I believe the US military would easily be willing to plow $10B.
Now, does that mean intel will actually be effective? I have my doubts, baring some sort of shotgun approach where multiple experimental fabs are done simultaneously.
I have been ragging Intel for a long time since the NetBurst debacle, but it's still a massive company with the x86 cash cow for at least another half-decade until AMD closes a bit of a gap.
They have the resources and history to recover. I have heard references to massive managerial layer problems and treating contractors like crap and the brain drain of the old guard, but those aren't intractable problems.
Intel has responded in the past. AMD looked completely dead in the Hector Ruiz waning days, and look at them now. Empower some good engineers and watch what happens.
Intel needs to start swinging the money around then because their reputation is that they underpay by paying 'market rate' ie as little as they can get away with, and not by trying to be market leaders. Their managerial layers have destroyed their reputation and its going to take a lot to steer that into being something people say 'I want to work at intel' when given a choice of nvidia.
Underpaying engineering in an engineering company.
Almost guarantee what that is: management building a huge pyramid reporting structure and then enriching themselves. To avoid reducing profits (which would threaten the bigwig C-level strike price options), they simply steal from the "proles", in this case the engineers that made the company.
Good news is: it's easy to clean house on shitty managers. Just drop half the layers or more, and then hire or acquire some good.
The other thing Intel had going for it back in the day: there were at least a couple teams working on x86 execution, so when Netburst crapped out they at least had the Israeli team working on the mobile architecture to switch to.
Intel's big enough that if you need two microarchitecture approaches, or even need to start an ARM project, well, they have the revenue if they want the talent.
I mean, look at what Apple did, they practically built the top-end chip in mobile within, what, four or five years? I guess I don't know exactly when they started working on an in-house A-series processors vs when they took leadership. But it didn't take long it seems, certainly relative to the four-year wishywashy timeframe being suggested now.
I'm not sure how much difference that would make. Intel already has $20B in cash reserves and is still making large profits (in the billions of dollars). Their problems have nothing to do with lack money.
Now, does that mean intel will actually be effective? I have my doubts, baring some sort of shotgun approach where multiple experimental fabs are done simultaneously.