Why Apple Should Acquire AMD

slashdotLIKES writes "CoolTechZone.com columnist Gundeep Hora has a new column up that discusses why Apple should acquire AMD and how both companies would be a good fit for each other. From the article, "After private equity groups, let's look at a more strategic acquisition. For that, Apple is the best bet. Yes, I know it sounds way too radical to be taken seriously. However, Apple could drop Intel altogether and adopt AMD for its Macintosh PCs. Sure, the transition is going to take sometime, and it would probably make Apple announce a brand new line of PCs. However, it will be well worth it. We know Steve Jobs is ruthless when it comes to making interesting deals with powerful companies. This makes AMD a perfect match. Obviously Intel isn't going to be too delighted, but other companies don't bother Jobs. We all know he's the type of executive who crafts deals on his own terms. If Intel wants to be associated with Apple, then they won't really have much of a choice."

Comments

Re:I doubt it would happen

[networkBoy]

Apple was lucky in that it had the foresight--or fortune--to maintain a secret Intel-native OS X build for years. It was forsight.
For nearly a decade Steve and the CEO of Intel have had lunch once a year. That shows how long the deal was "in the works".
-nB

Re:I doubt it would happen

[jimstapleton]

I'd have to agree with you. Within a generation or two of an Intel CPU model being released, AMD is typically completely instruction set compatable with the Intel CPUs. Ex, the original Athlons didn't have SSE at all if I remember correctly, the later 32bit athlons had SSE and I think SSE2.

So, instruction set wise, they'd be golden. Add to that the addition of the 3DNow instruction sets, and the fact that they could assume they were present on newer Macs, the switch shouldn't be hard for Apple. As you said, EFI would cost money though.

That being said, as someone else put it, the performace of current generation AMD chips (and even the projected next gen performaces for AMD and Intel), does not provide a compelling case for a switch. Then again, the performance generation of Intel chips vs. PPC chips when Apple was official about the switch, did not make a compelling case either.

Re:I doubt it would happen

[PygmySurfer]

The switch from PPC to intel was a far greater feat than going from Intel to AMD would be. In fact, I doubt there'd be a single software issue... apart from the lack of EFI (which I'm sure Apple could wrestle away from Intel at some outrageous price).

Actually, EFI is nowUEFI, and doesn't really belong to Intel anymore. In addition, AMD and Apple are members of the United EFI Forum.

Another reason for Apple not to buy AMD would be production issues - I believe one of the reasons Apple went with Intel was because of Intel's manufacturing capacity. If Apple buys AMD, they either don't get enough chips, or AMD CPUs become exclusive to Apple's computers - Dell, HP, and all the home builders would be SOL, because there'd be insufficient supply. And if that were to happen, there'd be zero benefit to owning AMD for Apple.

Another problem with this scenario is that Apple essentially buys ATI as well - what then, only ATI GPUs in Macs, in addition to only AMD CPUs? Then there's all the other chips AMD makes. Does Apple just sell off these other divisions, or just shut them down completely?

Re:I doubt it would happen

[t_ban]

That being said, as someone else put it, the performace of current generation AMD chips (and even the projected next gen performaces for AMD and Intel), does not provide a compelling case for a switch. Then again, the performance generation of Intel chips vs. PPC chips when Apple was official about the switch, did not make a compelling case either.

Performance-wise, AMD and Intel are close enough so that that won't really matter to Apple if they really switch over. That wouldn't be their reason, if they did. Their reason might be integration. Apple is typically a company that wants to fuse hardware and software together and brand the result as a unified product. They don't want customers to think along hardware/software lines. They had some bad experiences with IBM providing their hardware, so they switched to the Intel architecture.

It is possible that they shall now want to bring the hardware side of the Mac totally under their own control. I can very much see Steve Jobs wanting to do that. But as an astute businessman, he wouldn't take the double risk of changing the architecture and sinking a lot of money into acquiring a chip manufacturing company simultaneously, in case the move failed. Naturally, he would first switch to the new architecture and then, if that succeeded, proceed to buy out a manufacturer.

And what better target than AMD does he have?

I don't know if it will be good or bad, if this happens. I guess all depends on whether Apple will then sell processors separately, or subsume AMD's total productions into Macs. Because then Intel will be virtually without a competitor, and that can't be good.