Errr no they don't atm. But they have something more valuable. Ties. With all sorts of institutions, organizations, soft companies, automobile industry and whatnot and of course the military. US military believes Intel's 18A node will be good for them so they just chipped in 3 bil. dlrs. And this is the first breath of air for Intel in a very long 2024 of downfalls and constantly losing stock value. Tomshardware has a report on this.
So for the market cap, as of September 4, 2024, it is as follows (from Forbes):
- Microsoft $3.21 trillion
- Apple $3.17 trillion
- Nvidia $2.97 trillion
- AMD $257 billion
- Intel $130 billion (approximately)

Intel are paying for their sins and misses. They had to. Because they are many. Let's not forget that Apple, after 15 years of Intel cpus, is now running with their own ARM cpus literally because the I-phone happened. And Intel could have been inside the iphone but nooo they were too good for such a petty tech. Talking about epic fail. Anyway. I won't be surprised even with all the support Intel can get, to be reduced to a poor "relative" actually switching roles with AMD. We 'll have to see because people globally tend to have the memory of a fish and forget easily. Well frankly my friends, i don't.
To me, Intel was the necessary evil many years ago when AMD (and Cyrix, remember ?) played the role of the poor copycat company making Intel clones. Never liked Intel and the past 10 years or so, i dislike them even more.
Mainly because when you buy an Intel cpu it's not yours. It's still theirs. Apart from all fatal flaws and backdoors every Intel cpu with ME is basically only lent to you for an unknown period of time. Intel Management Engine which everyone has come across when installing chipset drivers etc., is literally a mini cpu inside the main cpu running a modified Minix v.3 OS.
This simply means no OS in the world can have final control over "your" Intel computer. Count in UEFI in modern systems and you have at least 2 kernels between your OS and the hardware, as zdnet once reported. In modern multicore Intel cpus, Minix also runs on three cores. It does all sorts of stuff: TCP/IP networking stacks (4 and 6), File systems, Drivers (disk, net, USB, mouse), Web server. But most importantly it can change your comp's firmware even when it's turned off (but still plugged in power outlet). And it has access to your passwords. And it's fucking vulnerable. Nothing can save your comp or server(s) if MINIX is compromised. Or may i add a lil' joke here, if Intel get completely destroyed and one mad Intel scientist, decides to "go out with a bang" and sends a "fuck you code" to ~2 billion comps running Intel cpus haha. Talking about Terminator days will be real then and not so funny as it seemingly is.
So yeah, there is a whole lower than low level instruction set execution in Intel cpus and it basically RUNS YOUR COMP. Not you.
This little history so we remember who Intel still is and what they do. And personally, although almost all my comps have Intel inside and only my main one is a Ryzen 9, i can never root for Intel. They are sort of evil. AMD's Platform Security Processor is also another riddle, a bit Intel-like lower than low level subsystem and it supposedly is only for security. Pre-Ryzen cpus don't have this. But it does and has access to much less than Intel's MINIX does, but still a-sort of- mystery box, yet to be deciphered. But hey, lemme see any Intel fanboy speak out now. I 'll be waiting for hot answers haha.
My best to all, cheers
PS: I had this much older friend from US who told me some 25 years ago, very seriously about Intel: "The guys who formed Intel in the late 60s, stole the tech for the 4004 and subsequently 8008/8080 microchip (hailed by most as the first truly integrated cpu), from a fallen alien spaceship. By managing to interpret what that alien thing did they -sort of- invented the modern x86 cpu as we know it". I used to laugh at him with all my heart back then. Right now, this seems much less far off than it seemed back then, even if it still is one for the conspiracy theory nerds. My friend's passed away but his words have this "Roland Space Echo" in my mind hehe. Wtf, godspeed old chap.

 

Last edited: Sep 18, 2024

Just a quick note. All CPUs (at least for PC) have some equivalent. AMD and Apple. Government orders, like you said.

Funny comment. They really were groundbreaking for many years.
I think the 8080 shows up in a "hacker movie". The movie was extremely bad on the hacker realism side, but watchable. Swordfish I think

 

Yes very true, but lemme note here, not to the extent where they can take control of your comp. They can do the "ET phone home" thing and gather all sorts of stats, prevent some malicious code and run some low level code mostly for microcode updates that sort of thing. But nothing -at least to my knowledge, which admittedly is very limited- as evil as Intel's closed-source MINIX version.

