Broadcom, TSMC Eye Deals for Parts of Intel, Report Says

Investopedia News ^ | February 16, 2025 | Nisha Gopalan

[SunkenCiv]

Broadcom and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. are reportedly weighing plans to bid for Intel that would result in the storied chipmaker breaking up.

According to The Wall Street Journal in a report Saturday, Broadcom has been looking into Intel’s chip-design and marketing business and and has “informally discussed” a bid with its advisers if it finds a partner for Intel’s chip-making operations.

The report said TSMC has examined taking over some or all of Intel’s chip plants, meanwhile, as part of an investor consortium or another structure.

[SunkenCiv]

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSM) is reportedly considering running Intel's (INTC) US factories at the request of US President Donald Trump's team, according to reports from Bloomberg. Baird technology desk sector strategist Ted Mortonson joins Julie Hyman and Josh Schafer on Market Domination.

"Intel is somewhat of a sinking ship right now," Mortonson says, explaining the legacy chipmaker is "having a lot of trouble" in its foundry business while also searching for a new CEO after Pat Gelsinger's sudden departure in December 2024. He sees TSMC as "the gold-plated area of manufactured at these advanced nodes" which has already "cracked the code" at making advanced nodes.

"When you talk about GenAI, you need to be there, and Intel is not," he tells Yahoo Finance.

Mortonson finds the administration's move as not totally unexpected: "Intel is a national asset, not only from a security standpoint but [for] manufacturing in the US. [Intel needs] some help, and TSM is the only one that can render the lifeboat.

Watch the video [below] to hear more about what a TSMC partnership could mean for Intel and the chipmakers' competitive position among the likes of Nvidia (NVDA) and AMD (AMD).

Intel 'a sinking ship right now': Analyst | 10:00
Yahoo Finance | 1.33M subscribers | 70,179 views | February 14, 2025

[SunkenCiv]

• TSMC says first advanced U.S. chip plant 'dang near back' on schedule. Here's an inside look at the Arizona fab [01/04/2025]

[SunkenCiv]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHat_LYrpQE

[lefty-lie-spy]

Pathetic. How could Intel be so tone deaf to the market over the last 30 years to actually be going bankrupt? There’s no way this should have happened with competent leadership. Let me gues - they went and got politically woke with the business.

[nwrep]

Yes, woke, and lacking any vision.

[bak3r]

They got complacent at the top and favored screwing over customers instead of innovating. Competition caught up and now they have to deal with their inferior products, quality control, and some unforgiving customers.

[SunkenCiv]

They've owned a big share of the market, and the technical lead swung between Intel and AMD for as long as I can remember. AMD got in a jam circa 20 years ago, working out a revolutionary architecture while building foundry space somewhere on the middle of the east coast. They got well into billions and had to walk away from the whole works.

Intel got to 14nm first, and AMD had a yield problem, such that it sold 'binned' three-core processors as its high end. Intel's lead didn't last.

Foundry moved more and more to eastern mainland Asia, and the next breakthroughs came from there. Intel was still stuck trying to iron out 10 nm as TSMC was fabricating that density, followed by ever smaller numbers.

Intel's overall production has remained high, while its newest foundry space has been built in Ireland, and more recently in Arizona.

ASML is based in Europe (Netherlands?) and makes the ultraviolet lithography equipment used by TSMC and Samsung et al to produce the most advanced lithography.

[TexasGator]

“to actually be going bankrupt? “

They have $22 billion in cash ...

[lefty-lie-spy]

That’s the gist of how o remember it too. I used to work across the street from their fab outside of Sacramento and had a few friends working there.

[Carry_Okie]

This is huge. I’m not in this business anymore but it looks to me like this represents a sea change from the personal microprocessor to the server-level AI/cloud. I hope not. I want all my computing to belong to me, including the damned software. I can’t begin to express my contempt for the way Adobe is ripping off its customers renting software under new “licenses” that is functionally identical to what I bought 15 years ago.

[montag813]

I can’t begin to express my contempt for the way Adobe is ripping off its customers renting software under new “licenses” that is functionally identical to what I bought 15 years ago.

I was a beta tester on Photoshop 0.1B (still have 3.5" floppy sent to me by John Knoll, which might be worth something), so I too have been a long-time Adobe customer. I agree outside of the generative AI functionality (which is buggy and not much more use than magic wand) Photoshop hasn't really improved much in the past 10 years.

[ChessExpert]

“Pathetic. How could Intel be so tone deaf to the market over the last 30 years to actually be going bankrupt?”

I think one element is that they have been waiting, and waiting, and waiting, for the CHIPS act to kick in.

“The CHIPS and Science Act is a U.S. law enacted in 2022 that provides approximately $280 billion to boost domestic semiconductor manufacturing and research, aiming to strengthen the U.S. supply chain and compete with China. It includes significant funding for chip manufacturing, research, and workforce development.”

Government largess became their strategy. It’s almost like doing poorly at a sport, counting on favorable draft selections to make you whole. Corporate welfare, like any welfare, is a destructive “sure thing.”

[Carry_Okie]

Photoshop hasn't really improved much in the past 10 years.

I have Photoshop 13. So far, they haven't wrecked that, but it's no more functional than the CS2 version I had. Where they've really got me is with Acrobat, in which I have an enormous investment.

[FRSobriquet]

By the late 90’s Intel already had a reputation as a H1B sweat shop. These H1B junior engineers from the 90’s and 2000’s now occupy the vast majority of Intel’s middle and upper management.

Numerous White engineers laid off to pay exec salaries.

Expect other tech companies to follow the same trajectory.

[SunkenCiv]

Top 7 Things Linux Does Better than Windows
ExplainingComputers (YT channel)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOSd7wD-2x4

[Carry_Okie]

I have a dual boot machine. I have yet to find a Linux version of Acrobat that can do what I need, particularly with big PowerPoint and Word files having photographs, text, and links. They end up badly corrupted in Linux.

The second big problem is a 15GB outlook.pst file that I have failed to convert to Thunderbird. I may have to run Windows as a virtual machine, but if I do that, I'll have to make sure I can get that data to work. Believe me: I want out of Microsoft.

[RoosterRedux]

Bfl

[SunkenCiv]

Hope this helps.

https://superuser.com/questions/19555/can-i-access-microsoft-outlook-pst-archives-with-any-other-tools

linux - Can I access Microsoft Outlook PST archives with any other ...
Top answer
All answers (5)
The .PST file is a proprietary format, and AFAIK, can only be used by Microsoft products.

There are ways to get around this, such as using Thunderbird to open the file and creating a new archive based on the mbox format.

This initial conversion can only be done on Windows because it uses a built-in mail API to access the information, but once you have converted the archive it should be accessible by most email tools, both on Windows and Linux.

Answer from chills42 on superuser.com

https://www.sysinfotools.com/linux/pst-converter.php

[Carry_Okie]

There are ways to get around this, such as using Thunderbird to open the file and creating a new archive based on the mbox format.

Thanks, I'll take a look.

I purchased a software product specifically dedicated to that end. It failed to generate a usable output, I think because of the file size. I have parted out portions of the Outlook.pst to archive files to run through that app, but haven't done it yet.