[WCCFT]Samsung may aquire AMD

[positivedoppler]

The source of the rumor is not Wccftech, they're just publishing what's on the Korea news site. I suspect Samsung is probably the source of the "leak."

 

[Noctifer616]

The source of the rumor is not Wccftech, they're just publishing what's on the Korea news site. I suspect Samsung is probably the source of the "leak."

Rumors of Samsung buying AMD are nothing new. I doubt there is any truth to it this time around as well.

 

[mrmt]

Apparently their two recent wins for semi-custom SOCs in their financials indicate those alone are worth $1B over 3 years.

I don't know why they even bothered to announce such a small sale.

 

[destrekor]

It's technically American but in nature is already multinational as a lot of their employees are immigrants on h1b visas. So being bought out would only change the people at the top.

Hence why I said, "American multinationals."

The buck still flows into and stops in the American HQ.

With a multinational company buying another one, there is a big chance for money to flow off-shore.

There is a reason, after all, a company would want to buy another company: to have their products/talent and make more money. Of course AMD, in this case, would continue to get revenue/budgets so that they can continue developing AMD IP and pushing it to market.

Depending upon the actual buyout structure, Samsung could also have unrestricted use of AMD IP. Remember that Intel actually licenses AMD64, the extension to the IA-32 ISA that AMD licensed from Intel.

Ultimately, these IPs could be the sole reason they would even be interested in AMD, and may have no long term plans to keep AMD around as a functional independent business unit, and would rather take the IP and continue developing product in-house.

Or they may let AMD do its thing but they could still take the IP and invest in R&D to produce their own in-house products that utilize AMD IP, potentially disrupting AMD market share even further. All of which could, long-term, lead to the dissolution of AMD as a business unit.

Of course, we could still see Samsung invest in AMD as a independent business unit, and for any products Samsung would want to develop further, could be thrown into the AMD unit.

AMD as a brand may or may not stick around in any case, much like ATi was folded into AMD and the brand extinguished, though the kept the sub-brands (Radeon, FirePro, etc).

It's not necessarily all doom and gloom, and there could be some real good results for the market. And ultimately, this is business, and I can't root for a government bail-out or anything. If a business fails to remain positive and cannot afford to continue pushing the boundary, that means management ultimately failed and the company ultimately deserves any potential buy-out, regardless of where it comes from. I just hate seeing it happen to the seemingly shrinking market of "still American owned" businesses.

 

[positivedoppler]

You know, I guess I wouldn't necessarily mind or care, but dang, I really wish the American multinationals could stay, well, American. It was sort of a huge blow that the American pioneer in communications equipment in just about every field, Motorola, struggled terribly and, when all was said and done, wound up in the hands of a Chinese multinational corporation (Lenovo).

It's great that Intel and Nvidia are still raking in cash, but it would be great if AMD could turn around and remain a fully American property.

Note: not to beat the American war drums or anything for those of you that are not American, but it's a piece of our pioneering history and pride, especially factoring in that what was once the norm that the pioneering corporations were American, most of them have fallen by the wayside, or otherwise the pioneering has been done elsewhere.

As for ownership of the company, it's no big deal. As it is right now, AMD is mostly owned by the middle east.
As for employment, even if Samsung were to take over AMD, the jobs will remain where they are so it's not like there will be an exodus of the labor force to Korea.
And the IC landscape right now is already pretty international. While Nvidia, Apple, and Qualcomm are American, they depend on TSMC and Samsung which are Asian companies.

I think Semiconductor in it's current form might be closer to then end then the beginning. It's the American way the we invent, profit, and once it because cheap and mass produced and fine honed by Asia, we move on to the next piece of technological innovation.


Oh yeah, don't forget 1/2 of AMD was once a Canadian company to begin with.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Someone in this thread said AMD IP isn't worth much.

Apparently their two recent wins for semi-custom SOCs in their financials indicate those alone are worth $1B over 3 years.

1 billion over 3 years in fact *isn't* much. I assume that is revenue, not net income. But for comparison purposes, Intel's revenue for *one* year was 52.7B and the net income for one year was 9.6B.

 

[psolord]

Here's to hoping that when I plug in my phone to charge, my graphics card will gain a 5% boost!

