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Nvidia to Buy ULI Electronics
Steve from Hexus writes "In a move that has taken the technology market by surprise, graphics card and chipset manufacturer Nvidia has announced its intention to buy ULI Electronics, Taiwanese chipset designer and maker: 'NVIDIA openly recognizes that a large proportion of chipset innovation happens in the Far East where ULi is based and that is one of the things that makes ULi an attractive proposition. The move is seen by many as good sense on NVIDIA's part as its own in-house chipset makers are based solely in the USA. ULi, in contrast, has relationships with chipset makers in Taiwan and China, as well as in San Jose.'"
http://www.transmeta.com/efficeon/partner_tech/uli .html
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and it's pretty cool - has both AGP and PCI-Xpress sockets so that I can continue to use my ATI X800 AGP video card, and then upgrade to a PCI-Xpress when it becomes too old. It also comes with two SATA ports, and an SATA2 port.
The motherboard is built by Asus (their value line, called ASRock), and it's been a great performer. It's the first motherboard that I've gotten dual-channel memory working.
The chipsets are innovative, but are they so innovative that nVidia wouldn't want to copy them? Maybe the lead-time, and wanting to keep their chipset line small was the reason.
the fun part is that lots of MB using ATI chipset use ULI southbridge as ATI still has a way to go for SATA, usb ans sound.
The real story is that it gives nVidia a good office in Taiwan and will strengthen their ties with taiwanese and chinese design house, mostly for MB and especially for laptops.
ULi also appears to be the only company other than ATI making chipsets that support CrossFire (ATI's multi-GPU solution, competing with Nvidia's SLI, for the one person who doesnt know but cares) in the form of the ULi M1575. I cant imagine Nvidia will let that continue.
I really, really hope this has positive impacts on the quality of nVIDIA's chipsets. They've been ridden with bugs times and times again, whilst ULi seemed to get along without major hickups like the totally b0rked SATA-implementation on the nForce3 150, for example.
And I hope they'll continue to provide the Linux Kernel Hackers with specs of their chipsets, just in the fashion ULi used to do. It can only get better for nVIDIA by embracing ULi's practises in more than a few fields of operation, in my opinion.
:%s/Open Source/Free Software/g
YTARY!
I've found modern VIA chipsets to be fine. Great linux support, does everything I need it to. What're your problems with them?
I am trolling
As someone mentioned above, ATI's southbridge offerings are, to say the least, lacking. I know on their (ATI's) new crossfire platform, most if not all motherboards use the ULI southbridge. That chip has some great features - SATA300, PCI Express link, and RAID0/1/0+1/5. What will ATI do now? I can't see nVidia making this integration any easier for ATI, so will ATI go looking for its' own chipset company? VIA, SiS, etc. will soon be saying, show me the money!
Its a good point - NVidia has pretty much cornered the market for AMD MB's already. ULi was providing an alternative on the "budget" boards, and could have launched some kind of challenge in the performance/hobbyist niche as well. Competition is a *good* thing. My NF4 board is OK, but one of the LAN ports has already failed, and the it runs way too hot. Unless VIA can make a comeback, NF5 will dominate the next generation, whether it deserves to or not.
Via chipsets are not what they used to be
;) find out what people who like via are putting into their systems and what n00bs who know nothing about configuring a system are trying to do that is totally f00baring them.
Oh Via is Everything it used to be, and that's the problem, the law of averages suggests that a company that's trying to produce as many chipsets as cheaply as possible are going to wind up with a few that manage to exceed the typical quality level churned out..
if you're considering a via, you seriously need to go with a fully researched configuration, not just what the marketing department claims the board can run. now i'm typing this from a rock solid Via based solution as we speak, but there are a lot of pieces of hardware i cannot purchase for this unit, simply because they're Known Incompatabilities, of course most chipsets have "known incompatabilities" but i tend to hear of more for via than other chipset makers. It's very easy to design a system around a via chipset, even in this day and age, but as always one needs to know what Won't work, and what's going to cause you nightmares and headaches galore. that's what they make the internet for
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
The move was merely to swallow up a competitor and likely use ULi's current line as a low end chipset.
nVidia has been making a lot of inroads in the chipset market, but not ATI is joining the fray... Eliminating ULi as competition, and acquiring it's current portfolio doesn't really provide a big bang for the buck, but marginally improves market share for nVidia in the chipset market.
It doesn't hurt that ULi came up with it's own configurable PCI-E setup (ala SLI, though not supported by video card makers, yet). That's probably the key piece, and there may be some parts of the IP portfolio nVidia can leverage toreduce their own licensing costs - which means cheaper chipsets.
Additionally, they gain a group of driver and firmware developers, probably more accustomed to rapid technology changes than nVidia's own group (allowing their original people to concentrate on video)
Overall, it's a "Decent" move, probably having more to do with opportunity, rather than as some large-scale strategic move. ULi simply doesn't command the market share nVidia does, and there are plenty of Asian motherboard makers using nForce chipsets already - this move has NOTHING to do with building those relationships.
I liken it more to buying that 300GB SATA drive on Black Friday because it's a decent deal, not because I suddenly need all that extra capacity, or even that I'll need it in the future... however, it does give me more options.