[Nov 21st] Qualcomm entering server market with x86-64/ARM chips and rumors that they may want to buy out AMD

[Ren]

EDIT: Longer, MUCH better article here from extremetech.

Highly recommend you check this out instead as it is very solid in comparison to Fudzilla's weaksauce clickbait article. 'll also edit my post to properly reflect why Qualcomm may be interested in buying out AMD as it is a really important piece of news in itself.

And I just found out that Teksyndicate has also commented on Qualcomm's ARM adventures in the server market in this The Tek episode.

Link is skipped to the segment on Qualcomm.

Original article is from Fudzilla.com.

Not much to read so I'll try to put everything relevant here.

Qualcomm's CEO, Steve Mollenkopf, has said that the server market is a $15 billion opportunity and will deliver products to address that market.

Intriguingly, he revealed that while it will take time to build that business, Qualcomm is confident that it will do well because it has access to the latest manufacturing technologies. This has sparked rumours that Qualcomm is serious about buying AMD. This would solve Qualcomm’s problem that it will take a while for it to get into that market. It lacks the expertise of AMD and one has to wonder whether Qualcomm will not, five years after acquiring AMD's mobile graphics IP, swallow the rest of the company.

Mollenkopf, speaking at the company's annual analyst day meeting in New York, told the audience that he sees a convergence between the requirements of chips that power high-end smartphones and tablets and those inside data centres.

).

Basically it's an ultra clickbait-y title both on fudzilla's and my own post. Sorry about that. Pretty speculative but it makes a lot of sense. It's one of the biggest struggles right now for AMD and Intel is really the only choice anyone has when it comes to efficient server products. I don't think AMD would let a buyout happen but the way this is worded, it could be very beneficial for both companies. The issue I have is I don't quite know why (maybe someone here can help

If you guys don't understand, Intel is the leading manufacturer for server-based products by a huge margin. The only "competitors" - use that term loosely for many reasons - Intel currently has at 10-20nm are AMD, Cavium, and AMCC. Calxeda, the last company to attempt to go head-to-head with Intel on that level, went bankrupt very quickly afterward. All 3 of the current competitors are manufacturing ARM-based chips along with Qualcomm, by the way.

Edit: Bankrupt may be the wrong word; they ran out of money to operate and decided to liquidate after failing to secure a deal with HP. This is the more realistic scenario with this type of stuff anyway, not bankruptcy.

Regardless of speculation, the real news this stemmed from is that Qualcomm is planning to manufacture ARM-based server chips by 2015, announced a few days prior to this article's release. The last statement from the CEO of Qualcomm above is implying that the market wants extremely power efficient server components and they want to be the first to provide a quality product that has those efficiencies.

From the Extremetech article:

Other companies, like AMD and Applied Micro, plan to enter the market with fairly aggressive ramps in the microserver space. Now, Qualcomm has flung its own hat into the ring — and it’s got the potential to dwarf all competitors.

According to Steven Mollenkopf, Qualcomm’s CEO, the company is already engaged with multiple customers, including Facebook. Unlike the other early competitors, Qualcomm doesn’t necessarily need to lead with a microserver design or take a page from AMD’s book and introduce a standard ARM core while it works to bring its own custom architecture to market.

To address those questioning the x86-64 licensing agreements for Intel and AMD, in case Qualcomm does buy AMD:

Qualcomm has been working on its own 64-bit chip for several years, and has relied on ARM’s standard Cortex-A15 and Cortex-A53 for its interim products, but the company didn’t fire its chip developers or retrench around the idea of just using ARM IP.

What does Qualcomm have that these other companies don’t? To be blunt: money. AMD and Applied Micro are taking similar strategies (focusing on ARM), with an emphasis on particular markets and unique features where the ARM architecture is best positioned.

 

Here's to hoping that Qualcomm (and AMD, potentially) starts driving a wedge between Intel and one of their practically monopolized markets.

[Sauron]

Well, competition is never bad ^^ I'm not sure what a company that works mostly on x86 could do for qualcomm though, they'd basically have to ditch their current experience in the sector and start anew.

[That Norwegian Guy]

The way I see it, the more focused AMD can get, the better. They have way too many fronts and are losing heavily on all of them.

 

Well, competition is never bad

 

This is a tangent, but: wrong

 

In digital entertainment/ media distribution where exclusive licenses are involved, competition is always bad. For example, let's say you want to stream 4 TV shows. To get them all you need to subscribe to 4 different services because of exclusive licenses. Hence, you pirate (unless you have no principles)

 

In this case, competition can be bad.

 

It's a huge problem with anime for example, and is why currently anime has a snowball's chance in hell of generating large income from the western market.

 

Sorry for the slight aside.

[Sauron]

The way I see it, the more focused AMD can get, the better. They have way too many fronts and are losing heavily on all of them.

 

 

This is a tangent, but: wrong

 

In digital entertainment/ media distribution where exclusive licenses are involved, competition is always bad. For example, let's say you want to stream 4 TV shows. To get them all you need to subscribe to 4 different services because of exclusive licenses. Hence, you pirate (unless you have no principles)

 

In this case, competition can be bad.

 

It's a huge problem with anime for example, and is why currently anime has a snowball's chance in hell of generating large income from the western market.

 

Sorry for the slight aside.

 

 

Well, I guess the statement changes to SENSIBLE competition is never bad...

[Geo2160]

Oh the click bait...

IMPORTANT STUFF THAT YOU SHOULD READ:

 

What most people tend to forget is that the x86 license that amd, Intel and VIA have is not transferable. In other words if AMD goes bankrupt and another company buys it, it will lose its x86 license and all abilities to sell x86 chips. If they want it back, they will have to renegociate with intel, and I doubt Intel will be reasonable. All the work on the new architecture that is supposed to be unveiled in 2016 that Jim Keller and co. have done will go to waste. Which is stupid. That's why I don't believe Qualcomm or any other company will buy out AMD in the next years.

