Exploring the ATI/AMD Rumor

phaedo00 writes "Ars Technica writes about current speculation circling around the supposed imminent merger of ATI and AMD: 'Last week at Computex, however, Intel allegedly began telling folks behind closed doors that AMD is planning to acquire ATI. This news came courtesy of Tweaktown, who cited a trusted and reliable anonymous source for the claim. It wasn't clear from Tweaktown's report if Intel itself had heard a rumor to this effect, or if the company was reading the same tea leaves as the RBC Capital Markets analysts in the Forbes article and coming to the same conclusion.'"

Comments

they want AMD's stock to go down

[hxnwix]

Intel wants to depress AMD's stock price and piss all over AMD's relationship with NVIDIA. Simple as that.

Re:they want AMD's stock to go down

[DoctorDyna]

huh? Why would that make any monopolies? Intel makes graphics chips right now. AMD does not. It would be nice if they did. If they consume ATI and rebrand their products, then so be it. Who cares.

Re:they want AMD's stock to go down

[DoctorDyna]

Sorry, meant to reply to Viriatus.

Re:they want AMD's stock to go down

[Anonymous Coward]

Motorola "spun off" (ie: ditched) their chip-making business. Inmos - owned by a music chain, Thorn EMI - was sold to ST and their technology was dumped. IIT, a co-processor manufacturer in the days of the 8086 to 80286 died a death. Cyrix was bought, as mentioned.

This is a field where you must not only have a good product, you must also have a solid market AND a solid marketing team, AND you must avoid bad PR like the plague, AND any major players (like Intel) must not deliberately sabotage efforts to compete, AND your plant can't be struck by major earthquakes.

(Why are all the major chip makers in Taiwan, Japan and America ALL concentrated in areas with high tectonic activity? Is there something in the fault line they use in the production line?)

The bottom line is simple. A chip fabrication plant can cost tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars, skilled chip designers can command hefty salaries, many of the key markets are 0wn3d by monopolies of questionable legality who flirt with unethical practices to keep their position, and software developers reinforce this by targetting established, high-volume platforms and that means no new products get support.

Of course, Transmeta didn't help its case. Its Linux distro was late, the first batch of chips was buggy, they didn't sell to anyone outside of the "big players" (and "big players" only really buy from other "big players", because volume bought and sold = profit), and they only produced an 80x86 layer for the Crusoe, rather than using the capabilities to cross market boundaries and therefore create volume by getting into many niche markets.

Also, their design was poor. Intel beat them on power consumption in a very short space of time, and this is Intel we are talking about. At the same time, people knew there were problems with 80x86 scalability (hence the work on SMP and hyperthreading), but Transmeta didn't look far enough ahead to build a multicore product, when they were already building a design from scratch and had ample opportunity to make such changes.

(In comparison, AMD and Intel have to engineer such features into an existing design, which is always much harder and likely to be much slower than working from first principles. AMD's and Intel's route also offers much better odds of bugs being found in the design, at a later date, as their architecture was never intended to be multicore.)

So, I don't hold Transmeta blameless in this. They may have been pushed over the edge, but they still chose to walk along the cliff in the first place, knowing it to be a dangerous spot, and knowing that the view wasn't even that good there, to make it worth the risk.

One of these days, I hope to see a company start up that takes the time to be truly innovative (and not just fake it), takes the time to get things right, and makes a product so damn unbeatable it wipes the floor with everything else.

It does happen. True, AMD is no start-up, but they were hardly giants in the 80x86 world. With the Opteron and their 64/32-bit crossover architecture, they've demolished Intel's Itanium and even convinced Microsoft to switch to them for 64-bit stuff. Given the longevity of the Wintel duopoly, that took a good plan and a good effort.

Re:they want AMD's stock to go down

[Strangefolker]

Agreed. AMD and ATI are two hugely succesfull and innovative companies. ATI has a huge chunk (more than nvidia) of the discrete graphics market, and AMD has more than doubled it's server side market share in under a year. I'm not an investor, but my first reaction to a merger like this isn't "oh man, that stuck is going to PLUMMET."

