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Comment by mtgx | Hacker News Reader

This will probably go down as AMD's biggest strategic mistake in the past decade (other than the Bulldozer architecture).

Did they at least revise their licensing deal where Intel basically adds a requirement that AMD can't be sold to other companies? If not, then AMD's leadership must be clueless. They should've revised that clause the first chance they got to make another deal (like this one!) with Intel.

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I can't imagine they would do this without a new licensing deal. Essentially, they are handing over their APU technology. I still think their ryzen chips are likely cheaper to produce and equally performant to Intel's. So overall they are still a solid option.

This just helps them make inroads with Intel who already locked up much of the laptop market. I'm pretty convinced there was no way AMD could enter that market for a few years in any meaningful way regardless.

As far as some sources report, AMD will be shipping Dies to Intel so the IP of the GPUs is not revealed. I also think that we will hear that AMD gets to use some patents/Intel technology over the deal (such as AVX512).

As a "strategic mistake" counter-argument: It is possible that AMD would go under without this deal.

Leading AMD must be emotionally exhausting. Can you image leading a company that for so long is fighting for survival?

This is basically every startup. Many of the quiet successes take decades.

This is most businesses in general where healthy and creatively destructive competition takes place.

Given the entangled licensing situation, what would happen to Intel if AMD went bankrupt? Would they not lose their x86_64 license, unless they bought what remained of AMD? And if they did, would that raise some major antitrust issues?

Depends on the license terms. e.g. if their license agreement says its irrevocable or "irrevocable unless <some action that blatantly violates the spirit of the contract>", then a future AMD buyer would not be able to retract the license just because they think they could get a better deal now. I'd imagine Intel's lawyers are good enough to get such a deal.

Is that reasonable though? I thought AMD was doing great with Ryzen and Epyc, and Vega is selling out as much as they can make.

AMD is BARELY free cash flow positive. They have been on the brink of running out of cash as long as memory serves me.

https://ycharts.com/companies/AMD/free_cash_flow

Depends how long

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