Rumours concerning Samsung acquisition of AMD circulate again

[HEXUS]

Similar industry insider based rumours did the rounds in 2007 and 2012.

Read more.

[shaithis]

If they would make x86 CPUs, then I am all for it. They have to provide better competition to Intel than AMD currently are.

[DanceswithUnix]

If they would make x86 CPUs, then I am all for it. They have to provide better competition to Intel than AMD currently are.

Fudzilla argues that Samsung probably wouldn't be all that fussed about x86.

http://www.fudzilla.com/news/process...to-acquire-amd

[AGTDenton]

AMD lost its mojo when the Core2's came out. This has been a long time coming imo.
CEO after CEO, new direction after new direction and inability to hold onto key staff, the writings been on the wall.
If this doesn't hold true they've not got another decade continuing the way they are.
Vive la AMD

[crossy]

AMD lost its mojo when the Core2's came out. This has been a long time coming imo. CEO after CEO, new direction after new direction and inability to hold onto key staff, the writings been on the wall. If this doesn't hold true they've not got another decade continuing the way they are.
Vive la AMD

I was going to say that AMD kind of lost it when the "i" series processors first hit the shelves. Before then at least there were good arguments to stay away from Chipzilla. Unfortunately I'm going to agree that they've been living on past glories as far as discrete cpu's go, and if I was building a new high-spec box then I'd be looking solely at i7.

If a post-acquisition AMD was more willing to "take the fight" to Intel on the top end then I'd welcome a Samsung takeover. Unfortunately I think it'd be more about mining a sickly AMD for it's valuable patents and then let it die slowly.

[yeeeeman]

Any firm that wants to acquire AMD will lose x86 license. So forget it!

[Corky34]

If, and it's a big if, Samsung did acquire AMD it would certainly give them plenty of ammo in their patents lawsuit.
Doesn't AMD hold the old ATI patents who were in the GPU business long before Nvidia.

[DanceswithUnix]

Any firm that wants to acquire AMD will lose x86 license. So forget it!

Why would Samsung want an x86 license?

Take a step back, see all the things around you with a CPU in them, see how few have an x86, and think just how unimportant x86 really is in the grand scheme of things.

Better ARM chips? Samsung sell those in every TV, phone and tablet and no doubt lots of other stuff besides. Better graphics in those devices? I can see them wanting that.

[shaithis]

Why would Samsung want an x86 license?

Take a step back, see all the things around you with a CPU in them, see how few have an x86, and think just how unimportant x86 really is in the grand scheme of things.

Better ARM chips? Samsung sell those in every TV, phone and tablet and no doubt lots of other stuff besides. Better graphics in those devices? I can see them wanting that.

I don't see it like that.

Pretty much every PC (Windows, Linux and Mac) has x86. Plus, every new console comes with x86. While no where near as many as phones/tablets, the profit on each one is much higher. We already keep hearing about $10 arm processors, have we ever even gotten close to a $10 x86 CPU? The closest thing is the Kabini at £20 ($30 on newegg) and that's from a company struggling to make a profit.

We still do not really have ARM cpus strong enough to replace desktop/console chips.

[DanceswithUnix]

I don't see it like that.

Pretty much every PC (Windows, Linux and Mac) has x86. Plus, every new console comes with x86. While no where near as many as phones/tablets, the profit on each one is much higher. We already keep hearing about $10 arm processors, have we ever even gotten close to a $10 x86 CPU? The closest thing is the Kabini at £20 ($30 on newegg) and that's from a company struggling to make a profit.

We still do not really have ARM cpus strong enough to replace desktop/console chips.

You may not see it like that, but I suspect Samsung would.

Consoles don't have to come with x86 (more correctly AMD64) cpus. Why do they? Because at that point if you asked AMD for an SOC then that is the only option they could give you. More to the point, those are pretty weak AMD64 cores well inside the performance range of existing ARM chips. So just as older consoles used PowerPC, MIPS and SuperH processors they could and would switch to ARM in a heartbeat if the costs were there.

Have you tried one of the new Raspberry Pi mk2 boards? It feels slow in the same way that my old Atom D520 board feels sluggish, and that is one of the sub $10 SOC chips that you are talking about. I should imagine it is way under $10, given that $10 gets you an 8 core A7 chip with higher clock speeds.

So yes I have a PC on my desk at work, it has a Xeon in it, and it has a keyboard which I believe contains an ARM chip, the mouse probably contains an ARM chip, and I don't think those on screen menus in the three monitors paint themselves on there so that will be another three CPUs which are probably ARM. It contains a boot SSD which will be either dual or triple core ARM, and a big data hard drive which I believe is another dual core ARM chip (at home I use WD black drives which are 3 core ARM again).

