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Comment by epolanski | Hacker News Reader

> The moat of the two companies together would give the new combined company plenty of time to ramp up their fabs.

Doubt.

Neither of the companies is particularly competitive on either processor or GPU architecture nor fabrication.

A merger of those entities looks like nothing but a recipe for further x86 stagnation and an even quicker death for the entities involved imho.

In particular I cannot see what's good in it for AMD. The fabs have no use/clear path forward. Their processors/gpu either match our outmatch the Intel offering.

A Broadcom/Apple takeover of Intel sounds much more reasonable.

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A Broadcom/Apple takeover of Intel sounds much more reasonable.

Out of curiosity, what would make Intel interesting to Apple? Apple already acquired Intel's modem business and they have their own CPU and GPU.

Maybe for the fabs? It might be attractive for Apple to move production state side via Intels fabs but on the other hand I don't think Intels fabs can do what Apple wants

Depends on what Apple wants…

Yes Congressman, we agree to take over Intel fabs if you agree to drop this antitrust nonsense. And we would like our $20B from Google back too.

That would work if the fabs were competitive. For Apple, they are technologically behind.

I think Apple has the cash, culture and management to make the fabs work.

But I'm just speculating.

Apple is really good in making OTHER PEOPLE'S fabs work for their purposes. Running their own manufacturing was never particularly a forté.

Apple currently really enjoys being on the very latest process node. It's not a given that they could match or improve on that with their own fab (Sure, there is a lot of VLSI design and materials experience, but that does not automatically translate into a state of the art process, and is unlikely to contain the magic ingredient to get Intel back on top).

And in the unlikely case it SHOULD work, that will only invite further regulatory headaches.

While I agree, I also think that Apple needs a new source revenue and a well executed fab one might be it.

Just speculating.

How well is Apple doing with the modem team they purchased from Intel? I have yet to see Apple release their own in-house 5G modem. I don’t think Apple can magically turn things around for Intel and such an acquisition would be a waste of money.

>In particular I cannot see what's good in it for AMD. The fabs have no use/clear path forward. Their processors/gpu either match our outmatch the Intel offering.

I can, but it's not technical. Intel has a huge advantage in several markets, and has strong relationships with many OEMs like Dell. Intel, even though their market cap is now a fraction of AMD's, still has a huge lead in marketshare in OEM systems and servers. (Several other posts in this thread have real numbers.)

If AMD bought out Intel, it would now get all of that, and be able to push all these OEM and server customers into AMD's solutions instead.

> is particularly competitive on either processor or GPU architecture nor fabrication.

Who is then? Apple is of course still ahead in lower power chips. But Apple is not in the the desktop/workstation/server market and there are hardly any alternatives to AMD or Intel there.

e.g. M2 Ultra Apple's fastest "desktop" CPU is slower than the 14700K you can get for $350. Seems pretty competitive...

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