*runs*

 

[smackababy]

I can't for the life of me figure out why anyone would want to buy AMD. Product "goodness" aside, they simply don't make a lot of money. And, quite often, don't make ANY profit. Just seems like a bad business move. Unless Samsung can leverage the technology to boost sales in other areas of their business worth more than the potential losses incurred operating AMD, I don't see this going through.

 

[Silverforce11]

1 billion over 3 years in fact *isn't* much. I assume that is revenue, not net income. But for comparison purposes, Intel's revenue for *one* year was 52.7B and the net income for one year was 9.6B.

Not comparing to Intel, for someone like AMD, 1B over 3 years EXTRA income (just IP) is a big deal.

Even NV dGPU division wouldn't consider 1B in 3 years extra as a small amount.

When you compare to scales like Intel, Samsung or Apple, sure, that's chump change.

 

[Ketchup]

I can't for the life of me figure out why anyone would want to buy AMD. Product "goodness" aside, they simply don't make a lot of money. And, quite often, don't make ANY profit. Just seems like a bad business move. Unless Samsung can leverage the technology to boost sales in other areas of their business worth more than the potential losses incurred operating AMD, I don't see this going through.

Well, if someone were to buy AMD, they obviously would be parting with all the "junk" that is making them so unprofitable.

 

[Enigmoid]

Not comparing to Intel, for someone like AMD, 1B over 3 years EXTRA income (just IP) is a big deal.

Even NV dGPU division wouldn't consider 1B in 3 years extra as a small amount.

When you compare to scales like Intel, Samsung or Apple, sure, that's chump change.

Its revenue, not income. Its too hard to speculate income for these types of deals and you bet AMD would quote the largest number (revenue > income) in PR.

 

[destrekor]

Well, if someone were to buy AMD, they obviously would be parting with all the "junk" that is making them so unprofitable.

AMD has the potential to do so very well, with a more focused management style and better R&D budgets. They are sort of in a trap from the recent era of management. They are stretched so thin now, they don't really have the R&D budgets to really rock the world. And because they can barely produce much of importance, they can't generate the revenue that would allow them to increase the R&D budgets. And as they continue to sort of scramble and look for additional ways to gain market share in new industries that aren't completely dominated by Intel, they continue to stretch thin and run in the red.

An influx of cash with the right management and they could achieve something grand once again. Intel has a terrific architecture, but they are yet again resting on their laurels these days, not really extensively pushing for extensive leaps anymore. (extensive leaps may require extremely challenging changes and possibly moving beyond silicon, however, Intel has the cash, but no drive)

Intel's only real challenge these days is somewhat new, that of dGPU compute-based computing. Intel has nothing to challenge that, and if supercomputing users have the calculation needs that dGPU compute can address, their money is surely going to Nvidia and their Tesla brand. AMD lead the charge on compute capability but missed the market and failed the capitalize on what that compute strength could do. Their VLIW architecture blew away Nvidia's GPU compute capability but they didn't aggressively pursue that strength and Nvidia was able to capitalize on the emerging market.

I don't know if their is a good strategy for AMD to shed or scale back certain markets in order to regain competitive strength in other key markets, and their is no guarantee that AMD nor any buyer would see the dGPU business as that market they need to focus on. A good point to start in order to grow their APU/SOC market, perhaps? But dGPU development, especially without the compute/supercomputer market on which Nvidia is currently making bank, is a little less rewarding for the end goal of revenue.

Some cash may be all they need in order to keep and gain the talent they need in order to become very competitive and healthy in all the markets in which they current compete. But at the same time, all of the IP they have could quite likely be put to use by any number of buyers. And it's quite possible to see one buyer swallow AMD whole, only to then regurgitate what it did not want for other buyers to clean up the scraps. If Samsung bought them buy did not care for the actual dGPU business, I have to wonder, could Intel pass on that? That can't touch the CPU business due to monopoly worries, but AMD's ATI GPU business unit isn't exactly in competition with Intel.

Lots of possibilities, but ultimately, I just hope AMD can start focusing on revenue growth so that in the future they can begin pumping more cash into R&D.

