Opinion: The Upside If Qualcomm Decided to Buy AMD

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[citation][nom]olaf[/nom]Note Samsung's recent investment of over 4billion (about Arm's yearly profit) into modernizing one of its Fab's to get to 28nm.[/citation]

ARM Holdings Design the Architecture, and licence it to Chip Makers such as Qualcomm/Samsung, who further re-design it to the SOC styles and needs they want!

ARM make nowhere near 4 Billion Profit!

For the whole of 2011, Arm Holdings' pre-tax profits rose to $156.9m, up 42% from 2010.

Source-The internet

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16809225

 
[citation][nom]schmich[/nom]I rather Samsung buys AMD. They're investing heavily in their foundries. Their ARM SOCs are awesome and they make great products.VIA has a license as well. In any case, Intel would be forced to license x86 if anything happens to AMD (due to the monopoly).[/citation]It depends on who buy AMD, with broken US judiciary system like what happened on Apple vs Samsung. If the AMD buyer isnt American company. It is going to tough get Intel Re-license x86 to AMD.
 
If Goggle buys AMD it would be what they would need to proliferate their market share in the Chromebook and PC realm.
 
AMD lost mostly in the PR department . When intel produced pentium 4 , the worst processor ever , people kept buying them believing it a great cpu . As much as AMD tried , they couldnt shake the follower mentality , even when they had the best cpu in the market . Of course C2D redeemed intel , and the momentum was lost forever . In the GPU market everything happened almost the same way , but with nvidia . Nvidia is great at understanding marketing concepts , its better to have people perceive your products as great , than actually having a great product . Thats not to say that most generations of nvidia werent great , they were , but some were total junk , and most people never knew . Oh well , its a business world and the strongest will survive , but I think its not in our best interest to have a market without competition . I for one always hoped that the race will go on forever , leaders changing every couple of years .
 
[citation][nom]rnssr71[/nom]If ANYONE buys AMD or if AMD goes bankrupt, the x86 license goes back to Intel. Anyone who buys AMD would know longer be able to produce an x86 cpu. ......Unless IBM buys them- IBM has an x86 license that they don't use.[/citation]

This, the license would not carry over and would make AMD useless because of it.
 


Yep, I noticed the article failed to address this critical issue. Most likely many of those thousands of AMD patents listed are specific to x86 and thus would be rather useless to a non-x86-licensed company. My bet is that Intel made sure they got the right to either buy those patents or a perpetual license to use them should AMD be bought out.

As for the ensuing "monopoly" status of Intel should AMD depart x86, there are far more ARM and other processors marketshare-wise, so I doubt any FTC anti-monopoly action would occur.
 


My bet is that it'll go below $2 if (1) Piledriver or desktop Trinity is delayed or canceled, or Steamroller/Excavator canceled (depending on which rumor du jour you may believe 😛), and (2) AMD's Q3 is worse than the lowered guidance they provided a couple months ago. If neither of these occur, now would be a good time to buy AMD stock since it'll probably start back up to $8 or so. So you can gamble on losing half your investment, or doubling it, if you were to buy today at $3.92 a share 😀.

Obviously the company is having renewed financial difficulties, having to issue more senior notes at higher interest to pay off the ones due now. They really cannot afford to make any more blunders such as the Llano OEM chipset one that allegedly tanked their Q2..

What I find peculiar in this article is AMD owning a chunk of TSMC - didn't know that. You'd think that TSMC would have cleaned up their 40 & 28nm fab problems for AMD. Well maybe not - GloFlo also screwed over their part-owner AMD with the BD yields and delays.. If AMD had kept their fabs (and the hiring/firing capability) they might not have had so many problems, but who knows.
 
[citation][nom]Tomfreak[/nom]It depends on who buy AMD, with broken US judiciary system like what happened on Apple vs Samsung. If the AMD buyer isnt American company. It is going to tough get Intel Re-license x86 to AMD.[/citation]
Bring IBM back into the PC business?
get them to buy AMD ?
 
[citation][nom]killabanks[/nom]intel doesnt need nvidia they can probably make a better gpu if they really wanted to[/citation]
We'll see once Haswell rolls out, Intel has been talking about Dx 11.1 and OpenGL 3.2 support quite a bit. My gut feeling is that it will be competitive with entry level solutions (read GT 630 and likes) but will be paired with $250 CPU, same SNAFU as HD4000 is. And let's face it iGPU are targeted at entry level gaming so Pentium G840+HD 7750 is much better deal than any Intel iGPU. People who can buy $250 CPU are more likely to need/want something much beefier than HD4000. Anyway, bottom line, Intel doesn't know how to make or market iGPU nor discrete GPU, otherwise they would have done it already. And it's not that they weren't trying for past ohhhhhhhhhh dozen or so years.
 