Re:they want AMD's stock to go down

[pawn63295]

Can someone define perfect for me

Re:they want AMD's stock to go down

[Nikker]

Hey how about a quad core (2xCPU + 2xGPU)? With internal memory managment and instant access to all cores the results would be amazing.

Re:they want AMD's stock to go down

[Abreu]

And next thing you know, someone will ask about a beowulf cluster of these... [rolls eyes]

Re:they want AMD's stock to go down

[hxnwix]

AMD would use their stock to purchase ATI. Therefore, if the rumor is believed, ATI's stock will increase in value while AMD's will drop.

Any time a public company is rumored to be considering buying another public company, the target's stock tends to go up while the acquirer's tends to drop. This is some pretty basic ass shit.

Re:they want AMD's stock to go down

[3rd_Floo]

SGI already tried something similar and look where it got them!

Re:they want AMD's stock to go down

[javamann]

A new State of the Art Chip FAB can cost Billions of Dollars (with a B).

Re:they want AMD's stock to go down

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

as their architecture was never intended to be multicore

AMD K8 was designed to be multicore from the start.

Re:they want AMD's stock to go down

[dwater]

What product was that, exactly?

Re:they want AMD's stock to go down

[Paul Jakma]

A chip fabrication plant can cost tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars,

FABs were hundreds of millions about 20 to 15 years ago. Today they're billions. Intel's FAB-24A cost $2B I think.

Re:they want AMD's stock to go down

[zippthorne]

Ok, day-trader. That's true, but that's hardly the kind of long-term effect that would merit the attention of the likes of Warren Buffet. The situation you describe is a problem/opportunity for speculators. Not for serious investors.

Re:they want AMD's stock to go down

[3rd_Floo]

[offtopic]
I was thinking along the lines of the IR line coupled with XIO. Pretty similar to a direct bus (numa) attached graphics chipset as the parent was suggesting, not exactly, but close enough.
Don't get me wrong, without it, modern CAVEs wouldn't be what they are today, and its a wonderful piece of hardware. However, I don't think SGI is doing better (or worse) in the grand scheme because of it, at least not right now.
[/offtopic]

Re:they want AMD's stock to go down

[dwater]

Right. I don't think SGI's lack of success is much to do with the IR line - more like it's *despite* the IR line. I also don't really think IR is all that similar to a direct bus attached graphics set. XIO was more analogous to PCI/et al, IIRC (but it's been a while...), and fairly slow compared to the internal buses.

Now the Indy XL/O2/320/540 (and some of the Integraph products too, IIRC) are another matter - I'd say those graphics chips were pretty tightly integrated. However, they didn't have their own dedicated memory, so perhaps they're dissimilar in that respect.

Of course, the O2's ICE chip was nicely placed and underappreciated IMO - not strictly graphics (well, not in the same way), but there you go...

Re:they want AMD's stock to go down

[hxnwix]

your comment. very pithy ;)

huh?

[Dorothy 86]

Trusted and Reliable Anonymous Cowa^H^H^H^H Source?

hmmm....

Heaven?

[neonprimetime]

We think that an AMD-ATI fusion is a match made in enthusiast heaven
 
From another source ... could affect ATI's most direct competitor (nVidia) a lot - the merger would create a company who has the capacity to create good CPU's, good chipsets and good GPU's. By combining their resources, it opens things up for AMD and ATI to really take on Intel and nVidia in a big way and increase their market share in a range of different product segments.

 
It would be very interesting to see this merger go thru ... could mean good things for gamers :-)

Re:Heaven?

[vivin]

Interesting merger if it happens.

Cue the Intel bashing.

Re:Heaven?

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be very interesting to see this merger go thru ... could mean good things for gamers :-)

Or it could be very bad for gamers. Remember a few years ago with the Intel Pentium MMX stuff? It would be unfortunate if games started coming out that specifically require an AMD/ATI config in order to play them reasonably. I much prefer today's methodology of having a game that will play on any system (AMD/ATI, AMD/NVidia, Intel/ATI, Intel/NVidia, etc).

Re:Heaven?

[cnelzie]

That's not necesarily true.

    If that were to happen, why would AMD keep working with Nvidia? What would stop the (Currently fictional) AMD/ATI Corporation from makign Nvidia graphics run poorly in comparison to their own offerings?

