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I haven't seen anything that suggests this since the cpu market has gained healthy competition.
AMDs patents are worth quite a bit:
x86 Patents: Without them, Intel won't be able to make CPUs that work with modern OS's including Windows, OSX, and several variants of Linux. (The same holds true for AMD without Intel's patents).
GPU Patents: Superior to anything Intel has. Although, I don't think Intel cares for this market.
The x86 patents is where AMD holds some cards. If AMD were to go under or be bought out, Intel would have to scramble to make sure they can keep rights to use AMD's instruction sets.
Intel could pick up the patents via a proxy hostile takeover. The entire company, patents and all, is only worth a few percent of Intel. Just with cash and equivalents on hand Intel could buy AMD multiple times. The patents aren't worth much.
AMD is switching more towards SOC. the Xbone and PS4 will both use AMD SOCs, Temash chip for tablets. They don't play in the smartphone arena and have no plans to, that's dominated by Apple, Intel and Qualcomm. Maybe they'll be more successful in tablets than servers. After they couldn't compete in desktop/laptop markets, they went after the server market. Intel just solidified its lead and now has some 95% of that market. Compared to the laptops which get more attention because they're consumer markets, Intel only has 82%. AMD just got slaughtered with servers. For now the Xbone and PS4 will keep it afloat. If it can break into the tablet SOC market with Temash and Kabini, they could do well. But that's a very tough field with Apple dominating and both Intel and Qualcomm fighting for the scraps.
^Let's go back to what you originally said to keep us from straying:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Malloric
Its patents and assets aren't worth much since they're inferior products to what Intel offers and there's no real buyers for them.
You haven't explained how AMDs patents are inferior to Intels and that there are no real buyers for them. The fact that Intel uses AMDs patents, implies that they are, indeed, of some value and Intel doesn't have anything better. If they did, why would they need AMDs patents?
I didn't say they were worthless. I said they weren't worth much. That is reflected in the valuation of the company. The entirety of the company, patents and all, is not worth much. It's sort of like Black Berry. Nobody is really that interest in it. Fairfax or Lenovo seems to be the front runners. Either way, you're talking about $5 billion while Black Berry has $3.5 billion assets, most of that being in cash. Less the pile of and short-term assets, Black Berry is only worth about 1.5 billion. That's not very much.
It's not clear to me that anyone needs to run out and buy AMD's patents. The x86/AMD64/ISA architecture licensing was settled years ago with a $1.25 billion payout. They have no need to buy anything from AMD for that at this point for Intel. It's covered under a cross-licensing agreement from 2009, which is just an extension of the 2001 agreement. There's no value there. At any rate, as you yourself said not quite correctly, it can't be sold. That's in effect correct because if AMD sells, it sells without Intel's x86 patents. Without access to Intel's x86 patents, AMD's patents are largely useless. Whoever the buyer is would have to go out and renegotiate the cross-license sharing with Intel for x86. The cross-licensing between Intel and AMD can't be transferred.
And for what? Intel already readily licenses x86, and x86 is on its way out, so even if AMD's cross-license was transferable (which it isn't), so what? Who is going to pay for it? ARM dominates SOC, Windows is going to ARM-based processors. Qualcomm already has the part of AMD it wants, ATI's handheld division. It licenses some low-value patents from AMD, but everyone licenses patents from everyone. That doesn't mean anything. Qualcomm's patents are worth $$$, and AMD's patents are not. Patents are a big reason why Qualcomm is as profitable as it is (and why AMD is as profitable as it is too, for that matter). As a patent bag, AMD just isn't that valuable. There's much more promise for it as a an actual company instead of a grab bag of mostly dusty patents for some patent troll or to be locked away in a closet to be dusted off in defense of one.
Worth much is also relative. Samsung paid Qualcomm $1.3 billion for the right to be able to pay Qualcomm royalties to license some of its patents for the next 15 years. AMD's patents in total are probably worth about that same $1.3 billion that Samsung paid upfront for the rights to pay Qualcomm royalties per unit for the next 15 years. Qualcomm still gets ongoing royalties for those patents from Samsung and licenses that same technology to Sony, Apple, Microsoft, Nokia, HTC, LG, etc, etc. And that's only for one narrow area of its patents.
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