 

[jpiniero]

I can't for the life of me figure out why anyone would want to buy AMD. Product "goodness" aside, they simply don't make a lot of money. And, quite often, don't make ANY profit. Just seems like a bad business move. Unless Samsung can leverage the technology to boost sales in other areas of their business worth more than the potential losses incurred operating AMD, I don't see this going through.

If Samsung was looking to jumpstart a server business, buying AMD would be a decent option especially if K12 is looking like it could be a viable product. Plus the GPU IP could be used in their mobile products and could also open up other areas like HPC for Samsung to get into.

They would buy their assets and not AMD itself. The corpse of AMD would remain as is and continue to sell the current x86 products and bring in the console revenue until they are no longer viable.

 

[Gloomy]

Actually on second thought, I just can't see a company as predatory as Samsung not swinging AMD's portfolio around like a club.

So I'm not totally positive on the prospect. But whatever, it's probably not happening anyway.

 

[at80eighty]

so in the same week, there is speculation of nv going to samsung for fabs, while samsung buys AMD. cool.

 

[5150Joker]

More sources speculating on the potential buy out: http://www.xda-developers.com/samsung-attempts-to-buy-amd-speculation-discussion/ and http://www.trustedreviews.com/opinions/why-samsung-should-buy-amd

 

[Silverforce11]

More sources speculating on the potential buy out: http://www.xda-developers.com/samsung-attempts-to-buy-amd-speculation-discussion/ and http://www.trustedreviews.com/opinions/why-samsung-should-buy-amd

It's going to hinge on whether x86 will be transferable or Intel will pull the plug, but its unlikely because they co-share due to x64 cross-license.

GPU tech is very handy for Samsung, but it's definitely x86, I have a feeling Samsung wants to be part of server & HPC provider and they are not keen on putting Intel chips in there forever benefiting their competitor who is attacking them on mobiles.

Where there's smoke, there's fire. This one is simmering for awhile.

 

[5150Joker]

It's going to hinge on whether x86 will be transferable or Intel will pull the plug, but its unlikely because they co-share due to x64 cross-license.

GPU tech is very handy for Samsung, but it's definitely x86, I have a feeling Samsung wants to be part of server & HPC provider and they are not keen on putting Intel chips in there forever benefiting their competitor who is attacking them on mobiles.

Where there's smoke, there's fire. This one is simmering for awhile.

I just don't see Intel letting Samsung get a foothold in the x86 business. I mean they are pretty much a monopoly, why invite in such a large threat? There's nothing stopping them from just cancelling the patent and taking Samsung to court and tying it up in litigation for a long long time. That's something Samsung wouldn't be very keen on. However, Samsung could just pass on the x86 patent and start focusing on AMD's graphics IP which could benefit them immensely. They could even use the CPU engineers to better their ARM processors which is where I see Samsung moving, not x86. Remember AMD has an initiative in place to use ARM for servers so with Samsung being the parent company, they could aggressively pursue that.

I think the down side would be that Samsung is almost guaranteed to pull AMD out of the discrete GPU market. It's too small and not profitable enough for them to bother and it's also shrinking. So in the end, I don't think it would be great for PC desktop enthusiasts unless AMD's executives somehow negotiate a clause with Samsung to allow discrete GPUs to continue. And if that happens, what would stop Intel from taking over NVIDIA? Damn, that would be an epic battle.

 

[jpiniero]

It's going to hinge on whether x86 will be transferable or Intel will pull the plug, but its unlikely because they co-share due to x64 cross-license.

If AMD gets bought or goes bankrupt they lose the x86 license. That's what the two agreed to.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Again, why would Samsung even want to do x86... They could pretty much spend 5 years and 5-10B$ just for a chance of being able to compete. And thats without the cost of buying AMD.

 

[MeldarthX]

Shink you tend think very short term; Samsung doesn't.

X86 License wouldn't be an issue either. There is a small little clause between FTC and Intel; if AMD is ever bought out; Intel can't do a single thing first 30 days about licensing. They then need to go into nagoations with the new owners of AMD to renew the license with good faith and they have up to a year; if they don't renew license with that first year and there was no real nagoations in good faith. FTC will investigate and possibly break up Intel for breach of monoply laws....

FTC purposely put that in there to prevent Intel from killing second source for x86 cpus. If Samsung bought out AMD; it would spell trouble for Intel.

