[Serious] If AMD went bankrupt tomorrow... what would happen to x86 CPUs?

[eton975]

If AMD just went poof... what would happen? Would Intel fill their void, or could another company take their place (eg. Qualcomm)?

Could the death of AMD actually benefit us, IF another company scooped up their IP?

Finally, could it mean a shift away from native x86 processors, and towards other designs? Could x86 only be emulated in the future?

I probably sound like I have no idea about what I'm talking about here... and I don't.

 

[NTMBK]

AMD's x86 license is non-transferable, and Intel don't want any more competitors eating into their x86 monopoly. NVidia tried for a long time to get an x86 license, and eventually gave up and had to make ARM CPUs instead. Unless some form of government body (EU, FTC, whatever) stepped in and forced Intel to license their ISA to another company, I don't think we'd see a new competitor in that market. It would become Intel with a pure x86 monopoly, vs the multiple ARM vendors.

EDIT: This is assuming that VIA also went "poof", as they can still make x86. Though they aren't really competitive.

 

[BrightCandle]

I suspect very little would happen in the short term. The market wouldn't really changer all that much. Intel still has plenty of competition with different ISA's so its not like its alone in the market place and those competitors are innovating in their own ways. It might be important for x86 that one of only two companies goes under but for the computer market more generally its probably not a big problem.

 

[NostaSeronx]

If AMD nears bankruptcy it has a high change to get taken over by Mubadala Technology. This take over won't actually happen till the current Intel and AMD cross-license agreement ends. MT would want to force the usage of only GlobalFoundries as always.

 

[MisterMac]

Absolutely nothing.


..i wonder if Intel would snatch up IP + AMD tech talent from all it's divisions tho..
or It would be plucked to bits by all the big tech players in small parts.

 

[24601]

Intel would buy up the Graphics IP at cut-rate prices.

That's about it.

Intel would then not renew it's Cross-Licensing Agreement with Nvidia as the Intel Entity as well as Deny Nvidia the Cross-Licensing agreement Nvidia has with AMD and Nvidia would essentially die when those two Cross-Licensing agreements both expire.

Image somewhat related:

 

[OCGuy]

AMD has plenty of IP that will not be going anywhere. It does feel like they have given both the CPU amd GPU markets their best shot, but they cannot crack the dominance of Intel and NVidia.

 

[Arkadrel]

What always happends when there is no competition....

Prices go up as far as they can.

That means little in the low end market, where ARM gives intel a bit of competition.

In the high end, desktop and laptop's the CPU prices would explode.

Eventually Intel would kill off the PCIe port on motherboards, and force people to use their IGPs for graphics.

(why let nvidia have any profits from that area if they can just snatch it up for themselfs? and amd is dead? more money for Intel, its not like they need nvidia's gpus if theres no AMD to compete against, and they can just shut nvidia out)

The biggest price differnce in that world of future Intel CPUs would be how powerfull the IGP that goes with the CPU is.

 

[24601]

What always happends when there is no competition....

Prices go up as far as they can.

That means little in the low end market, where ARM gives intel a bit of competition.

In the high end, desktop and laptop's the CPU prices would explode.

Eventually Intel would kill off the PCIe port on motherboards, and force people to use their IGPs for graphics.

The biggest price differnce in that world of future Intel CPUs would be how powerfull the IGP that goes with the CPU is.

That happened with Bulldozer. Old news.

Nvidia has known about the PCIe kill off since they were literally the ones that made sure that there even was a time-frame Intel had to stick to in their killing off PCIe.

Without that, PCIe would likely have been killed after PCIe 1.0 .

 

[scannall]

With x86 having %100 of the laptop and desktop market it is likely they would run into anti-trust issues. What the remedy would be? Who knows. Be forced to let AMD's license transfer? Be forced to license to any and all?

Neither of those would hurt Intel a lot. Since they have the experience and the process to keep the vast majority of the x86 business anyway, regardless of who or how many licenses there are.

 

[Homeles]

What always happends when there is no competition....

Prices go up as far as they can.

That means little in the low end market, where ARM gives intel a bit of competition.

In the high end, desktop and laptop's the CPU prices would explode.

Eventually Intel would kill off the PCIe port on motherboards, and force people to use their IGPs for graphics.

(why let nvidia have any profits from that area if they can just snatch it up for themselfs? and amd is dead? more money for Intel, its not like they need nvidia's gpus if theres no AMD to compete against, and they can just shut nvidia out)

The biggest price differnce in that world of future Intel CPUs would be how powerfull the IGP that goes with the CPU is.

We've already got monopoly pricing, FYI.

 

[BSim500]

In the high end, desktop and laptop's the CPU prices would explode.

Eventually Intel would kill off the PCIe port on motherboards, and force people to use their IGPs for graphics.

Prices probably won't rise much more than now. The biggest competitor to Intel's Haswell's are Intel's Ivy & Sandy Bridge's, (ie, if they put prices up too much, people will just stop upgrading and hang onto older hardware for longer). If they set them too high, they'd just end up dropping prices to what people are willing to pay just as AMD were forced to do with the crazy FX-9590 launch prices. "The sky isn't the limit" as Intel will still find what's most efficient on the demand curve (which is a curve not a straight line to infinity). No-one's going to pay $1,000 for an i5 or an nVidia 760 if AMD vanished.

And I doubt they'd kill off PCI-E just to stuff nvidia as the bus is widely used for far more than just GFX cards (ie, SSD's, TV cards, pro multi-channel audio editing, pro multi-channel video editing (SDI interface for broadcast / production TV cameras), high-grade sound cards, render farms, wi-fi on desktops, firewire, fibre ethernet adaptors, analogue modems, multi-channel CCTV security cards, GPS, GSM telephony, robotics controllers, etc).

