United States government mulling a potential merger between Intel and AMD

[Redaktion]

The United States Commerce Department is figuring out ways to keep Intel afloat after it posted $16.3 billion in losses this quarter. One of the options includes a merger with market rivals such as AMD and Marvell.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/United-States-government-mulling-a-potential-merger-between-Intel-and-AMD.912749.0.html

[Enma45]

Intel has been doing its job poorly for 3 years in the face of competition that has surpassed it, in this case AMD with its PCs and laptops has known how to react to the market by manufacturing products far superior to those of Intel since the appearance of Ryzen. American taxpayers have continued to finance Intel without seeing the expected results and the US Government wants to save a company by giving it millions of Euros without receiving anything in return, this is crazy and even more so when there are executives who take almost $1,000,000/year.

[Jedi2155]

AMD has no manufacturing capabilities anymore (spun off via GlobalFoundries and now owned by the UAE oil barons). Intel is one of the last major chip manufacturers and without them the US would be screwed in a war with China.

[JamF]

Intel has been doing its job poorly for 3 years in the face of competition that has surpassed it, in this case AMD with its PCs and laptops has known how to react to the market by manufacturing products far superior to those of Intel since the appearance of Ryzen. American taxpayers have continued to finance Intel without seeing the expected results and the US Government wants to save a company by giving it millions of Euros without receiving anything in return, this is crazy and even more so when there are executives who take almost $1,000,000/year.

It has been doing a poor job for a lot longer than 3 years. It's been a decade of minor iterations of a design that came about 15 years ago. They shrink the process node and make some minor changes, call if a new chip and charge big money. The moment Ryzen from AMD started shipping the writing was on the wall, all Intel have been able to do is ramp up the clocks to try and compete. They have had well over 5 years to pivot to a new architecture and beat AMD but they just don't have the designs, that is a critical failing of R&D and exactly why Intel have been failing for so long, an absolute lack of ideas and leaders with MBAs who only care about the numbers, not the technology and keeping the technology lead.

[w h payne]

Intel and AMD saddled with complex 64 bit x86 power-consuming instruction set?

Add with carry x86 instruction an example.

[Erdrick]

It has been doing a poor job for a lot longer than 3 years....... They have had well over 5 years to pivot to a new architecture and beat AMD but they just don't have the designs, that is a critical failing of R&D

Exactly this.  Intel coasted on prior success from the Core and Core 2 era from 2010-2014 for far too long, and lost the ability to compete despite having 5x the number of employees as AMD (2023 filings) and spending far more in R&D. 
Now, without 18A in sight, they want billions from the USA CHIPs act to build manufacturing that would compete with where TSMC was two years ago.
They have been dropped by Apple, outfoxed by AMD, and like many others are years behind Nvidia in AI. 
The only way to recover now without a bailout is to shed more employees, including the leadership team, and focus on new process nodes and designs with far less organizational bloat.

[Logoffon]

and the US Government wants to save a company by giving it millions of Euros without receiving anything in return

🤣

[retrixe]

Intel and AMD saddled with complex 64 bit x86 power-consuming instruction set?

Add with carry x86 instruction an example.

ARM has "add with carry" too, see: developer.arm.com/documentation/ddi0602/2022-06/Base-Instructions/ADC--Add-with-Carry-

The instruction set has nothing to do with the high idle power consumption of Intel/AMD processors, Intel's Lunar Lake has already demonstrated this practically as well with its very low idle power consumption

[A]

Apple is a Chinese company and Intel does more business there than the US - but it's the only domestic manufacturer left.  Given AMD already sold their foundry business I doubt they want a new one. 

[GeorgeS]

IMHO: Intel lost their mojo over a decade ago.

As others have mentioned, there is only so much that can be squeezed out of a die shrink.

They seem to think "toss more transistors at it" (IE: "Moores Law") is the answer to everything. :)

Comically while AMD and Nvidia (on the GPU side) keep making their GPU memory buses WIDER AND WIDER for higher performance, Intel (and AMD) have seemingly stopped short of doing this for their CPU's.

IDK if we have reached "end game" for x86 or not but surely SOMEONE ELSE needs to pick up the ball (so to speak) and offer some REAL INNOVATION into the platform to keep it viable.

And YES, sadly just about everyone else has 'off shored' or 'outsourced' their foundries so Intel is one of the remaining US companies that actually HAS a foundry.

(China could take over Taiwan and shut the entire worlds technology economy down in a heart beat!!)

[Hotz]

If they want to merge AMD and Intel, then hurry up!!! Preferably AMD being the one which creates the chip architecture (because it looks like it's superior and more efficient, and Intel ditching its own) and Intel becoming the actual chip-hardware manufacturer. I think that would be the best outcome for us customers.

But make it quick and fast - better yesterday than tomorrow - so I know what to buy or not buy right now. This shitshow has been dragging on for too long already...

[RobertJasiek]

AMD being the one which creates the chip architecture (because it looks like it's superior and more efficient, and Intel ditching its own) and Intel becoming the actual chip-hardware manufacturer. I think that would be the best outcome for us customers.

No, no, no. The best for us customers is the latest TSMC node!

[Worgarthe]

No, no, no. The best for us customers is the latest TSMC node!

Yeah, especially for our wallets given the fact that TSMC is producing every single existing chip out there for all major players (Intel, AMD, Apple, Nvidia, Qualcomm...).

[GeorgeS]

No, no, no. The best for us customers is the latest TSMC node!

Yeah, especially for our wallets given the fact that TSMC is producing every single existing chip out there for all major players (Intel, AMD, Apple, Nvidia, Qualcomm...).

Some day MAYBE Intel MIGHT catch up however not anytime soon.

Until then the entire world's leading edge devices use/rely on TSMC.

[A]

We need more competition, not less. I don't want to see prices jacked up due to the merge