Comment by bigyabai
2 days ago
You're basically reiterating exactly what I just said. Intel had no interest in licensing ARM's IP, they'd have made more money selling their fab space for Cortex designs at that point.
Yes, it cost Intel their smartphone contracts, but those weren't high-margin sales in the first place. Conversely, ARM's capricious licensing meant that we wouldn't see truly high-performance ARM cores until M1 and Neoverse hit the market.
> Intel had no interest in licensing ARM's IP, they'd have made more money selling their fab space for Cortex designs at that point.
Maybe, but the fact remains that they spent years trying to make an Atom that could fit the performance/watt that smartphone makers needed to be competitive, and they couldn't do it, which pretty strongly suggests it's fundamentally difficult. Even if they now try to sour-grapes that they just weren't really trying, I don't believe them.
I think we're talking past each other here. I already mentioned this in my original comment:
From Intel's perspective, the decision to invest in x86 was purely fiscal. With the benefit of hindsight, it's also pretty obvious that licensing ARM would not have saved the company. Intel was still hamstrung by DUV fabs. It made no sense to abandon their high-margin datacenter market to chase low-margin SOCs.