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How Qualcomm Tried and Failed To Steal Intel's Crown Jewel
An anonymous reader shares an article from Bloomberg: In early November, Qualcomm Chairman Paul Jacobs stood on a stage in the heart of Silicon Valley and vowed to break Intel's stranglehold on the world's most lucrative chip business. The mobile internet and cloud computing were booming and the data centers running this digital economy had an insatiable thirst for computer servers -- and especially the powerful, expensive server chips that Intel churns out by the million. Qualcomm had spent five years and hundreds of millions of dollars designing competing processors, trying to expand beyond its mobile business. Jacobs was leading a coming-out party featuring tech giants like Microsoft and HP, which had committed to try the new gear. "That's an industry that's been very slow moving, very complacent," Jacobs said on stage. "We're going to change that."
Less than a year later, this once-promising business is in tatters, according to people familiar with the situation. Most of the key engineers are gone. Big customers are looking elsewhere or going back to Intel for the data center chips they need. Efforts to sell the operation -- including a proposed management buyout backed by SoftBank -- have failed, the people said. Jacobs, chief backer of the plan and the son of Qualcomm's founder, is out, too. The demise is a story of debt-fueled dealmaking and executive cost-cutting pledges in the face of restless investors seeking quick returns -- exactly the wrong environment for the painstaking and expensive task of building a new semiconductor business from scratch. It leaves Qualcomm more reliant on a smartphone market that's plateaued. And Intel's server chip boss is happy.
Less than a year later, this once-promising business is in tatters, according to people familiar with the situation. Most of the key engineers are gone. Big customers are looking elsewhere or going back to Intel for the data center chips they need. Efforts to sell the operation -- including a proposed management buyout backed by SoftBank -- have failed, the people said. Jacobs, chief backer of the plan and the son of Qualcomm's founder, is out, too. The demise is a story of debt-fueled dealmaking and executive cost-cutting pledges in the face of restless investors seeking quick returns -- exactly the wrong environment for the painstaking and expensive task of building a new semiconductor business from scratch. It leaves Qualcomm more reliant on a smartphone market that's plateaued. And Intel's server chip boss is happy.
They need a registered+unregistered ECC-capable DDR4 memory controller capable of driving at least 2-4 sockets and either hypertransport lanes to a PCIe controler, or onboard PCIe 4.0-5.0 lanes ranging from 16 to 48 minimum, depending on the market segment they are trying to capture, ideally supporting bifurcation along all power of two possibilities.
If they did that their chips would be capable of driving PCIMG passive backplane motherboards, actual x86 style motherboards, and the full range of consumer, professional, and industrial grade hardware.
This isn't rocket science. The technologies, licensing, and engineering are all non-trivial, but also well within the capabilities of companies like Qualcomm. The fact that they managed to fumble this bad enough to take themselves down is both technological and political in nature (the trade war with china closely aligns with Qualcomm's failed attempt, doesn't it?)
Intel's transition to 10nm is delayed until late next year at best, whereas TSMC is selling (similar-size) 7nm chips en-masse today. Furthermore, Intel is facing a 14nm chip shortage due to their long-term planning on having moved to 10nm already, which is hitting the server chip business hard. Now is the time when Qualcomm should've doubled-down and pushed into the market.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
It seems to be a one-true Scotsman argument. ARM chips account for 85% of processors currently, Intel only 15%. Sure they dominate the Windows PC and "Cloud Data Center" markets...... Trouble is, your more likely to be reading Slashdot on a non Windows non Intel device these days, with your office or home based server being ARM based (e.g. a Synology RAID). The "true" Scotsman in this claim has changed from "processors" to "server processors" to "cloud scale data center processors".
Sure Intel still dominates the "cloud" data centers, with Xeons running big assed server racks and Qualcomm don't have market share with their ARM based server.... but that's not how the ARM world works. It's not *one* supplier that overwhelmed Intel in the other markets, it was thousands of other companies making thousands of competing commodity products. Pecking away until Intel is driven from that market.
The big growth in cloud servers for Intel *was* China, but the trade war means Intel gets hit with big phased in price hikes in China, while Chinese companies want to sell ARM based servers. Its not like these trade wars can end, because they never had a win scenario, the PR for the trade war *is* the win scenario for Trump. The war is the win. At best, the adults in the room, might resurrect the TPP and EU trade agreements (which locked China out of markets if it infringed IP) and label them "Trump" agreements to save face, but that's a long shot. Most likely the tarrifs will continue for years and Chinese ARM server makers will take over.
I'm not bullish on Intel. They seem to be complacent and in decline.