The 8080 must have been in War Games -1983. I think they had Pentium 3 or 4 in Swordfish, as everything shown in the movie was the current creme de la creme. I do remember the scene with the 7 lcd monitors and it was damn impressive for 2001. I think they pulled that off using Matrox gpus. But of course the movie lacked realism, something which ironically Travolta's character monologue in the opening of the movie criticizes heavily hahaha. Overall i did enjoy the movie, somewhat cool thriller.
My best mate

 

wow

 

And to think that this economic reversal for the two companies is while AMD has about 25% of the pcs globally and Intel 70%. Another 5% is ARM and others. And if you ask me how is this possible, it is because AMD has re-appeared out of almost nowhere. And all their numbers we see now is from sales done in about the last 6-7 years with mostly current prices. Whereas Intel has built that 70% with extreme discounts to big vendors and longterm contracts with huge companies and the server industry including leasing-like upgrades, paying for new with old prices and such. Imho, Intel's dominance is a thin tower mostly built on trust rather than actual winner product lines. And now that this trust is shaken, or proven forfeit if you like, the foundation has started to crumble, so to speak.
Something that we haven't talked about is Intel blindsided its shareholders suspending their dividend payments back in August. And all this after presenting the most disappointing Q2 ever. The -supposed- blindsiding refers more to fact that Intel revealed in August 1 that their foundries for doing manufacturing for third parties were mostly doing nothing, costing billions while at the same time Intel was letting off 15% of its workforce and halting payments to shareholders. In return Intel, its CEO and the Chief Financial Officer are now facing a class action, mass lawsuit from their own shareholders and this is how Intel's stock has plummeted leading to the number you saw even with almost 3 times the market coverage AMD has.
Now, in the pre-Ryzen era AMD was about 2-3% of the industry and mainly sold cheap cpus in countries with poor economies. The Zen architecture was their final bet at the time, if it didn't catch on they would be totally bankrupt. But they pulled a hat trick with it and here we are. I must emphasize here, Intel's old tricks paying off big vendors under the desk not to put AMD cpus in their comps will not work anymore, as public demand seems to have outweighed Intel's outrageous bribes and extortion tactics of the past.
So coming back to the start of my post, even 70% of the global pc market cannot sustain a company with 100 thousand employees when its share keeps falling constantly. So the 100K employees are now 85K and with all else put in motion, Intel plans to bounce back at about mid 2025. Until then, we 'll just watch how it progresses.
Cheers
PS: I 've got lots of popcorn and front row seats to the drama. Sit back and relax, i am very curious as to what will happen.

 

Very important fact. It's not the AMD is not killing it lately, it's just that "lately" is only since Zen 3000K series. In the server market changes are slower by definition, but there is where AMD is crushing Intel even more.

Yeah, the gear and soft was like "3D-hacking" so very fancy and nothing real.
But I'm still convinced the hacker downloaded like "the core" of his brilliant "hacker-toolz" from a ancient CPU that somehow had internet access. But maybe I'm confusing it with other flick... I thought that was very neat, again for a movie. Didn't even knew what CPU it was when I watched it

Always a pleasure my friend

Hell yeah. And I'm here for it. Like every weekend I youtube "intel" and there's always new drama

 

Found it. No wonder I didn't find it with a simple google search. It was the dinosaur PDP-10

 

Last edited: Sep 20, 2024

More drama... From Tomshardware
"Qualcomm has its eye on Intel. According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, Qualcomm approached the struggling Intel about a potential takeover deal. The deal is described as "far from certain" and likely to garner antitrust investigations. If a deal occurred, it could also have far-reaching effects on the x86 architecture"
This is something totally new and a most unexpected turn of events. More like a Hollywood movie and less than reality, but still it's true. I googled this and both Intel and Qualcomm are very hush hush about this. I am almost certain that they have their eye on the foundries and not care much about the x86 licenses and such, but i might be wrong of course... Xupito? bro, we need more popcorn for sure!
PS: And if you read the Wall Street article, shockingly, Intel is now at 90bil market share. 40 billion less than the 130billion i estimated from Forbes' report because, the article itself did not refer to Intel's market share directly but just said that AMD is now double the market cap than Intel.

 

Last edited: Sep 20, 2024

Holy shit. Last I read was that Qualcomm has interest only in the foundries of Intel. But seeing that very low value of Intel perhaps they feel adventurous.
Qualcomm is trying hard to catch up with Apple chips using its own ARM design, which should be using TSMC.
On the other hand historically Qualcomm has made its fortune designing and implementing other kind of chips. Mainly cell telecommunications stuff, since day one of digital cells at least.

 

Last edited: Sep 21, 2024

Some say it was a Trojan Horse for control.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Brother_(Nineteen_Eighty-Four)

 

Qualcomm acquiring Intel would be really bad for all of us. Arrow Lake better be good.

 

Yep, even less competition. Anyways I don't see why or how Qualcomm would take over all Intel.
As said before, I don't think USA government would allow it. Intel has strategic value. Qualcomm is also American, but I don't know the shareholders pie

 

That's what's worrying me. There's a good chance that if Qualcomm is truly serious, that they're already lobbying Washington's politicians to be allowed to acquire Intel.

"Look, Intel is fucked no matter what. But we'll foot the bill - if you let us. You can be the politician who can claim to have saved America's chip future. Or you can be the politician who has to explain to the American people why they have to cough up $115 billion over the next 7 years to prop up a dead company. Not a good look in this economy, what with the inflation and all. Your son's about to finish university, isn't he? Qualcomm's always looking for talented staff."

 

Then again, that's what Intel has been doing for decades.
If this keeps going:
"Intel is the new Boeing" (TM Xupito et.al.)

