Comment by bhouston | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bhouston | Hacker News Reader

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> Snapdragon X is fine but nothing special compared AMD/Intel chips.

The issue is that ARM is now fine for Windows. Until Snapdragon, ARM was actually pretty crap outside of Apple. This is a huge step. Qualcomm acquired a lot of the original Apple team for the M1 via Nuvia and I expect them to be able to execute at least decently going forward.

Apparently they are selling because they have better battery life than Intel/AMD laptops according to this: https://www.techpowerup.com/324301/battery-life-is-driving-s...

> Servers is kind of a mixed story as well.

Graviton is 30% cheap for the performance (e.g. performance adjusted price.) It is a no brainer for a lot of workflows, especially given so many developers are actually building on ARM machines in the first place. I want my servers to be 30% cheaper.

> There is nothing wrong with other companies trying to disrupt AMD/Intel duopoly and hopefully we'll get lower prices and more innovation because of that but calling x86 dead is a bit premature at this point..

Qualcomm is exploring acquiring Intel. A company who got its value from ARM is looking to take over the historic leader in x86 - doesn't that tell you something? https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/qualcomm-approached-in...

The writing is on the wall. x86 isn't dead and it won't be dead anytime soon, but it definitely in its twilight period.

Graviton single thread performance is _not_ the same as the Intel or AMD offerings on AWS.

Yeah, it seems whatever key improvements Qualcomm did for the Snapdragon X and Apple did for the Mx series haven't made it to the Graviton yet. When I said 30% earlier I was talking about value - my understanding is that Graviton is 30% cheaper once you factor in the performance differences.

> Qualcomm did for the Snapdragon X and Apple did for the Mx series haven't made it to the Graviton yet

Why would they, though?

Neither Apple nor Qualcomm have any incentives to share their designs with ARM anymore than they do with Intel, AMD or each other. I wonder how AmpereOne will look assuming it actually ever comes out...

> Neither Apple nor Qualcomm have any incentives to share their designs with ARM anymore than they do with Intel, AMD or each other.

Techniques leak out as people move around, etc.

For example, AMD had a lead on chiplet designs but now Intel has them in the latest generation. I would expect that ARM will have chiplets designs by the end of the decade as well.

Look at Anthropic that seems to have an LLM that is on par with OpenAI GPT 4.

Funny you say that, because ARM is actually suing Qualcomm specifically over this issue.

The Nuvia designs Qualcomm bought were made under an ARM architectural license that specifically restricts all designs sold to only go in servers - not phones, laptops, or anything else. They also weren't allowed to sell the company without destroying the designs first, because Nuvia got a really sweet deal on the architectural license. Qualcomm thinks that doesn't matter, because they have a (much broader) ARM architectural license already - you can't force someone to buy the same license twice, under the principle of rights exhaustion.

ARM furthermore has an incentive to keep architectural licensees from competing with ARM's in-house design licensing business. Apple Silicon isn't a threat to that business because Apple will never sell their own components to third-parties. In fact, that's why they hate right-to-repair so much[0]. They're better off licensing ARM patents and having Apple continue to work on LLVM than trying to squeeze them for more money. Qualcomm on the other hand sells phone chips to other companies, and currently spends a lot of money to package ARM's licensed designs into their own SoCs. Nuvia designs going into those phones would be a significant movement of money from ARM's pocket to Qualcomm's.

[0] To be specific, in a right-to-repair world where individual components have to be sold at the same pricing arrangements available to the OEM, Apple would not be able to have exclusive parts in their phones that other vendors can't have. Apple can't say this, because it's hilariously self-serving and the general public correctly doesn't give a flying fuck about IP law, but you can infer it from conduct.

Apple is perfectly willing to sell you assemblies, of course. Because no vendor is going to buy 100 unrelated parts to get the 1 they care about.

> I want my servers to be 30% cheaper.

Sure, I mean I agree that ARM can outcompete x86 there but mainly Amazon can just cut out Intel/AMD and make their chips themselves which can significantly reduce costs. Not because Neoverse is somehow inherently better or faster than its x86 equivalents. Of course from the perspective of most users that's effectively the same thing, why overpay for 1 fast core when you can just get 2 slightly slower ones.

> Qualcomm is exploring acquiring Intel.

That's far fetched and hard to believe. IIRC there were talks about Qualcomm maybe buying some secondary subsidiaries/departments form Intel and somehow it got extrapolated to Qualcomm acquiring Intel (unless there is any credible information to back that up?)

> That's far fetched and hard to believe. IIRC there were talks about Qualcomm maybe buying some secondary subsidiaries/departments form Intel and somehow it got extrapolated to Qualcomm acquiring Intel (unless there is any credible information to back that up?)

Also reported in WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/business/deals/qualcomm-approached-intel...

That is Reuters and WSJ reporting it, not an X post by a anonymous rando. It mentions at least two sources.

This is not a rumour, it was at least somewhat real. Doesn't mean it will happen, it seems to be very preliminary and exploratory.

It won't happen because neither the US nor the EU antitrust regulators will allow it. It isn't just up to Qualcomm and Intel.

Some other deal, where Qualcomm buys some pieces of Intel, might be possible.

> This is not a rumour, it was at least somewhat real

How can you tell? I'm not denying that and obviously can't claim to know but I just don't see any public information that would allow us to make this conclusion.

WSJ, Reuters and everyone else regularly report rumours that sound credible.

Although if we're only talking about "exploring" rather than anything more that's probably true, there is no reason for Qualcomm to at least try and do the math of at what price point it might start making sense and they should be obviously be doing that.

I just don't really see how is that particularly newsworthy since it's just extremely improbably (due to factors both Intel and Qualcomm can't directly control).

> WSJ, Reuters and everyone else regularly report rumours that sound credible.

Huh? You live in a different reality than I do. These are reputable sources and I need to move onto something more productive.

> These are reputable sources

Yes? And? Did I imply that there is something wrong with that or that they shouldn't be reporting it? I assume our definitions of what is a "credible rumour" differ...

> You live in a different reality than I do.

If you can seriously believe that Qualcomm could actually acquire Intel (unless Intel's management is engaging in some extreme amount of fraud to hide the fact that the company is on the brink of imminent bankruptcy) then yes, that must be the case...

Market cap of Qualcomm is 2x of Intel market cap(~200B vs ~100B). Current Intel stock price is the same as 1997. In 1 year intel stock price lost more than 50%.

I'm not sure money would be the real issue.

Nvidia wasn't even allowed to buy ARM even though they weren't competitors and had almost no real overlap. This would be considerably harder to pull off.

Also you have that whole AMD64/x86 patent thing. Not sure about the details (and maybe the original agreement has expired and that part wasn't renewed) but according the original deal the cross licensing agreement would automatically expire if either party was acquired.

I think the first reason is more than enough but if it's not and they still have something similar about newer x86 related features developed after 2009 Qualcomm would only be buying Intel for the fabs and other assets or would have to pay off AMD if they want x86.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-10-15/qualcomm-...

"Qualcomm is exploring acquiring Intel"

Huh, I didn't even realize they are sufficiently big for this to be potentially possible.

That but I also think they are also at the same time much too big for this to be potentially possible since no government would approve it unless Intel was on the brink of bankruptcy.

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