I hope they lose billions on this deal. I know I’m only going with AMD now. It’s not much, but I do buy all the tech for my company. Servers, laptops, etc… will all be AMD going forward.
I’ve been building computers since 1999, and I’ve noticed that the industry is cyclical. I’ve purchased CPUs from both Intel and AMD. We need Intel to succeed, otherwise AMD will dominate the x86 processor market.
Don’t get me wrong, the market will probably be worse if Intel were to go bust (certainly in the short term), but it wouldn’t be anywhere near as devastating as it would’ve been 10, 15, 20 years ago.
x86 isn’t the only viable architecture in town anymore.
Apple and others have proven that ARM is certainly viable for PCs.
Yes, Qualcomm’s X Elite was a complete dud, but that’s more on their/MS’s absolute shit show of driver/firmware/graphics API development, not on the hardware. Nvidia’s ARM stuff is already more mature.
Now imagine if Intel disappeared. AMD simply would not be able to meet the demand required, it’d tigger an arms race of companies pushing ARM and RISC-V development. Nvidia has not kept it secret that they want to get more into CPUs.
Shit, as unlikely as it initially seems, there’s so much money on the table that Apple could even consider selling SoCs (although even if they did, I imagine they’d retain the best for themselves, or charge a huge premium).
I don’t think people should be as worried about a lack of competition as they were when AMD was facing bankruptcy. The market is different now, and it’s in a state of fairly quick evolution.
Literally illegal. Only AMD and Intel have the patent cross-licensing rights to make x86 chips. There used to be a third company (Cyrix and subsequently VIA), and (maybe?) still is, but it hasn’t been relevant to the desktop CPU market in decades.
The real competition will come from ARM-based computers.
We don’t need competition in the x86 space, we need competition in the mobile/desktop/server space. That could easily be performance competitive ARM or RISC-v or whatever. Better even with diversity of design.
I’d buy a macbook, but it’s a lot more expensive than my “throw Linux on a used corporate thinkpad” approach, and I can tolerate macOS, but don’t love it. If you’re in the market for a new premium laptop, I think they’re pretty established, and I do think people are buying them.
Ampere workstations are cool, but in a price range where most customers are probably corporate, and they’ll mostly buy what they know works. I think their offerings are mostly niche for engineers who do dev work with stuff that will run on arm servers.
I’d say non-corporate arm adoption will grow when there’s more affordable new and used options from mainstream manufacturers. Most people won’t go for an expensive niche option, and probably don’t care about architecture. Most Apple machines probably sell because they’re Apple machines, not because of the chip inside.
I don’t know exact numbers, but I do feel that arm server adoption isn’t going to badly, especially with new web servers.
I own an M1 MacBook. I don’t use it nearly as much as my main pc (gaming laptop with CachyOS (Arch-based, btw)) but it’s very well built and is well optimized. If I could get the build of a MacBook but with the specs of my gaming pc without spending 2x the price as I would on a pre-build windows machine I would absolutely do it.
Apple doesn’t really exist as a competitor for a number of industries and use cases due to not officially supporting anything other than OSX so I’m not sure if they’re a fair comparison here.
The only real edge they have is in non-gaming related consumer workloads.
intel must still be hanging on purely based on corporate computers? or is there something else they are a large part of?
this just be in my bubble, but i feel like anyone i know over the last 15 years has been exclusively getting AMD, whether theyre tech savvy or just a regular consumer.
Athlon64 x2s fucking dominated Pentiums back in the mid 2000s, but the market for people playing games was much smaller. Only with the i-series did Intel come back on top. Ryzen was great when it came out for budget gaming, but Intel still was supreme in perforce until the Ryzen 3D processors came out.
Oh I agree with you, but in my experience the people i know have predominately gone AMD as well. When I bought my 9900k, Reddit was HEAVILY downvoting any Intel support and upvoting AMD support. It doesn’t reflect the market, it I do see that in social trends.
…that said, while my 9900k still kicks ass, I am never going Intel again after recent news hahaha
They do a a good amount of of military industrial contracting and work for 3 letter agencies on data processing/ high performance computing.
They also got awarded government funding in 2024 to build logic chips for the military in-country.
Not enough to sustain the company, but such “sensitive” programs may not be allowed to show up in revenue reports or have to be assigned to other areas or so.
I hope they lose billions on this deal. I know I’m only going with AMD now. It’s not much, but I do buy all the tech for my company. Servers, laptops, etc… will all be AMD going forward.
I’ve been building computers since 1999, and I’ve noticed that the industry is cyclical. I’ve purchased CPUs from both Intel and AMD. We need Intel to succeed, otherwise AMD will dominate the x86 processor market.
Modern times aren’t like the past.
Don’t get me wrong, the market will probably be worse if Intel were to go bust (certainly in the short term), but it wouldn’t be anywhere near as devastating as it would’ve been 10, 15, 20 years ago.
x86 isn’t the only viable architecture in town anymore.
Apple and others have proven that ARM is certainly viable for PCs.
