AMDisTheBEST
Senior member
- Dec 17, 2015
- 682
- 90
- 61
x86 is not a totally closed market. IBM, can manufacture x86 processors at will and you have VIA. That these companies to not make substantial investments on x86 should tell you how profitable it is to invest on it. So if AMD goes under and the FTC forces Intel to open x86 to new licensees, I don't think there will be many companies queuing up for it.
One of the reasons is that building x86 chips is to compete against the guy making the instruction set, which means you'll be always behind in terms of implementing new features of the instruction set, and you'll also only be able to implement your features only if you have a solid backing from dominant software companies like Microsoft or Oracle, which is not easy to get.
Breaking up Intel is not a choice too, the company is too tightly integrated, break it up and you'll end up with two dead parts.
So in the end if AMD goes under, what changes? Nothing. The FTC won't do anything, the prices will stay more or less the same and life will go on.
By US federal law(shaman anti trust act) no company can control above 90% of the market. Several company have been broken up this way.Most prominent example would the attempted merge of AT&T and T-mobile. If AMD leaves, Intel has 100% monopoly over consumer computers, business, and servers. That will ring an alarm bell however you look at it. Not even Microsoft has such dominance considering Linux+Unix have a lion share of the server OS.