical integration enthusiasm. AMD hopefully still remembers running a fab.

The only thing that Apple might find even remotely useful are Intel's fabs. The rest of the business would have to be sold ton someone else or closed down (which would never be approved by the government).

Even then there is zero indication that Apple would ever want to do their own manufacturing.

The government desperately wants US fabs because the military requires tech and it's increasingly dangerous to rely on globalization when the globe is going nuts -- the rest of it doesn't really matter.

We're talking about Apple, though?

There are also options like Texas Instruments or Microchip. Of course far more unlikely than either nvidia or amd, but definitely options.

Ford, GM... The big automakers got burned with the chip shortage after COVID (this is their fault, but still they got burned)

That would be a hard call

One of the reasons where Intel "let" AMD compete in the x86 space is US Gov requirements for being able to source chips from two vendors at least