Yes, Qualcomm’s X Elite was a complete dud, but that’s more on their/MS’s absolute shit show of driver/firmware/graphics API development, not on the hardware. Nvidia’s ARM stuff is already more mature.
Now imagine if Intel disappeared. AMD simply would not be able to meet the demand required, it’d tigger an arms race of companies pushing ARM and RISC-V development. Nvidia has not kept it secret that they want to get more into CPUs.
Shit, as unlikely as it initially seems, there’s so much money on the table that Apple could even consider selling SoCs (although even if they did, I imagine they’d retain the best for themselves, or charge a huge premium).
I don’t think people should be as worried about a lack of competition as they were when AMD was facing bankruptcy. The market is different now, and it’s in a state of fairly quick evolution.
The architecture is in its swan song anyways. Let AMD ride it into the sunset and bid it good riddance.
Not having competition is not a good thing. I hope a third player comes along.
Literally illegal. Only AMD and Intel have the patent cross-licensing rights to make x86 chips. There used to be a third company (Cyrix and subsequently VIA), and (maybe?) still is, but it hasn’t been relevant to the desktop CPU market in decades.
The real competition will come from ARM-based computers.
We don’t need competition in the x86 space, we need competition in the mobile/desktop/server space. That could easily be performance competitive ARM or RISC-v or whatever. Better even with diversity of design.
Heck of an industry to break into.
Competitor is already here. Apple and Ampere are making ARM systems that fit most users needs. There are ARM servers. But people don’t want to switch.
I’d buy a macbook, but it’s a lot more expensive than my “throw Linux on a used corporate thinkpad” approach, and I can tolerate macOS, but don’t love it. If you’re in the market for a new premium laptop, I think they’re pretty established, and I do think people are buying them.
Ampere workstations are cool, but in a price range where most customers are probably corporate, and they’ll mostly buy what they know works. I think their offerings are mostly niche for engineers who do dev work with stuff that will run on arm servers.
I’d say non-corporate arm adoption will grow when there’s more affordable new and used options from mainstream manufacturers. Most people won’t go for an expensive niche option, and probably don’t care about architecture. Most Apple machines probably sell because they’re Apple machines, not because of the chip inside.
I don’t know exact numbers, but I do feel that arm server adoption isn’t going to badly, especially with new web servers.
I own an M1 MacBook. I don’t use it nearly as much as my main pc (gaming laptop with CachyOS (Arch-based, btw)) but it’s very well built and is well optimized. If I could get the build of a MacBook but with the specs of my gaming pc without spending 2x the price as I would on a pre-build windows machine I would absolutely do it.
Apple doesn’t really exist as a competitor for a number of industries and use cases due to not officially supporting anything other than OSX so I’m not sure if they’re a fair comparison here.
The only real edge they have is in non-gaming related consumer workloads.
Would TSMC be considered a competitor to AMD?
No. AMD is fabless; TSMC doesn’t design chips. They’re in different parts of the supply chain.
In fact, AMD is a customer of TSMC.
intel must still be hanging on purely based on corporate computers? or is there something else they are a large part of?
this just be in my bubble, but i feel like anyone i know over the last 15 years has been exclusively getting AMD, whether theyre tech savvy or just a regular consumer.
A lot of people I work with still buy Intel based on brand recognition alone. Most are tech savvy people too.
15 years? absolutely not. Before Ryzen in 2017 almost no one was buying AMD.
edit:
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/amds-desktop-pc-market-share-hits-a-new-high-as-server-gains-slow-down-intel-now-only-outsells-amd-2-1-down-from-9-1-a-few-years-ago
AMD is at 32.2% unit share of Desktop/Laptop PCs in Q2 2025. Lots of people still buying Intel.
Athlon64 x2s fucking dominated Pentiums back in the mid 2000s, but the market for people playing games was much smaller. Only with the i-series did Intel come back on top. Ryzen was great when it came out for budget gaming, but Intel still was supreme in perforce until the Ryzen 3D processors came out.
the person above said:
that is 100% nonsense. as stated above even today intel is still outselling AMD 2:1 in the PC market.
Oh I agree with you, but in my experience the people i know have predominately gone AMD as well. When I bought my 9900k, Reddit was HEAVILY downvoting any Intel support and upvoting AMD support. It doesn’t reflect the market, it I do see that in social trends.
…that said, while my 9900k still kicks ass, I am never going Intel again after recent news hahaha
I got a new work laptop recently. First one I’ve ever had that didn’t have an Intel cpu. Company is a decent sized multinational.
I think it’s already turning. But at the same time I don’t think the US can afford to let Intel fail entirely.
Defense contracting.
They do a a good amount of of military industrial contracting and work for 3 letter agencies on data processing/ high performance computing.
They also got awarded government funding in 2024 to build logic chips for the military in-country.
Not enough to sustain the company, but such “sensitive” programs may not be allowed to show up in revenue reports or have to be assigned to other areas or so.
Their new GPU has a pretty solid price/performance.
CPU is shit though
Can confirm my work laptop has an Intel chip