It of course won’t happen, but if Intel went poof next monday then what would happen to the x86 ecosystem. It’s basically co-owned by AMD and Intel. As I recall the sharing partnership that these two have basically prevents neither guy from selling their patents/license to third parties. Would we just be left with AMD monopoly with intel’s corpse hanging from it, until X86 finally croaks? Do these CPU licensing agreements prevent just wholesale acquisition of Intel?
If Intel disappears, I imagine AMD will end up as the sole owner of the relevant Intel x86 patents during bankruptcy proceedings. Then AMD will then either negotiate a new agreement with someone else who wants to make x86 processors, or they end up having a monopoly on x86 and are forced to tread extremely lightly to avoid an antitrust lawsuit.
I think someone would get those Intel X86 rights. However there may be questions on whether the rights from AMD like A64 are transferable. But if some company buys the entire Intel X86 division, I bet that counts as the patents remaining within the division that has the rights, although it is under different ownership. We recently had the Arm vs Qualcomm case that showed this can be allowed.
Anyways this might be disruptive, and the immediate effect would probably be that AMD X86 will be a lot more expensive.
Companies as big as Intel don’t typically go poof, they have bankruptcy proceedings and sell off their assets. If those assets contractually can’t be sold, then yeah AMD would be the remaining owner.
They are losing money hand over fist right now though and have basically broken hundreds of agreements they have already been paid for…
I do agree - I believe what would happen is they would be split up, as per most of these things, and the US govt would ensure that the X86 division remains american. I would imagine the real issue here is not the cpus but the fabs as they are the things really underperforming and have for at least a decade now
It of course won’t happen, but if Intel went poof next monday then what would happen to the x86 ecosystem. It’s basically co-owned by AMD and Intel. As I recall the sharing partnership that these two have basically prevents neither guy from selling their patents/license to third parties. Would we just be left with AMD monopoly with intel’s corpse hanging from it, until X86 finally croaks? Do these CPU licensing agreements prevent just wholesale acquisition of Intel?
If Intel disappears, I imagine AMD will end up as the sole owner of the relevant Intel x86 patents during bankruptcy proceedings. Then AMD will then either negotiate a new agreement with someone else who wants to make x86 processors, or they end up having a monopoly on x86 and are forced to tread extremely lightly to avoid an antitrust lawsuit.
I think someone would get those Intel X86 rights. However there may be questions on whether the rights from AMD like A64 are transferable. But if some company buys the entire Intel X86 division, I bet that counts as the patents remaining within the division that has the rights, although it is under different ownership. We recently had the Arm vs Qualcomm case that showed this can be allowed.
Anyways this might be disruptive, and the immediate effect would probably be that AMD X86 will be a lot more expensive.
This is exactly how I see it panning out. The new owners would be american as well as there is no way the US govt would allow it to go overseas
Companies as big as Intel don’t typically go poof, they have bankruptcy proceedings and sell off their assets. If those assets contractually can’t be sold, then yeah AMD would be the remaining owner.
They are losing money hand over fist right now though and have basically broken hundreds of agreements they have already been paid for…
I do agree - I believe what would happen is they would be split up, as per most of these things, and the US govt would ensure that the X86 division remains american. I would imagine the real issue here is not the cpus but the fabs as they are the things really underperforming and have for at least a decade now