    A good number of people find ATI's offerings to be lackluster in comparison to Nvidia.

    I see this as a bad thing. I like AMD's offerings, I have never liked ATI's offerings. If I get stuck with the graphics of ATI, if I want to keep using AMD, I would rather switch over to Intel and use their over-priced crap to ensure a certain "freedom" of choice and still use Nvidia Graphics chips.

Re:Heaven?

[wowbagger]

It would be very interesting to see this merger go thru ... could mean good things for gamers :-)

I think you mean "...could mean good things for Windows gamers."

While I don't particularly like nVidia's way of doing drivers for Linux, at least they WORK. I cannot install the ATI drivers for my video card because ATI hasn't kept up with the development in Xorg 7.x, and the Free driver really isn't worth much.

From my perspective, an ATI/AMD merger could be good, IF AMD opens up more of the programming specs for the ATI graphics chips (NOTE: NOT the driver source - the SPECS , as in "To enable texture fill, set register $foo bit $bar to 1.")

However, the more likely result will be even more closed, proprietary, Microsoft® Windows® Vista® DRM only hardware.

A pity - I rather like AMD's processors, but with the way things are going, I may want my next machine to be an Intel - while their graphics chips aren't great, they are much better supported under X.

And for those of you Windows® Fanboies who will say "Suxxors 2 B joo! Run Windows!" - you run what you choose to run, I shall choose to run what I run. BTW - say HI to all the Russian and Taiwanese spammers for me, and make sure you keep their^Wyour computer running.

Re:Heaven?

[Viceice]

It would be very interesting to see this merger go thru ... could mean good things for gamers :-)

For this VERY reason, it's a bad idea. AMD already has the hearts and minds of gamers. But that market is small, and in the grand scheme of things, insignificant. What AMD needs is to prove itself as a computing powerhouse more capable then Intel. This means producing servers, corperate desktops, supercomputers etc.

ATi is a company that makes good gaming cards that make for shitty content development platforms. AMD's interest would only be furthered only if they graphics card maker they merged with was nVidia, which not only makes good development cards in the form of it's Quadro line, writes reliable and stable drivers and is invested in creating tools that mean business, like Gelato.

For the same reason it makes good marketing sense for Apple to not hype it's gaming capabilities, it would make bad sense for AMD to hype itself as a super gaming processor.

Re:Heaven?

[Xichekolas]

I cringe at the thought of this.

AMD and Nvidia do a lot of mutual back scratching now, by creating good products that play well with others. Why would AMD want to ruin that by trying to create a company that competes at every level, and hence has no real allies? This works fine for Intel, since it is by far the biggest dog in the pack, but it would kill a company like AMD.

If nothing else, this would just drive Nvidia into the arms of Intel, or maybe even provoke it to make it's own foray into CPUs. It's not like Nvidia isn't already making very complex microchips to drive it's video cards. It wouldn't be a big leap, and not necessarily a bad one from the standpoint of consumers, but from AMD's view, this would be terrible.

I just cannot see any real longterm upside to AMD acquiring ATI, and lots of potential downsides exist. ATI is only profitable every few years, and carries a big pile of debt. And their products seem to always lag behind Nvidia. Maybe I am just biased against ATI, but it just seems like a really poor business move.

Re:Heaven?

[Anonymous Coward]

ATI...no chipsets...2nd in the market in GPU's AMD...no chipsets...2nd in the market in CPU's nVidia...best AMD chipset (nForce 4)...1st in the market in GPU's I say "AMD and nVidia would kick ass together, unless ATI has something nasty up thier sleeve that I don't know about"

Re:Heaven?

[Abu Hurayrah]

I find this comment to be rather naïve - how could this merger, if it happens, be a bad thing for the Linux market? AMD is well-supported under Linux and supports Linux rather well (though I imagine it's more on one side than the other). Developing drivers for Linux has always been an issue of balancing available resources, and the resources AMD could potentially provide for this purpose would be invaluable.

If anything, a merger like this should really push the Linux desktop forward and challenge the Wintel trap we've been in for so long. This is just one more factor that is continuing the push for greater Linux penetration. A good example to cite would be Dell's acquisition of Alienware. If AMD & ATI merge, what kind of hardware do you think would be best optimize? Taking the Dell example further, as their sales of Linux servers increase, they undoubtedly are going to explore Linux on the desktop (after overcoming the obviously hurdle that Microsoft would present to them in terms of OEM Windows pricing). Just add up all these trends, and it can only be an optimistic outlook, in my opinion.