 

[NTMBK]

And I doubt they'd kill off PCI-E just to stuff nvidia as the bus is widely used for far more than just GFX cards (ie, SSD's, TV cards, pro multi-channel audio editing, pro multi-channel video editing (SDI interface for broadcast / production TV cameras), high-grade sound cards, render farms, wi-fi on desktops, firewire, fibre ethernet adaptors, analogue modems, multi-channel CCTV security cards, GPS, GSM telephony, robotics controllers, etc).

Most of those things need only a couple of PCIe channels, tops, and the few that need a full fat x16 link are professional workstation applications. Drop the "consumer" platform down to 4 x1 links, or whatever, and keep a whole heap of lanes on the workstation/server platform.

 

[sefsefsefsef]

In enterprise, x86 might become the new Itanium. With only a single possible supplier, companies will want to move away from x86, but all their legacy code is already written for it. There will be a much larger push to get ARM in shape for high performance applications, and many companies will move even faster in that direction than they already are.

 

[raghu78]

"I probably sound like I have no idea about what I'm talking about here... and I don't. "

OP thats the only useful part in your post. :whiste:

Personal attacks will not be tolerated
-ViRGE

 

[jones377]

Speaking of tomorrow, what will your new thread title be called then?

 

[Torn Mind]

What always happends when there is no competition....

Prices go up as far as they can.

That means little in the low end market, where ARM gives intel a bit of competition.

In the high end, desktop and laptop's the CPU prices would explode.

Eventually Intel would kill off the PCIe port on motherboards, and force people to use their IGPs for graphics.

(why let nvidia have any profits from that area if they can just snatch it up for themselfs? and amd is dead? more money for Intel, its not like they need nvidia's gpus if theres no AMD to compete against, and they can just shut nvidia out)

The biggest price differnce in that world of future Intel CPUs would be how powerfull the IGP that goes with the CPU is.

Capturing what would be consumer surplus and economic "inefficiency"(portion of surplus lost) and having higher prices than would be in a more competitive environment are the effect of a monopolized market. However, this does not mean prices trending towards infinity, as there will be a point in which the price increase is so high that units sold drops off and profit starts to go down. Running their own OEM customers, like Dell, out of business with a 500 dollar Celeron is not in Intel's best interest.

 

[Ajay]

IIRC, the legal settlement between Intel & AMD specifies that if AMD goes bankrupt, all of AMD's x86 related technology goes to Intel. AMD's license is not transferable. Game over.

 

[kimmel]

Almost nothing would happen to x86 CPUs, as AMD doesn't really play in the current competitive CPU landscape. Now, if Qualcomm, Mediatek and others went bankrupt then we might see a different strategy wrt Intel.

At the high end Intel has been competing with itself (and a tiny bit with power and sparc) for awhile now. At the low end it is being swarmed by quite a few other companies that matter a whole lot more to Intel.

AMD doesn't matter regardless of the wishful thinking in this thread.

 

[Homeles]

In enterprise, x86 might become the new Itanium. With only a single possible supplier, companies will want to move away from x86, but all their legacy code is already written for it. There will be a much larger push to get ARM in shape for high performance applications, and many companies will move even faster in that direction than they already are.

This is an interesting perspective.

 

[BrightCandle]

I don't know if AMD has any further innovations to make. Memory controller onto the CPU and 64 bit instruction set were big improvements. But the impact I fear is in the GPU market where competition is fierce at the top end and the impact of AMD going under would be dramatic.

 

[DeathReborn]

What always happends when there is no competition....

Prices go up as far as they can.

That means little in the low end market, where ARM gives intel a bit of competition.

In the high end, desktop and laptop's the CPU prices would explode.

Eventually Intel would kill off the PCIe port on motherboards, and force people to use their IGPs for graphics.

(why let nvidia have any profits from that area if they can just snatch it up for themselfs? and amd is dead? more money for Intel, its not like they need nvidia's gpus if theres no AMD to compete against, and they can just shut nvidia out)

The biggest price differnce in that world of future Intel CPUs would be how powerfull the IGP that goes with the CPU is.

I suspect the interfering, busy-body, nanny state called the EU would stimy any attempts by Intel to jack up prices or prevent any form of competition in the Desktop/Laptop/Server markets. The EU is a big enough market to have some sway over Intel, even if it resorts to "forcing" the US government to bash Intel into some form of shape.

 

[SAAA]

IIRC, the legal settlement between Intel & AMD specifies that if AMD goes bankrupt, all of AMD's x86 related technology goes to Intel. AMD's license is not transferable. Game over.

Does this include Kaveri/HSA related tech?

 

[TreVader]

Intel would buy up the Graphics IP at cut-rate prices.

That's about it.

Intel would then not renew it's Cross-Licensing Agreement with Nvidia as the Intel Entity as well as Deny Nvidia the Cross-Licensing agreement Nvidia has with AMD and Nvidia would essentially die when those two Cross-Licensing agreements both expire.

Image somewhat related:

This would actually be the likely outcome. With AMDs superior tech and Intels massive resources nvidia would cease to exist within 2 years.


That said, AMD isn't going anywhere. They won't be running X86 any time soon but they still provide good APUs and I have no doubt their ARM core will be excellent.

dGPU they are already poised to take the market in 2015.

 

[JDG1980]

I don't understand how AMD got put in the position of having a non-transferrable license. It seems that ownership of the AMD64 extensions (which Intel has of course incorporated for years) should have given them more leverage than that. If AMD was bought out / went bankrupt and Intel tried to use that as an excuse to yank their license, why couldn't AMD say in return that their agreement to let Intel use the 64-bit x86 extensions is likewise null and void? Intel obviously wouldn't want to go back to 32-bit only, so they would have to relent. Who gave away that leverage?