I am sad to say this but the only other company right now that would benefit from buying AMD besides Qualcomm would be the Apple. That would be a massive death blow to AMD fans as well as the industry as a whole, but if you think about it. It would be a very smart move for Apple to do. They already own an ARM CPU design company, several other IP firms allowing them to develop their hardware and software in house. Why not go all the way to have your own x86 CPU and Graphics to cover your whole Desktop and laptop line.

I doubt it will happen due to the partnership with Intel and Apple but if apple really wanted to pull more market share from Microsoft and Google. That would one hell of a gut punch.
 
[citation][nom]rnssr71[/nom]If ANYONE buys AMD or if AMD goes bankrupt, the x86 license goes back to Intel. Anyone who buys AMD would know longer be able to produce an x86 cpu. ......Unless IBM buys them- IBM has an x86 license that they don't use.[/citation]

the x86 license you are talking about has nothing to do with acquisitions, takeovers and staff like that. Qualcom buying AMD doesn't mean there will be no AMD as standalone company. It just mean that qualcom will be a parent company of AMD, or major stakeholder if you prefer that name. So AMD's license won't become void and null.
 
[citation][nom]sgtgimpy[/nom]I am sad to say this but the only other company right now that would benefit from buying AMD besides Qualcomm would be the Apple. ... [/citation]

Why? So Apple can say they innovated the design of the graphics card to have a metal heat spreader and fan, slap a patent on it, and call up the iLawyers on nVidia?

No Thanks.
 
@Tivatar

Obviously you dink get the gist of my comment. I am not by any means an Apple Fan boy and hence why I said I was sad to say it.

My point in the comment (At a business level) was for companies that would benefit from purchasing AMD besides Qualcomm, Apple is the only really other likely company that would really benefit from buying them at this point. I saw everyone mention IBM in the threads. IBM has its own patents and processor tech and wouldn’t really benefit from AMD’s CPU IP, maybe their APU design and GPGPU tech for high-end server and mainframes. IBM left the Personal PC arena a long time again and has no reason to come back to the profit suck fest.

It would definitely suck hard if Apple bought AMD because not only would we lose AMD form the PC sector, but we would lose their graphic hardware and APU tech was well since Apple would pull it behind their walled garden never to be seen again.
 
[citation][nom]kcorp2003[/nom]They haven't failed. The project got integrated into the CPU. After all Larrabee is GPGPU, so the technology was all too different from the discrete GPU.[/citation]
[citation][nom]greghome[/nom]After seeing what the latest Intel HDs can do.......I don't think they've done trying and frankly, they haven't failed, just progressing a little slow[/citation]

look at intel intergrated, now look and amd, than back at intel... one last look at amd...

there is a massive difference between the two, and intel either doesnt want to close the gap... which i dont believe they ever would willingly do, or they cant close the gap, which i believe is more believable.

they couldn't come up with a financially viable gpu, and cant make a competitive integrated solution to the others that are out there.
 
5 Billion is what AMD paid for ATI. And now itself is worth less then that. The article did mention about the price for all those patents, talent. And Intel would still need some sort of license to use x64, i.e 64bit version of x86 which belongs to AMD. So it is a bit complicated.
 
So, in the interest of full disclosure, does Wolfgang Gruener or Bestofmedia Group have any stocks, bonds or options in either of these companies?
 


Buy low - sell high 😀

AMD is in as good as shape as they have been since the bad ol' days of Hector (and he really didn't bother me the way others seem to go off on him). Any long-term debt they have booked can easily be re-financed these days on favorable terms, keeping interest expense down. AMD still churns $1.5b a quarter in revenue - likely down in Q3-12, but that is the way they 'cycle.' They're as lean as they can be operationally (too lean in R&D), BUT !! ...

I doubt AMD *owns* any of TSMC in the sense of equity (I think the author really screwed this up). What AMD likely holds is a contractual right to a certain level of TSMC production over an extended term, primarily in bulk silicon but (gasp!) likely a good bit in SOI, too. X-, Y-, and Z-wafer starts per week over A-B weeks.

This bodes well for Kaveri/Kabini/Samara in the channel, and who knows? Could be some 20/22nm wafer-starts in there, too (my understanding is they are entering risk production in Q4 for some lines).


 
This is actually a very good idea; however the value of AMD is is about 2x gross sales and climbing.

Additionally the x86 license DOES TRANSFER TO QUALCOMM!!!!!!!

Read the Federal Trade Commission ORDER in the AMD vs INTEL settlement agreement. That order specifically states that INTEL SHALL negotiate in good faith a license renewal with a new ownership entity and that the business of designing, producing and selling said x86 processors nto be interrupted during negotiations.

Do your due diligence.
 
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