Re:Heaven?

[Chode2235]

I also agree, it might not be the best match for gamers in general. Specifically consoles, IBM is making all of the chips for the next gen systems, where ATI is creating specific graphics processors for Nintendo I believe. It seems like it might be good as these companies can 'leveage synergy', however I see an elimination of choices, specifically to mix and match.

Re:Heaven?

[gripen40k]

I don't think you have too much to worry about. A merger like this wouldn't change the existing PCIe/AGP graphics card market very much, in the sence that ATI would still make those cards (and apparently their crappy drivers). Just a guess here, but IF they were to merge, I still think that nVidia's cards would work with AMD CPU's, or at least for the first little while. Besides, you run Linux, you should be used to sub-par documentation ;)

Re:Heaven?

[Chubby_C]

ATI is only profitable every few years, and carries a big pile of debt.

ATi is a debt free company with $600+ million in cash on hand

Re:Heaven?

[Monster_Juice]

While I don't particularly like nVidia's way of doing drivers for Linux, at least they WORK.

The same could be said about Windows drivers. ATI drivers have never been up to par for Windows. If they cannot keep up with a driver that works in Windows it would be crazy to think they could keep up to date on more than one platform.

I have purchased AMD since the 386 days and will continue to do so until I have a strong reason to go with someone else.
I purchased ATI one time and will continue to buy anything but ATI until every other company is out of business. Heck I would buy an Intel card before I purchased another ATI card. At least I can expect to get get drivers that work from Intel.

Re:Heaven?

[Anonymous Coward]

I completely agree with the ATI statement. I have owned 2 ATI graphics solutions, 1 video card, 1 integrated into my laptop. Driver support was horrendous for both. I will never buy ATI again, and if that means no AMD either, then so be it.

Re:Heaven?

[Carewolf]

AMD and ATI are the least Linux friendly. Intel is be most pro Linux hardware developer and NVidia a distant second.

Re:Heaven?

[Compholio]

AMD is well-supported under Linux and supports Linux rather well (though I imagine it's more on one side than the other).

They're not just well-supported, AMD actively works with the community! That's the only reason we have Linux support for the x86-64 processors, not because Intel was being a nice processor overlord or people spent the last decade hacking support: http://www.x86-64.org/

Re:Heaven?

[espinafre]

Amen to that, bro. I dislike ATI even more because I run only Linux and FreeBSD. The games I play are those which run on these systems (thanks to iD Software and the brave folks at Bioware). ATI never had good drivers (well, they blame the drivers, but I'm not sure about the hardware as well).
On the other hand, I've always liked AMD better than Intel (faster, cheaper, cooler processors), but the reasons for it are fading away with Intel's latest and announced offerings.

I may very well buy an ATIMD/AMDTI/AMTI/ATMID/however that potential new corp will be called in the future if, and only if, they fully support the operating systems I care for. Nowadays, only nVidia excels at that, and I thank them with my hard-earned money.

Re:Heaven?

[DemiKnute]

Hmmmm. While I will readily admit that they suck, I'm running ATI's binary drivers under X.org 7 right now.

Re:Heaven?

[Anonymous Coward]

as horrible as this merger would be... it MIGHT make ATI cards more stable on more machines and who knows... maybe drive prices down??!?! *wishing*

Re:Heaven?

[Xichekolas]

ATI ... (ATYT) Total Net Income 2005 - 16,929,000 2004 - 204,799,000 2003 - 35,229,000 2002 - -47,465,000 2001 - -54,205,000 Fully Diluted EPS 2005 - 0.07 2004 - 0.80 2003 - 0.14 2002 - -0.20 2001 - -0.23 Operating Margin = -3.82% Net Margin = -3.04% Return on Common Equity = -6.41% Return on Invested Capital = -6.24% Return on Assets = -3.77% I will admit that I somehow pulled the piles of debt out of my ass... ATI only has ~$25 million in debt, which is more than covered by the ~$185 million in cash on hand. All figures are from SmartMoney.com, taken from 2/28/06 quarterly report. So maybe my argument based on financials isn't as strong, but I think it stands on the other merits.

