The latest potential semiconductor industry merger is between AMD and Xilinx, a deal which has been reported, over the past couple of weeks, to be imminent, but has not been confirmed by either side. If an acquisition materializes, the price is expected to be about $30bn, and it would open the way for AMD to be a more significant player in the 5G landscape. The main thing that AMD and Xilinx have in common is head-to-head competition with Intel. AMD, of course, has been battling the world’s biggest chipmaker throughout its 50-year life, and built a lot of its early success on its deal to license the x86 architecture to provide IBM with an second source processor provider for the…