The biggest hurdle won't be X86 license; it would be US government; US government already said they'd block sale of AMD to middle east....

Samsung; might have a chance to get around it....

 

[Timorous]

I just don't see Intel letting Samsung get a foothold in the x86 business. I mean they are pretty much a monopoly, why invite in such a large threat? There's nothing stopping them from just cancelling the patent and taking Samsung to court and tying it up in litigation for a long long time. That's something Samsung wouldn't be very keen on. However, Samsung could just pass on the x86 patent and start focusing on AMD's graphics IP which could benefit them immensely. They could even use the CPU engineers to better their ARM processors which is where I see Samsung moving, not x86. Remember AMD has an initiative in place to use ARM for servers so with Samsung being the parent company, they could aggressively pursue that.

I think the down side would be that Samsung is almost guaranteed to pull AMD out of the discrete GPU market. It's too small and not profitable enough for them to bother and it's also shrinking. So in the end, I don't think it would be great for PC desktop enthusiasts unless AMD's executives somehow negotiate a clause with Samsung to allow discrete GPUs to continue. And if that happens, what would stop Intel from taking over NVIDIA? Damn, that would be an epic battle.

Personally I think Intel would be quick to agree terms to a new cross licencing deal with a Samsung owned AMD as they would quickly realise that they have a lot more to lose. Just play the scenario where Intel does not licence X86 to Samsung and see what happens.

1) Samsung refuse to licence X86-64
2) This forces Intel to come up with a new X86 based 64 bit architecture
3) That will not happen quickly, even if they have designs on the table to cover this scenario
4) They will also be incompatible with current X86-64 software as if they had a compatible architecture that did not infringe on AMD's patents they would be using it to reduce the leverage AMD have already.
5) In the interim period where Intel cannot make X86-64 till they release their new architecture any new hardware required by the likes of google, Facebook, Amazon etc would have to be provided by a different tech so ARM, IBM or SUN most likely.
6) Samsung can provide ARM based designs and with extra IP from AMD and their engineers could probably create ARM based designs that competitive with X86 CPUs but that will take a while.
7) Even when Intel does release a new architecture it is going to require new software for it to work. Because it is X86 based it is likely to be very similar so 32 bit apps will likely work correctly but 64 bit apps will need to be reworked.
8) Samsung would also have AMDs GPU tech so they could get into the HPC space. They would need a software solution as robust as CUDA though but they do have the money to make it work.
9) Samsung being unable to manufacture X86 hardware would cause the PS4 and Xbox One to collapse as they cannot manufacture any new hardware units. This is likely to annoy Microsoft and since Microsoft make very important software products it is entirely possible they could be slow to adopt Intel's new architecture. Without software any new architecture will fail.
10) Samsung could see that as a positive as it is likely it would usher in a new generation of consoles and since Samsung now have a lot of IP they can provide the core parts of the consoles such as CPU, GPU, HDD, Memory etc.

Ultimately Intel would be screwing themselves over by not letting Samsung have the X86 licence. If Intel went that route it could end up being a positive outcome for Samsung so I do not see Intel withholding the licence. Too much to lose and too little to gain.

EDIT: I also totally forgot about the FTC and the monopoly issues Intel would face as well.

 

[jpiniero]

Again, why would Samsung even want to do x86... They could pretty much spend 5 years and 5-10B$ just for a chance of being able to compete. And thats without the cost of buying AMD.

It's not really even about competing. At this point, even Intel is at the mercy of how interested corporations are buying new laptops (and to an extent desktops). Granted, it's such a stranglehold there that even if Samsung created more competitive products it would be too difficult to crack. Everything else, ARM would be better for Samsung anyway.

If Mububala wants out, there's not much the BoD can do about it.

 

[jpiniero]

1) Samsung refuse to licence X86-64

Intel also gets to keep the x86-64 tech if AMD is bought. Really, it seems like it is water tight for Intel. Govt Intervention is of course a possibility but given the competition that ARM poses it's less of an issue.

 

[ShintaiDK]

1) Samsung refuse to licence X86-64

Doesnt matter, after a change of control. Intel got full rights forever to x64 plus whatever else IP.