Broadcom reportedly investigates acquiring Intel’s chip design biz

Broadcom is reportedly contemplating a play for Intel. The Wall Street Journal reports that Broadcom has closely examined Intel’s chip design and marketing businesses with a view to a possible acquisition, conditional upon someone else taking on Intel’s foundry business. Broadcom already has a very substantial chip design …

[Michael Hoffmann]

It would fit the pattern

Once great companies, leaders in their field, fallen on hard times due to mismanagement by exec that have long ago ejected with their golden parachutes.

Bought out, massive layoffs, the carcasses squeezed for every drop as long as possible, while their death is drawn out, and customers run for the hills.

Sic transit gloria mundi!

[blu3b3rry]

It'll be interesting to see how the funding handed over under the CHIPS act is handled if a purchase went ahead. Just about any buyer of Intel is going to chop the Foundry off as soon as possible (and likely let it go bust or be asset stripped). Can't see the US gov getting their money back.....

Even more so if the CHIPS act is as disliked by President Cheese Puff as suggested. I thought he wanted more US manufacturing or something?

[Anonymous Coward]

... and hence the talk about TSMC taking over the foundry side of the business.

[steviebuk]

No, Tango man just wants whatever makes him money and will say whatever he knows will make his idiots vote for him.

[UnknownUnknown]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=124I9Ps2Ow0

A slap in the chops is about the same effect on the US of the current one.

[Anonymous Coward]

re CHIPS act is as disliked by President Cheese Puff

That is a given.

Perhaps President Mucky Musk would buy it with the loose change that he will find down the side of the resolute desk in his office.

After all, he needs a fab for all those chips he's going to need for all those robots that he'll sell the Government to replace the humans that he's fired.

Cynical? You betcha.

[UnknownUnknown]

I’m itching for Elon Musk to buy it and sort Intel out.

Go on Elon !!!!

[Missing Semicolon]

Another bad option

First Qualcomm, now Broadcom?

The value in Intel is the patent portfolio, not the products.

[sarusa]

Gee.

Looking forward to paying $5000 for an entry level CPU.

(Yeah, I know, their chips are more reasonably priced than their services, but the joke was there. And I am sure they will figure out how to leverage it for evil.)

[Richard 12]

Re: Gee.

They'll just stop making them.

The duopoly would become ARM vs AMD, all made by a TSMC monopoly.

[Will Godfrey]

Bye bye Intel

They were rather a curate's egg, but produced some good stuff.

[blu3b3rry]

Re: Bye bye Intel

Tbh the last "good" CPU's in my rather limited experience were the 4th and 5th gen Core i5/i7 CPU's. After that they just kept on releasing the same CPU for another two generations with nothing but a tiny bump in clock speed. 8th gen meanwhile was just toasty even if better performing....and they run hot in the way the equivalent Ryzen's in my home desktop PC never did.

[A Non e-mouse]

Desktop Vs Server

Not sure how splitting off the desktop chips from the server chips would work. There would have to be some fun cross-licensing terms right from the off.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Desktop Vs Server

Remember Symantec & Norton? Lots of shared code between the consumer and enterprise product lines. That didn't stop Broadcom from acquiring Symantec's enterprise business and letting go the consumer biz.

[Steve Davies 3]

Shuffling the chairs on the deck

of the Itanic then?

This might improve Intel's bottom line for a few quarters. By then the current 'C Level' execs will be long gone and have cashed in their stock options.

We all know what happens then don't we? The Vulture Capitalists will begin circling the corpse of a once great and innovative company (Once was a long time ago)

[Ilgaz]

How can it work?

I have never used Broadcom website except getting Linux drivers but thanks to VMware desktop becoming free, I dealt with it.

Once I used my native Turkish name while registering, it took two days with a very helpful (no sarcasm) support staff to grant my free download.

I figured one thing. That is a mainframe/large enterprise company who has no clue about end users or small businesses.

It is like a friend who worked in IBM Turk in Aptiva age. He was holding a freaking bank to help some teenager install his game.