Re:Heaven?

[nuzak]

Why would nvidia's motherboard division want to sabotage its marketability to gamers, more than half of whom on those very motherboards run AMD? (according to the last Steam survey)

I have an ATI graphics card plugged into an nVidia motherboard right now. Works perfectly. If either ATI or AMD made their own motherboards, I imagine nvidia would bust its ass to make sure their cards ran just as well in those boards as any other, since it's both nvidia's reputation and marketshare that are still on the line.

I can't imagine nvidia reacting to the news of a merger with anything but glee as they watch ATI's productivity and stock price plummet while the newly-formed company struggles with aligning such completely different business units.

Re:Heaven?

[Xichekolas]

Bah... forgot the HTML on that...

ATI ... (ATYT)

Total Net Income

• 2005 - 16,929,000
• 2004 - 204,799,000
• 2003 - 35,229,000
• 2002 - -47,465,000
• 2001 - -54,205,000

Fully Diluted EPS

• 2005 - 0.07
• 2004 - 0.80
• 2003 - 0.14
• 2002 - -0.20
• 2001 - -0.23

Other Stats

• Operating Margin = -3.82%
• Net Margin = -3.04%
• Return on Common Equity = -6.41%
• Return on Invested Capital = -6.24%
• Return on Assets = -3.77%

I will admit that I somehow pulled the piles of debt out of my ass... ATI only has ~$25 million in debt, which is more than covered by the ~$185 million in cash on hand. All figures are from SmartMoney.com, taken from 2/28/06 quarterly report.

So maybe my argument based on financials isn't as strong, but I think it stands on the other merits.

Re:Heaven?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you will not buy Intel either. I have 5 notebook computers with ATI/Intel at work that when it comes to video it is terrible.

Re:Heaven?

[bigpat]

Nvidia is just better to its customers than ATI. In addition to linux support, nvidia has also supported stereo 3d gaming and simulation with pretty good stereoscopic versions of its drivers. I know the market segment for stereo 3d is relatively small, but it shows nvidia's willingness to respond to its customers needs.

Re:Heaven?

[nuzak]

Feh, I think I replied to the wrong thread, but this one's even easier to dismiss: it's easy to sabotage a competitor's product, but even easier to get caught. Besides, imagine the marketing opportunity: "Same card, different motherboards. Let's review some benchmarks on these motherboards and separate the winners from the losers"

Re:Heaven?

[Anonymous Coward]

A pity - I rather like AMD's processors, but with the way things are going, I may want my next machine to be an Intel - while their graphics chips aren't great, they are much better supported under X.

I wouldn't sweat it. My last three machines have been AMD and NVIDA, but I'll switch off to Intel's Core2 in a heartbeat if the Linux/FreeBSD support from a theoretical AMD/ATI company isn't up to snuff. I've been waiting on workstation grade dual core from Intel and it's right around the corner.

I used to get stressed out about this sort of thing, but now I just roll with the punches and use whatever works.

Re:Heaven?

[pci]

If you really want performance out of X windows on Linux, but a commercial X server. I may cost you a few $$, but its well worth it.

There are things hardware vendors will share with closed source shops that they just don't want to make free to the world for their competitors to see.

Xi make a nice X server: http://www.xig.com/

Re:Heaven?

[elrond1999]

I agree that ATI and nVidia should open up their spec, at least enough for someone to implement an independent driver. However can you fathom what a momumental amount of work that would give ATI? Not only do you have to release a somewhat complete and updated spec, it has to be free from any NDA / patentable information. So you can't just release whatever you have inhouse, you have to produce a separate document. These ducuments must also be updated with new chips, new revisions etc..

So given the man years you have to invest in this, what would they gain from it? Respect from the Linux gaming comunity? What does that mean in $ and ?

Re:Heaven?

[MicrowavedH2O]

... and the Free driver really isn't worth much.

Well, the cost to worthlessness ratio holds true.

But, they are giving it away. What can you expect? If money was actually made/spent developing it, I am sure there would be a better product.
I can play pong online for free, but it isn't worth much. WoW actually has much better entertainment value.

