Intel To Buy Smartphone Chipmaker Infineon For $2B

sylverboss writes "Intel Corp., the world's largest chipmaker, is close to an agreement to buy Infineon Technologies AG's wireless business, three people with direct knowledge of the discussions said. When it comes to desktop, laptop and server chips, Intel's pretty much got a lock on the market but everyone can see the writing on the wall: mobile chips and architectures are the future of computing thanks to the popularity of smartphones, but Intel doesn't have anything to offer in that regard. Don't know Infineon? You should: they are the guys who have supplied Apple with their iPhone baseband chips since 2007."

Comments

What about RAMBUS?

[ELCouz]

Buying the Infineon RAM chipmaker will directly place Intel in competition with it's once best friend RAMBUS...

Atom?

[Doc Ruby]

Intel's Atom chips are low power. They're not good for putting into smartphones?

Are there some Infineon chips now used for only smartphones that will show up in netbooks? Do they run Linux? Do they run x86 instructions? And if not, will Intel sustain a product line that splits its main CPU culture away from x86?

Re:Atom?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in Toulouse* Intel has just hired back most of Freescale's cellphone/embedded R&D team (which was recently closed by Freescale along with the rest of its local fab) as well as test equipment, in order to work on system integration of ultra-mobile platforms. Since they definitely are targeting this market in the near future, I can see some logic in the buying of a baseband processor maker.

(*: that's in France, for you yankees)

Escrow arrangements are probably in place.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be surprised if Apple didn't have the key IP in Third-party escrow, so if they
go belly-up or get bought by Microsoft Apple can still get the chips they need.

Re:Escrow arrangements are probably in place.

[perlchild]

The IP likely belongs to Apple, and wouldn't need third party escrow. On the other hand, even with the IP, a lack of supply is what killed the power pc in the first place. The same, but affecting the now higher profile iphone would be a disaster for Apple.

Re:Escrow arrangements are probably in place.

[mjwx]

I'd be surprised if Apple

Why is everyone so obsessed with Apple?

Infineon's Trusted Platform Module would be of far more interest to Intel as Infineon supplies TPM's to a lot of OEM's who shift more units per quarter then Apple has in the last 3 years. Not to mention the interest Intel's had in pushing Trusted Computing. I'd say expect TPM on die in future. Possibly an Atom based SOC but even Intel has already figured out how unlikely that is to take off compared to ARM SOC's.

Re:Escrow arrangements are probably in place.

[TheRaven64]

It's not like you can just email some zipped-up files off to a fab and get chips back in a few weeks

Actually, you can, for lots as small as a few hundred. It's very expensive doing it that way, but there are quite a few companies that offer precisely that service. If you talk to ARM, they have agreements in place with a few fab companies that let you license a core from ARM, add your own on-die peripherals to the design, and get the whole SoC produced by one of ARM's partners.

A lot of Intel's advantage comes from the fact that they invest heavily in research related to manufacturing techniques, so they tend to be at least half a generation ahead of their competitors in terms of fabrication processes. Switching to producing a new design in one of their fabs is surprisingly quick these days, and it's something they've been focussing on since the mid '90s when they found they had incorrectly estimated demand for several of their products.

Re:Infineon?

[shoehornjob]

They don't have to be important..just big enough to attract the right kind of attention (it appears they have.)

Re:Infineon?

[mjwx]

Does that really mean they're important, though?

What makes them important (to Intel) is that they are one of the worlds largest suppliers of Trusted Platform Modules (TPM). Which is also why I distrust any radio made by them, who better then a Trusted (treacherous) computing company to build a back door in for the manufacturer.

Re:Different makret

[asliarun]

The intersect is going to start happening later this year when Intel releases Moorestown. Moorestown is a ground-up redesigned architecture that will still run x86, and will idle at 23mW and play video at 1.1W. It will also give about 2X performance increase over current ARM designs, although the 1.1W power consumption will probably mean that it will only end up in tablets, MIDs, and PMPs. For naysayers who keep bashing how wasteful x86 is (which it is) and how it will never compete with ARM, note the power consumption in idle.

The real intersect will happen when Intel releases Medfield, the next generation of Moorestown, probably in Q4 of 2011.

One caveat to this is the fact that by the time Intel releases Moorestown and Medfield, ARM performance would have also increased to an extent that Moorestown's performance edge may only be a small one (although ARM's power consumption also seems to be increasing). On the other hand, x86 (and Linux) support may be a strong reason for companies to migrate to this platform.

I disagree with your views on Intel/Windows. Firstly, your notion is quite outdated - in the mobile space, Intel is actually pushing Linux very strongly in the form of Moblin, and is really not trying to shove Windows down everyone's throat.

Secondly, and more interestingly, MS itself recognizes how unsuitable Windows is in mobile devices. Take a look at the extent to which MS has redesigned Windows Mobile 7 - I strongly suspect that it will be a viable challenger to Android and Apple in the near future.