Something Probably Nobody Saw Coming

Hello everyone, how are you all doing? We've got some interesting developments over at Silicon valley. Looks like Intel is sort of up for grabs. Last week we saw that the government has taken 10% share of Intel in exchange for the money that Intel was supposed to receive to work on the chief manufacturing plants. There are some more crazy details in those contracts such as the government will be able to buy more Intel shares at a cut price if Intel loses their foundry business, which essentially implies that Intel cannot lose ground on their foundry business. ---  [Source](https://unsplash.com/photos/black-and-silver-electronic-device-ZavLsrP4CDI) --- But this week we have something more interesting. After the government, it is now Nvidia who is taking up Intel shares. Just today I saw the news that Nvidia will be investing around 4 to 5 billion dollars in Intel so that they can use some Frankenstein connection of Intel CPUs and Nvidia GPUs. This investment will see Nvidia owning around 4 or maybe 5 percent market share of Intel. Now this is where things get a little crazy. Because it still produces gpus under the ARC branding. I myself am a user of Intel gpus. And I must say only in their second generation, the hardware is very good. Nvidia has been trying to get into the CPU market for quite some time now. And last year after the Snapdragon chips were announced for laptops, Nvidia also announced that they will be releasing their own chips to run Windows. There hasn't been much word on it since. They are probably still working on it. But this deal which they made with Intel will allow them to use Intel's x86 architecture and fuse it together with their GPU cores using NVlink. Traditionally NVlink has allowed Nvidia hardware to connect and communicate better than other hardware. So I think what they are trying to do is make an x86 CPU that has the GPU cores of Nvidia and CPU design of Nvidia as well along with NVlink. And they will basically be using Intel's technology and experience in the CPU manufacturing business and their foundries to produce them locally at a lower cost in order to get themselves out in the market. The reality right now is that in the CPU with integrated GPU market, AMD is king. Some of this merger could directly hamper only AMD, probably. Now, I must clarify that I'm only speculating based on the strengths of these two companies. And there is no doubt that the government also wants them to play with each other and not against each other as they try to maintain their leadership in AI. But at the moment it seems Intel is quiet down and out. It's seeking help from everywhere and is getting some. But it must show real promise if it wants to keep this level of relevance at the minimum.