It’s apparently Merger Monday, as computer chipmaker Broadcom is waving money at shareholders of Qualcomm in an acquisition offer worth well over $100 billion. And no, the companies are not related, despite the “com” name thing. Broadcom is the No. 5 chipmaker in the world and Qualcomm is at No. 3 behind Samsung and market leader Intel.
And while such a merger or buyout or takeover likely wouldn’t affect your daily life, it does have big implications for another company: Apple. Cupertino is currently having some legal disagreements with Qualcomm, and has recently stopped using their chips in various tech gadgets. HTC, Nintendo and Google also use Qualcomm chips. However, the company has also recently come under scrutiny from the FTC for some unsavory business practices.
Some analysts think that if the deal goes through – Qualcomm is reportedly not on board, yet – the merger could wrap up the Apple and FTC complaints and everyone will resume happily making next-generation phones and other amazing tech.
Dragons inside?
Speaking of companies that don’t always get along, there appears to be a serious bit of détente happening between chipmaker Intel and… chipmaker AMD. PC World is reporting the two companies are cooperating on what could be a significant evolution in chip tech by essentially inserting or joining a high-end AMD graphics chip system into or onto an Intel Core processor, using a new method called “E-MIB” that allows chips to be connected at a basic level.
The result is something called a “system-in-package module,” an evolution of the “system on a chip” tech currently found in just about everything. What does it mean for consumers? Well, for one, it means future super-thin-and-light laptops could have the graphics power of a high-end gaming PC built-in, and we can’t think of anyone that wouldn’t want that. Check out all the details at the link.
If only we could always drive this fast
Swedish supercar maker Koenigsegg recently convinced the Nevada highway department to block off 11 miles of ultra-straight Highway 160 between Vegas and Pahrump so they could see just how fast they could get their top-tier Agera RS supercar to go.
It hit 284 miles an hour going one way with a bit of a tailwind and 271 going the other, for an average of 277 miles an hour, which officially makes it the fastest production car in the world, if you can call hand-built $2 million-pus cars actual “production” cars. But Guinness does, so the challenge now falls to the equally ridiculous (and admittedly awesome) Bugatti Chiron and the new Venom F5, which Hennessey says may be able to top 300 miles an hour. We’ll let you know when this new record gets broken, it’ll probably be soon.
We’ve got more news on our Facebook page and YouTube channel, and be sure to tune in to this week’s DT podcasts: Trends with Benefits (general tech shenanigans) on Thursdays, and Between the Streams (movie and TV topics) every Friday.
