There are so many reasons why this won't happen lmao
Qualcomm has about 70% of Intel's revenue, and their valuation is only twice as much as Intels. There is no way they could get a loan equivalent to half of their net worth to acquire intel, a company that is having some financial difficulties. Then there are regulators that will very likely block this acquisition. But this rumor made the Intel stock price go up and I made money, so keep the rumors coming!
They don't mention what the offer is. Very easily could be a stock-based deal where Intel stockholders get a portion of the combined company. That's how T-Mobile bought Sprint.
I don't recall Qualcomm trying to buy ARM. That was Nvidia. (though, yes, it likely would also have been prevented if it had tried)
But they'd probably have a better (but still slim) chance of getting a purchase of Intel through. That'd be a more horizontal acquisition than a vertical one as Qualcomm doesn't make x86 chips so they can at least argue it wouldn't be anti-competitive.
It won't, the market share is generally complementary, not competitive, the sectors tend to be different (more or less until recently).
Mostly, if people are really scared into might fold (unlikely, but we don't know everything) then the ftc will roll out the red carpet for a player like Intel.
Doubt it will happen, qcomm is too smart, but it's not unthinkable, and it would give qcomm domination over US cpus, save hyperscalers.
Change in leadership would also mean that the deal with AMD would have to be renegotiated, meaning that intel under qualcomm would not be legally able to create new 64-bit CPUs.
That sounds wrong, AMD is leasing from intel right? So if they sell then INTEL would still be able to make x86. IF anything AMD would be the one affected, unless I’m missing something.
No, AMD actually did the 64 bit extensions, as a lot more.
AMD has been working hard in innovating whereas Intel has been working hard riding it's oen reputation into the ground whilst generating great short term profits for shareholders.
My understanding is that x86 originated from Intel and x86-64 was an extension of it by AMD who had been licensing x86. They agreed to trade so neither paid to license one from the other. So Intel got to use x86-64 because they let AMD have free use of x86. As a result they both keep anyone else from using x86. And of course now a days x86-64 is the only one that really matters. Presumably another company getting involved like Qualcomm would mess up that old deal.
No. AMD and Intel have a bunch of legally binding agreements that allow each other to manufacture CPUs that are essentially 100% compatible architecture-wise. You can install any OS on an Intel CPU, replace that CPU with one from AMD and expect things to work just the same (talking compatibility, not performance) and vice versa. The 64bit extension for the x86 architecture was created by and is patented by AMD. Intel are able to use that extension in any of their processors without paying royalties, but AMD are the owners of that specific technology. The contracts between these two companies also dictate that those contracts need to be renegotiated in case either company gets bought out, which makes me think that qualcomm would only care about buying intel because it would allow them to essentially permanently deadlock all negotiations and thus kill the x86 architecture, immediatly handing the entire CPU industry to ARM and, going by market share, themselves.