Rumour: Intel Could Buy AMD As ARM’s Success Now Prevents Monopoly
Ryan Martin / 12 years ago
It is the age old rumour of the computer industry, whether Intel and AMD would join forces in a merger or whether one would buy the other, notably Intel buying AMD in recent times thanks to its great successes. In the past the debate was always cut short by traditional market “antitrust” competition regulations that dictated neither Intel or AMD could buy each other as it would create a monopoly. This is because when it comes to central processing units (CPUs) and the computer industry there are few, if any, alternatives to Intel or AMD, with exception to IBM and VIA in the industrial and enterprise markets.
However, according to sources within the technology market and trading industry this age old speculation has re-emerged. With AMD struggling to make ends meet Intel is reportedly assessing whether to acquire AMD. The rumour suggests that this time around the takeover would be possible because there is now an alternative to x86 in the CPU market with the rise of ARM CPUs. This means that if Intel were to buy AMD tomorrow the deal may be approved by market regulators because it would no longer be a monopoly.
With an Intel-AMD “superpower” we could see the best of both worlds in terms of high performance CPU innovations from Intel and high performance GPU innovations from AMD, maybe even Intel APUs with Intel CPU parts and AMD GPU parts.
Though AMD is still doing reasonably well at the moment in terms of expanding into new markets, so they may be unlikely to surrender to Intel with such a promising future ahead. AMD has recently dominated the console market providing the central CPU and GPU components for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox 720 as well as continuing to be successful in the GPU market, expanding into the tablet market and promising to develop ARM based products.
To any sensible minded person this deal still seems incredibly unlikely as Intel would have a complete monopoly on the consumer desktop, laptop and notebook markets, which is very anti-competitive. What are your thoughts on the revival of this rumour?