[Platinum]

If it happens and AMD lose there X86 licence I can see there being some uproar from the competition authority's, that would leave Intel as the only major X86 player (Yea Via has a licence but there not really competition)

I think the outcome would be that Intel would be forced to let AMD keep there licence.

[shaithis]

So yes I have a PC on my desk at work, it has a Xeon in it, and it has a keyboard which I believe contains an ARM chip, the mouse probably contains an ARM chip, and I don't think those on screen menus in the three monitors paint themselves on there so that will be another three CPUs which are probably ARM. It contains a boot SSD which will be either dual or triple core ARM, and a big data hard drive which I believe is another dual core ARM chip (at home I use WD black drives which are 3 core ARM again).

That's all well and good but still doesn't address profitability.

If ARM is where the money is, why are AMD forging on with new x86 roadmaps and not dumping them and churning out tons of ARM chips using their ARM license? They are continuing their fight against Intel, even though they are falling further behind. They can obviously see how profitable the x86 market can be....hell, look at intel.

The ARM market is quite fractured and volatile, just looking at a very recent example: The HTC M9 still hasn't shipped and the M9+ has been announced to release a few weeks later. The M9 has a Qualcomm chip, the M9+ has a MediaTek chip. Everyone and their dog is undercutting each other for a slice of the ARM pie, while Intel is giving chips away to try and get into the mobile sector and still posting massive profits.

[The Hand]

Isn't the US protectionist, in that they would prefer another US company to buy AMD rather than a foreign company like Samsung? I'm just trying to think of the last significant sized US firm that got bought by a foreign company.

[DanceswithUnix]

That's all well and good but still doesn't address profitability.

If ARM is where the money is, why are AMD forging on with new x86 roadmaps and not dumping them and churning out tons of ARM chips using their ARM license? They are continuing their fight against Intel, even though they are falling further behind. They can obviously see how profitable the x86 market can be....hell, look at intel.

The ARM market is quite fractured and volatile, just looking at a very recent example: The HTC M9 still hasn't shipped and the M9+ has been announced to release a few weeks later. The M9 has a Qualcomm chip, the M9+ has a MediaTek chip. Everyone and their dog is undercutting each other for a slice of the ARM pie, while Intel is giving chips away to try and get into the mobile sector and still posting massive profits.

AMD, as AMD, have no choice but to keep fighting in x86 for the near and medium term future as they need that revenue.

But profitability? Look at Qualcomm, Samsung, MediaTek and AllWinner for companies that are far from struggling precisely because they are outside the PC eco system and not in any way trying to get in.

Let's look at this from another direction though. x86 was an architectural mess when it was new, and whilst AMD64 cleans some of the worst of that up it still isn't pretty. ARM V8 can, I believe, go faster than AMD64 in the long run and can do so using less silicon.

Sorry, but x86 is an Intel platform under an Intel monopoly and if you want to play the likes of Crysis then you need to buy into that, but the likes of Samsung can and will walk away. IBM did, and they are still here.

[scaryjim]

... If ARM is where the money is, why are AMD forging on with new x86 roadmaps and not dumping them and churning out tons of ARM chips using their ARM license? ...

You could just as easily ask why, if x86 is so profitable, AMD are looking to shift large amounts of their high margin AMD64 server business to ARM? They obviously think ARM can provide the performance their customers want and generate better profits in that market.

AMD has to push on with x86 while its their only play in the CPU core market, but even the most cursory inspection of the changing roadmap over the last few years makes it clear that AMD are slowing desktop CPU development dramatically, and they've not moved their many-core server chips onto a new arch since Piledriver. Instead they've filled the server roadmap with ... mobile APUs. As you say, Intel are desperately pushing more and more resource into mobile, but they actually did that at a huge loss - then restructured their reporting so the loss in mobile x86 chips got swallowed into a more profitable segment of the business.

it's pretty clear from the stategies at AMD and Intel that high performance CPU cores are actually a niche product now. The AMD64 market is likely to be stable for a while yet: there's plenty of legacy software still in use that people will need backwards compatibility for. Just as long as no-one finds a way to virtualise AMD64 on ARM with decent performance....

[abaxas]

Just as long as no-one finds a way to virtualise AMD64 on ARM with decent performance....

I don't think that is the issue. The issue lies with legacy software that only runs on x86 which (these days) is actually quite a small amount. MS did away with full backwards compatability in excel/access years ago so the only thing that is now pure x86 is the exchange/email.

I would be very suprized if MS couldn't transfer to ARM withint months. If anything, I bet there is a team doing that as we speak.