 

The way i see it... Firstly imho Qualcomm can't be worse than Intel. Surely they don't know shit about desktop and server/datacenter. But, throughout the years and in order to maintain domination in the x86 and more over the cpu domain in general, Intel demonstrated some of the most hideous practices towards competing companies, also eradicating most of the much smaller possible rivals by cutting them off from both the supply and the distribution chain. Now personally, and excuse my language, i wouldn't give a fuck if Qualcomm acquired the whole lot of Intel because secondly, they are both USA entities. Investigations pending and such would be a typical procedure for any company trying to pull off such a surprising yet legit "hijack" of Intel. Most importantly, as the stock market works now, with Intel standing at 90bil market share and Qualcomm actually being 100billion plus that number, with 190bil total market share, this buyout can happen in a single day. And actually with very little cash and just a shitload of Qualcomm shares. It is almost how HP bought Compaq actually. Back then HP was at #5 as a global pc vendor and Compaq was number 2 only surpassed by Dell. But HP successfully bought and actually absorbed almost overnight the -then struggling- Compaq. Now Compaq, once a major pc vendor in all areas is just a name that few of us older people actually remember. And nothing more. And HP by absorbing Compaq went to #1 global vendor back then. But of course things change as the years pass. HP's disability of introducing really interesting products no matter how many companies they acquired along the way, has given way for the Taiwanese/Chinese companies to become players in the same market also, companies which not so long ago, were mostly m/b manufacturers and nothing more, now have become major competitors in the global pc and peripheral market with an amazingly diverse number of products every year. Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, ASRock and others. Especially Asus sells anything possible that comes to mind but kitchen appliances really.
And we shouldn't forget (the Chinese) Lenovo acquiring the whole IBM desktop/laptop department. I am very sure nobody but the Chinese knew wtf is Lenovo. They were already the "darlings" of the Chinese internal laptop/pc market but whoelse was aware of their existence really? They came out of nowhere out in the world wide market! A Chinese multinational? 20 years ago almost, in 2005? Able to buy out the company who brought the pc as we know it to the world? I reckon if Intel is one bit important, IBM was twice as much but they managed to make this -very convenient for the problematic commercial IBM branch- transaction, even with all sorts of investigations and the usual "fear of the Chinese invasion" from politicians and the likes. How? By having IBM keeping the most important branch of their company, the RnD department with all their scientists and engineers and focusing on high end computing. For the record, Lenovo is now no1 pc laptop vendor and very reputable so and HP is second.
So, if Lenovo managed to pull off buying the consumer branch of the IBM giant, in my pov, i 'm pretty sure Intel should be happy to sell Qualcomm their foundries and whatnot and just become a very agile, fabless, AMD-like company. By keeping what is the most important in any such tech company, which should be the RnD and general science/engineering/industrial design personnel, most of their IPs and patents and only a fraction of the bureaucratic auxiliaries, they should be able to achieve full speed in realizing the most bold cpu AND gpu designs with TSMC as manufacturer and actually come back sooner than anyone could imagine with competing cutting edge tech at 3 or even 2nm transistor "lithography".
Finally the things can be really complicated only and if only Qualcomm is after the whole lot of Intel or mainly their branches that i just mentioned as being crucial to developing new products. Then Intel could be the next Compaq if this deal comes through.
But lemme lighten up the atmosphere a bit. Honestly, Qualcomm is such a bad name aesthetically. Intel as a brand name rocks really. On the other hand all this i7, i9 and bullcrap is tiring and confusing and convoluted too and very bad for proper marketing sustained as products only by being "known by continuity". Whereas Snapdragon is a damn killer name hehe, depicting speed and power at the same time. So what's next brothers and sisters? Lemme be the first to introduce... Where the heck is my drumroll please...
Intel Snapdragon at 2nm on desktop/laptop and on mobile phones/tablets too. And forget/discontinue all that shit about the lakes and ponds and whatever products starting with a stupid i, which sounds so 2007 haha. Now that 'll be something that will turn some eyebrows, especially by some peeps called Apple lol.
All my best guys

 

Last edited: Sep 22, 2024

Intel found the bug! (Supposedly but the explanation seems quite reasonable scientifically). A new microcode update is pending. A little late perhaps because they lost so much trust and stock share but still within 2024, so i guess we should call this better late than never... My sympathy now goes to possibly affected fellow audiosexers. You 've waited long enough!
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-com...rrors-prepares-new-and-final-microcode-update

 

Last edited: Sep 27, 2024

There's another one "Halt and catch fire" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543312/
A good one about the aera that transtports the feelings of that time quite well. It was a revolution and Intel was part of it. For me as a programmer back then it's like bitter sweet memories. Intel is part of my very own history, so I really don't like to see them struggeling. But with Intel, as is so often the case, too much money spoils the character
That's why I made sure I never had too much money.

 

This would be great it it's true! I agree with you in that the explanation seems reasonable. But that doesn't guarantee it's true.

 

I would still choose a top tier pentium over amd for music production anytime.

 

Wendell sheds some more light. His phrase "gaming cpus that can't game" had me laughing out loud for real.