In the early days of 64-bit, Intel put all of their resources into 'itanium' and it was AMD that created 'x86-64'
I doubt Intel would back out of the cross-licensing agreement that lets them implement x86-64.
I doubt Intel would back out of the cross-licensing agreement that lets them implement x86-64.
Qualcomm as the new owner of Intel, trying to extract maximum profit out of their IP, possibly. Think of when Oracle bought Sun Microsystems.
Not to mention the cross-licensing deal between Intel and AMD also includes x86 patents from both sides anyways (your original article doesn't reference this as it's about Intel and Microsoft, not Intel and AMD).
> Doubly so after already receiving over a billion in antitrust fines in 2009 for simply being "unfair" about the agreement, not even outright removing it.
Intel continued their unfair business practices, particularly in their compiler. If you wonder why Intel CPUs didn't move up from declaring CPUID Family 6 until now, that is why. More recently there was the MKL scandal. No antitrust authority was interested in either.
> Not to mention the cross-licensing deal between Intel and AMD also includes x86 patents from both sides anyways
The AMD-Intel cross-licensing agreement will need to be renewed when Qualcomm buys Intel, because it has a termination clause in case of ownership change. The companies can continue to sell existing products, but new products would need a new patent deal.
But Qualcomm won't be interested if they can just sell their Snapdragon CPUs to former x86 customers, who have no other choice because of Intel's patents on emulating the newer x86 instructions.
Taking all of your assumptions together as givens:
- Intel's unacted claims around patents 7 years ago were valid in the first place.
- No major government acts against the action because of simultaneous individual tentative politics in each and every single one. Including the EU, which has indeed blocked deals between 2 US companies even after the FTC has approved the merger (e.g. GE+Honeywell).
- Qualcomm concludes the best way to squeeze the most money out of Intel is to shitcan x86 completely by cancelling the cross-licensing deal (despite INTC having higher revenues than Qualcomm and selling competitive CPUs in markets it doesn't even target at all).
- The result of shitcanning x86 by cancelling the cross-licensing deal is people go exclusively to ARM
It's still not clear why Qualcomm would have free reign on the x86 PC market it just ate the cost of destroying. MediaTek, Samsung, and Rockchip already make consumer ARM laptops - the first two often beating Qualcomm in performance anyways. Apple also has their own walled garden offerings in the consumer ARM device space. Qualcomm's biggest advantage in the PC space was their exclusivity agreement with Microsoft for Windows on ARM but that is already dying at the end of the year. So say all the above wasn't a concern, Qualcomm really did dump billions into Intel just to stop making their processors and it was allowed, how is Qualcomm going to get their money back at all let alone better than squeezing Intel normally without first killing its main source of revenue?
Keep in mind that the outlook for Intel products is not that rosy both short- and mid-term. They will certainly not go back to commanding historic margins in the datacenter. Also they lost trust from both institutional and private customers in how they handled the Raptor Lake voltage problem. Whether these customers come back anytime soon is doubtful.
Also on the manufacturing side, Intel foundries are bleeding money, 20A is cancelled, and 18A is yet unproven. So making back the purchase price off the usual business would likely take a looong time.
Yes, it is possible that Intel's patents on their instruction sets and on emulating them are all invalid, but Qualcomm is the kind of litigious company that seems determined to find out. (Their patents are also the presumed reason why Qualcomm is basically the last major vendor to offer AV1 hardware decode in their processors)
It is also possible that the EU blocks the merger but in the current political climate, the EU has become something of a vassal of the US. same politicians who pressure for replacement of Lina Khan will also exert pressure on the EU.
> MediaTek, Samsung, and Rockchip already make consumer ARM laptops
Yes, but them not being able to economically emulate newer x86 instructions would be a major sales point for Qualcomm Snapdragon. They could basically capture all the customers which are dependent on x86 software.
> Qualcomm's biggest advantage in the PC space was their exclusivity agreement with Microsoft for Windows on ARM but that is already dying at the end of the year
I think you got that backwards. The exclusivity was the precondition for Qualcomm to become interested in the Windows on ARM. Otherwise they would not even have bothered to release products specifically for that tiny market. It is Microsoft who desperately needs to become independent from x86.
> Qualcomm really did dump billions into Intel just to stop making their processors and it was allowed, how is Qualcomm going to get their money back at all let alone better than squeezing Intel normally without first killing its main source of revenue?
Qualcomm will continue to sell x86 processors, just like Oracle continued to sell SPARC processors, for a while. But they would wind down the x86 business and try to capture locked-in x86 customers onto (high-margin) Snapdragons, and they have all the ingredients to make this happen. And they will have the patents both on the design and manufacturing side to at least cause serious trouble for competitors.
As far as I am aware, the AMD-Intel cross licensing agreement allows to continue to sell existing products after termination, just not bring new ones to market. And Qualcomm would of course continue to sell Intel's products, just possibly not develop new ones.
If Qualcomm buys Intel, they will have the patents that are needed to emulate modern x86 instructions like AVX. Or are you aware of any patents that AMD owns or claims to own on emulating x86?
> I have to ask as a sanity check - am I talking to a human or a bot?
Human. I guess I have to thank you for not writing "ignore previous instructions" or similar.