 

Intel has AMD exactly where they want them: technologically they're so far behind that they can not compete without murdering their margins and legally they can't be accused of monopolizing the market because from the outside it seems that AMD keeps digging its own grave. As a bonus, from a buyer's perspective their CPU business is almost worthless due to the licensing agreements, so that they can not come back from the grave and provide some competition that the desktop market really needs.

[cesrai]

The way I see it, the more focused AMD can get, the better. They have way too many fronts and are losing heavily on all of them.

 

 

This is a tangent, but: wrong

 

In digital entertainment/ media distribution where exclusive licenses are involved, competition is always bad. For example, let's say you want to stream 4 TV shows. To get them all you need to subscribe to 4 different services because of exclusive licenses. Hence, you pirate (unless you have no principles)

 

In this case, competition can be bad.

 

It's a huge problem with anime for example, and is why currently anime has a snowball's chance in hell of generating large income from the western market.

 

Sorry for the slight aside.

Mind blown, wow thanks for pointing that out.

[Ren]

What most people tend to forget is that the x86 license that amd, Intel and VIA have is not transferable. In other words if AMD goes bankrupt and another company buys it, it will lose its x86 license and all abilities to sell x86 chips.

K, look at what Jim Keller is doing for AMD. Now think of that, but with all of AMD for Qualcomm. If they do not use the AMD64 x86 architecture designs, I don't think they would have any issues. If it's all fresh, which it should be if it were ARM-based, they can use AMD's ideas with their own chips and perhaps make something truly competitive. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, just use sources.

Considering the fact that Qualcomm can swallow AMD's CPU side entirely with pure cash and AMD is already keen to integrate ARM technologies into their products, I'd say this is the strongest rumor of 2014 without anything official even being murmured. The only reason I have doubts is due to AMD wanting to see where they can take the Zen architecture. They might have already gotten to that point. No one will know until later.

I'll edit my main post with a few other links for people to check out.

[Geo2160]

K, look at what Jim Keller is doing for AMD. Now think of that, but with all of AMD for Qualcomm. If they do not use the AMD64 x86 architecture designs, I don't think they would have any issues. If it's all fresh, which it should be if it were ARM-based, they can use AMD's ideas with their own chips and perhaps make something truly competitive. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, just use sources.

 

How can you use ideas from X86 70W-120W TDP chips in ~1W ARM chips mind you? They're the exact opposite. They will have to either dump that business entirely or pay Intel ridiculous royalties. They may not want to do x86 chips any more, but why would they even want AMD at that point? They have better alternatives that they can acquire in the server business and they already have better designs for the consumer market. Not to mention the people from AMD who will probably quit or be laid off if this ever happens.

[Ren]

Fixed main post to feel less clickbait-y and more informative. Blame fudzilla for that.

[Guest]

In digital entertainment/ media distribution where exclusive licenses are involved, competition is always bad.

If exclusive licenses are involved, that means there is no competition.

If the licenses weren't exclusive and all the services competed in delivering each show, the consumer and the animation studios would be better off.

 

But as for the subject of the thread, AMD getting a cash injection sounds like a fantastic prospect. It could only be better if it came from a company that's not American.

[That Norwegian Guy]

If exclusive licenses are involved, that means there is no competition.

 

If streaming service A has a license to anime 1, and streaming service B has license to anime 2, and they're both charging 10 bucks for membership to watch it, they are competing for the money of anime watchers and essentially sabotaging eachother as most people aren't interested in subscribing to more than one such service. Will anime watcher who wants to watch both 1 and 2 either subscribe to just one, subscribe to both, or simply pirate/ free stream both and pay nothing?

 

The latter, in 85% of cases.

[patrickjp93]

Eh, Qualcomm doesn't have the engineers to make this worth it. Samsung would be more interesting.

[Guest]

If streaming service A has a license to anime 1, and streaming service B has license to anime 2, and they're both charging 10 bucks for membership to watch it, they are competing for the money of anime watchers.

I understood what you were saying.

My point was that the nature of an exclusive license is to make so that other services can't compete in delivering show A or B to the viewer.

What you are describing are not the negative effects of competition. You're describing the negative effects of exclusivity - artificially imposed lack of competition.

Competition is always good.

[That Norwegian Guy]

I understood what you were saying.

My point was that the nature of an exclusive license is to make so that other services can't compete in delivering show A or B to the viewer.

What you are describing are not the negative effects of competition. You're describing the negative effects of exclusivity - artificially imposed lack of competition.

Competition is always good.

 

No because exclusivity is a tactic used in competition. Not separated from it.

 

You seem to be fixating on the individual shows. I'm talking about the medium as a whole.

[MoonSpot]

Heck with AMDs market cap of 2.2 billion, I would think apple would buy them just for kicks. Would be a corporate notch in the belt that specifically designs chips for APPL hardware.

[Guest]

No because exclusivity is a tactic used in competition. Not separated from it.

You seem to be fixating on the individual shows. I'm talking about the medium as a whole.

You see streaming services using this tactic which hurts the fans and - as you agree- the medium as a whole.

And you think that if one of these services became a monopoly, it would decide to not use anti-consumer tactics? Why? It would be in a position where it could dictate the price to animation studios and consumers and be under no pressure to do a better job at dubbing and translating the shows than amateur torrent uploaders or innovate in any way.

Yeah, it probably would cost less than subscribing to a handful of services, but the price of this one service would go up.