Probably no one.
Samsung has no use for the IP unless it's for the cross-license deals AMD has in place with Nvidia. Only valid if the Samsung/Nvidia litigation looks like costing the former.
Qualcomm - not likely, unless AMD basically give the IP away to QC for nothing...again
Microsoft and Apple. Why take on a loss making operation when you can get AMD to sweat bullets and basically work gratis by contracting their services?
The Al Nahyan family ( via ATIC/Mubadala). Major share holder in AMD and owner of GlobalFoundries. The products of one help feed the revenue of the other. Chances of the US DoJ sanctioning the sale of a company whose IP is a cornerstone for the U.S. electronics industry to an Islamic state? 0% The climate hasn't improved since the
UAE first attempted a major move into US industry.
Any new owner has to contend with starting from scratch in a fight against Intel, since the discrete graphics market,
so we're told, is on borrowed time (Who invests in a vanishing market?), and that sector is already divided into three camps. Intel and its OEM's (who are very likely happy with the current situation), and two RISC based ecosystems that AMD hasn't contributed anything to.
So, why buy a company when you can lure the engineers away with better R&D budgets, and pick over the IP and licence/buy what you want rather than having to deal with the whole debt, staffing, redundancy issues that come with acquiring a company. Beats me why AMD don't just take a leaf out of ARM Holding's book - turn into a design house and just licence IP - architecture, core, logic macros - and let the individual companies licensing the tech invest their own R&D for specific applications, while spinning off existing product partnerships to generate some immediate cash to settle up some debt.
As long as AMD sells every single product it "makes" (hint: it makes ZERO consumer-focused products, other companies do that for them), and does so without a loss, then they are good.
That sounds curiously like AMD fan fiction. AMD simply aren't hardwired for that, and have demonstrated it on numerous occasions - the latest one being the "buy SeaMicro because Intel is doing something" strategy. The same thinking got the company into the present situation. Flush with cash with K7 revenue (and Intel falling over themselves), the company could either invest or put the cash aside for R&D and an ordered expansion. Sanders said "fuck it, I'm going all in" and poured money into Dresden trying to go for an Intel kill that was never going to happen when the safe bet was to ally with UMC or TSMC and outsource production to keep the shelves stocked and the OEMs happy...but, no! Sanders was old school, and if you didn't make the silicon yourself you were no better than the fabless plebs taking over the industry. Not content with overextending the company on a long term gamble, Hector decides to mortgage the company by pouring $2bn in cash that AMD didn't have into buying ATI - again, rather than doing the sane thing - licence the IP or at least the audit the company you plan on taking over. A company on one else was particularly interested in buying.
