I've been building computers since 1999, and I've noticed that the industry is cyclical. I've purchased CPUs from both Intel and AMD. We need Intel to succeed, otherwise AMD will dominate the x86 processor market.

Would TSMC be considered a competitor to AMD?

15 years? absolutely not. Before Ryzen in 2017 almost no one was buying AMD.

edit:

AMD's desktop PC market share hits a new high as server gains slow down — Intel now only outsells AMD 2:1, down from 9:1 a few years ago

AMD reached record desktop CPU market share and posted strong server gains in early 2025, while its mobile CPU position weakened, but revenue shares across all segments hit new highs.

Tom's Hardware (www.tomshardware.com)

AMD is at 32.2% unit share of Desktop/Laptop PCs in Q2 2025. Lots of people still buying Intel.

No. AMD is fabless; TSMC doesn't design chips. They're in different parts of the supply chain.

In fact, AMD is a customer of TSMC.

Good point. But would the share price otherwise have been higher without the government discounted purchase? Share dilution, law of supply and demand, etc are all decent arguments the shareholders could make.

And there's now increased risk that the purchase could cause future strategic and market challenges, especially internationally.

Plus it's not just a share price issue. For example, the fact that shareholders have had their voting power diluted is arguably a concern.

Prior to a week ago every conservative was 100% against any form of government corporate ownership. They hated TARP, Solyndra and quantitative easing. They went so far as to want to privatize social security and the post office. Countless hours have been spent justifying all of this and it was baked into their identity that it was all bad in any flavor.

Then, suddenly, Trump is for it and they fall into line without a moment of cognitive dilemma. Cult mentality. They cared about communism before and suddenly they don't and they haven't given us a reason. They haven't admitted their change.

Competitor is already here. Apple and Ampere are making ARM systems that fit most users needs. There are ARM servers. But people don’t want to switch.

I don't disagree with anything else you said, they are a cult it's just not communist at all. Fascist yes

Literally illegal. Only AMD and Intel have the patent cross-licensing rights to make x86 chips. There used to be a third company (Cyrix and subsequently VIA), and (maybe?) still is, but it hasn't been relevant to the desktop CPU market in decades.

The real competition will come from ARM-based computers.

Not communist except for the government ownership of companies?

Plenty of capitalist companies are government owned. Canada has crown corporations, for example, that do generate profits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_government-owned_companies

If the government owns every company, maybe you have communism, but most likely what you have is autocracy. If the government owns a 10% stake of one company, that's some nationalisation. There are good reasons for it in capitalism, such as for regulating natural monopolies. I'm not sure Intel falls into "good reasons,' since it appears to me to be some kind of corruption.

10% for now. Trump always changes his mind.
One company for now. Except the 15% tax that exists only on Nvidia. 15% for now. Trump always changes his mind.

Broken record: if Biden or Obama did this the same MAGA people making excuses would be decrying this government overreach. And what happens when Trump isn't in office anymore? When a Dem embraces and extends this governor power grab?

Are you in favor of this?

In favour of what

Defense contracting.

They do a a good amount of of military industrial contracting and work for 3 letter agencies on data processing/ high performance computing.

They also got awarded government funding in 2024 to build logic chips for the military in-country.

Not enough to sustain the company, but such "sensitive" programs may not be allowed to show up in revenue reports or have to be assigned to other areas or so.

Athlon64 x2s fucking dominated Pentiums back in the mid 2000s, but the market for people playing games was much smaller. Only with the i-series did Intel come back on top. Ryzen was great when it came out for budget gaming, but Intel still was supreme in perforce until the Ryzen 3D processors came out.

The government holding ownership stakes in companies. If so, have you been in favor for a long time or did it start this week?
Because I'm focusing on the people that just recently adopted this position after years of opposition to anything that even smelled like government interfering with business.

I agree with everything you said. But none of it is a rebuttal to what I said

Apple doesn't really exist as a competitor for a number of industries and use cases due to not officially supporting anything other than OSX so I'm not sure if they're a fair comparison here.

The only real edge they have is in non-gaming related consumer workloads.