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AMD shares rose to a nearly six-year high [autoplaying video] ahead of its December 13th preview of the company's Zen chips, and amid rumors that AMD will license its integrated graphics technology to Intel:
Nvidia and Intel began suing each other in 2009 over Nvidia's nForce chipsets for Intel CPUs. The suits were eventually settled in 2011: Nvidia agreed not to build chipsets for Intel's Core i7 CPUs, and Intel was free to build graphics cores without getting sued by Nvidia. The price of Intel's freedom was high, though: The chip giant agreed to pay Nvidia licensing fees over the next six years totalling $1.5 billion.
After writing the last $200 million check in January 2016, the licensing deal is winding down, which means Intel has to go shopping for patent protection for its graphics cores. As AMD and Nvidia essentially own the lion's share of graphics patents in the world, developing graphics cores is nigh impossible without licensing deals.
[...] Such a deal wouldn't come cheap, but Intel was already cutting checks of $200 million to $300 million to Nvidia every year. "Intel would have to pony up some significant money to make this deal work," Krewell told PCWorld. "The amount of extra cash AMD could make on royalties would be very appealing to the shareholders."
Fans may be concerned that such a deal would all but give up the last advantage AMD's upcoming Zen-based APUs would have over Intel chips. AMD's Zen core could equal Intel's newest cores in x86 performance. Combine that with AMD's much more powerful graphics cores and you'd have an instant winner. Financial realities, however, overshadow any moral victories. "Is it better to make a royalty on 80 percent to 90 percent of the PC processor shipments or fight it out for the remaining 10 percent or 20 percent?" Krewell said. AMD can make a lot more money partnering with Intel rather than competing.
Also at Nasdaq. Rumor source.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by requerdanos on Thursday December 08 2016, @10:26PM
What I hope is that AMD, with its Zen designs, makes some CPUs that are competitive with Intel's chips, in both the server and desktop space.
This would be great for AMD (and their so-called "fanboys")--finally, back in competition.
But this would be great for everybody, including Intel's customers--competition driving Intel to better and better products and value.
There have been a lot of not-Intel chips that I've personally used in PCs over the years... NEC V20, Winchip, Via C3, Transmeta, NexGen Nx586, Cyrix [5,6]x86 (and [D,S]LC), and... AMD. Only AMD remains significant in the CPU market, and that's only significant in the "small minority" sense. I'd like to see that continue and expand for the good of all the market.
Heck, I'd love to see half a dozen firms designing and building competing CPU chips again (fast ones, not just ARM chips), but the patent minefield probably wouldn't allow that, because it would involve "innovation" which patents kill dead. So I'd like to see *at least* AMD grow and compete, and have some awesome, awesome CPUs shake things up.
If Zen lives up to its hype speed- and price-wise, I plan to upgrade my main workstation with one on general principle. When Intel makes an incredibly fast, capable chip, it's not a market-shaking event (it's just what they generally do), but when AMD does it... Very refreshing.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday December 08 2016, @11:12PM
http://wccftech.com/amd-zen-8-core-35ghz-cpu-spotted/ [wccftech.com]
Well, the 8 core is coming in January and can apparently match one of Intel's $999 cards at half the price.
As for servers, things are a bit more uncertain. You might remember that AMD delayed its K12 ARM server chips [wikipedia.org] by at least a year, switching the release with Zen (and then the Zen release date shifted from mid-late 2016 to Q1 2017). AMD seems to be preparing 16-32 core "Opteron" Zen chips for HPC/servers:
http://wccftech.com/amd-allegedly-preparing-apu-sixteen-zen-cores-greenland-hbm-graphics/ [wccftech.com]
http://wccftech.com/amd-naples-32-core-zen/ [wccftech.com] (the article mentions yet another 32 core offering)
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