In the past AMD needed to survive for antitrust reasons. Now x86 is losing in relevance now as alternatives are established. Nobody needs to keep intel alive.
AMD also received many Hail Marys as a result of Intel’s anticompetitive behavior. Directly via payouts Intel and partners had to make, and indirectly via companies being more willing to work with them for their GPU expertise and better (out of desperation) licensing/purchase agreements.
Intel can’t rely on the same. They haven’t been directly impacted by another larger company, they rely too much on a single technology that’s slowly fading from the spotlight, and they can’t compete against AMD on price.
Maybe if they ended up in a small and lean desperation position they could pivot and survive, but their current business model is a losing eventuality.
AMD could not afford their own foundries anymore. The same is likely to happen to intel. The CPU business may be sold off to some other company, so x86 and intel will "survive" for sure but they will rely on other fabs to produce and they will milk the legacy cow instead of holding the overall performance crown.
As I said, AMD survived by going into a lean pivot out of desperation. Intel has that opportunity as well, but the deck is stacked against them due to their size and over-reliance on specific IPs.
1) Shrinking compared to what? The moment you want to do any serious work or gaming, you need a desktop (or a laptop, but a real PC in any case).
2) Ok, so there is expensive workstation available. It is a step forward I guess.
3) Call me when it is available and I can buy it in any normal computer shop.
Look, I hate the x86 architectur with a passion, having grown up with MS-DOS and the horrors of real mode. But the truth is that if I want to buy a computer right now, today, it is either a x86 PC or an Apple, and I have zero interest in Apple's closed ecosystem, so a PC it is.
1) Shrinking compared to Mobile, GPU/AI, Non-x86-Server. Manufacturing only x86-CPU will not pay for the next fab anymore.
3) PM me your number.
The fact is just that x86-CPU gets less and less important in the overall picture. It's not shrinking in total volume but in relative volume and fabs get exponentially more expensive. If Intel can make it in this generation they can't finance the next generation making only their own CPUs. They missed the big growth markets. They lost Apple as a customer. They have no GPU and no mobile chip that matters. They invested billions and billions into technology that went nowhere. Now they have to ask TSMC already to manufacture competitive CPUs. The only way this could change if Apple and/or NVidia massively start buying future capacity at intel. But why would they?
