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.
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.
Enterprise ARM servers exist, I’ve used them, they’re neat.
With a proper stack you don’t even notice they’re arm
Or riscv
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.
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.
They do fine with content creation. Windows 11 has been such a bear many are moving back, and the m-series mac mini is a surprisingly capable little box that’s not offensively priced.
Asahi Linux has made fantastic progress too. It’s really just bare metal windows that’s a problem anymore on these and nobody wants windows anymore anyways. It’s just what they have. Outside of gaming it’s largely unnesscarry to use windows in 2025.
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.
I wouldn’t buy a used Lenovo right now. There’s a lot of 13th/14th gen Intel trash blowing around out there right now that’s been silently damaged already. There are Ryzen based Lenovos but those aren’t as common.
Probably applies to most used Laptops right now. Also, I have some thinkpad nostalgia, but the similar skus from other manufacturers will also do, though they put course have the same problem.
Generally, you of course always need to research the specific hardware. Also, my current one is on 8th gen, still does the job for now.
Ars is making a mountain out of a molehill.
James McRitchie
Kristin Hull
These are literal activists investors known for taking such stances. It would be weird if they didn’t.
a company that’s not in crisis
Intel is literally circling the drain. It doesn’t look like it on paper, but the fab/chip design business is so long term that if they don’t get on track, they’re basically toast. And they’re also important to the military.
Intel stock is up, short term and YTD. CNBC was ooing and aahing over it today. Intel is not facing major investor backlash.
Of course there are blatant issues, like:
However, the US can vote “as it wishes,” Intel reported, and experts suggested to Reuters that regulations may be needed to “limit government opportunities for abuses such as insider trading.”
And we all know they’re going to insider trade the heck out of it, openly, and no one is going to stop them. Not to speak of the awful precedent this sets.
But the sentiment (not the way the admin went about it) is not a bad idea. Government ties/history mixed with private enterprise are why TSMC and Samsung Foundry are where they are today, and their bowed-out competitors are not.