Re:Heaven?

[dnissley]

However, the more likely result will be even more closed, proprietary, Microsoft® Windows® Vista® DRM only hardware.

Is it the more likely result? Seeing as AMD is the bigger company, and also the more generous of the two when it comes to source (and more accepting when it comes to linux), it seems to me that the more likely result would be that ATI would be in a tight spot not to release their code/specs. AMD has a good track record for releasing documentation/specs (at least to my knowledge) and it would be highly unlikely that they would let ATI mar that record.

What would be the point of continuing to release binary blob drivers? Their would be a mutiny if AMD explicitly said no to releasing the driver code because they are fairly closely associated with the OSS community, and have forged an identity around being OSS friendly. I still dont understand why ATI continues to restrict their driver code, let alone GPU specs!

Re:Heaven?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, so ATI drivers only work properly on...Macs? (They certainly have worked perfectly on all three of mine, all of which have ATI graphics)

Re:Heaven?

[piotrr]

You self-admittedly bought ATI once and never again. My experiences are a little more current.

ATI drivers in the past few years have surpassed nVidia drivers in performance, stability and support, while nVidia drivers have maintained the same quality they always had (well, disregarding a few of the "leaked" betas in the 40 and 80-series) but have also become more and more bloated while adding little to stability or base functionality. Window throwing? Mouse gestures? In a driver? Not only is it absurd creature feep, it is also adding possible error sources to the package.

So while I, too, have experience from the "bad years" of ATI drivers - never mention the ATI Rage Turbo AGP2x to me ever again - I would not hold it against their drivers today. Why should I let past emotions stand between me and the best hardware I can buy? No reason at all, of course.

more and more and morea...

[carlosGames]

Well since 3 years ago I consider the PC good enough to handle the most common apps well, (under windows or linux as well), my mom got a good pc which was not a dual core PC but it is enough to use any app she would need... and I have a good PC with an amd64 3400 cpu with enough power to compile my source codes and have a good gaming time too

I think thats way Intel is considering downgrade its prices but I don't know what would make me consider in get the new chipsets from ATI/AMD would make, yes Vista is comming soon but how many ppl is really thinking in give it a try now with winXP SP2 working *good* enough? (and linux working better.. sorry, I had to say it).

Packaging?

[general scruff]

So, does this mean that ATI packaging will look just a bit more reserved, or can we expect more scary disturbing pictures of spikey metal heads of increasing size and complexity depending on the speed of the processor we get?

Not so impossible

[Solder Fumes]

My first reaction was to laugh and think about all the nForce motherboards out there, but ATI has done some very interesting things with AMD chipsets recently.

One thing is for sure: when Intel, AMD, Nvidia, and ATI fight, we customers win.

Re:Not so impossible

[vimh42]

One thing is for sure: when Intel, AMD, Nvidia, and ATI fight, we customers win. Don't be so sure. I have been a long time fan of AMD and NVIDIA. I use Windows as a desktop and Linux on severs. I enjoy tinkering with Linux and BSD. I would also like to move my graphical work (both 2D & 3D) to Linux and eventually my desktop. While I am not completely satisfied with Nvidia's support of Linux, it is my understanding that support is better than what ATI has to offer. Sure I could switch to Intel for my CPU's if AMD merges with ATI but I'd rather not. I'd rather see everybody stay separate. If there was a merger, I'd rather see it between AMD and Nvidia and let Intel and ATI go on their merry way.

Re:Not so impossible

[public transport]

One thing is for sure: when Intel, AMD, Nvidia, and ATI fight, we customers win.

Nvidia and ATI are quite much equal competitors at the moment. If AMD and ATI merges, that could tilt the competition to ATI's favour. That means less competition in the graphics sector, and customers loose. On the CPU front AMD is already gaining on Intel, they don't really need this.

OTOH, it would be nice to see a "low-end" on-board graphics card with a FOSS driver on AMD boards, similar to what Intel offers. That would be very nice for servers and many of the Linux desktops. However, I don't think that's the motivation for this purchase if the rumour is true.

FTC may not allow it

[MobyDisk]

Remember when Intel started to make video cards and motherboards? The FTC forbade them from doing it. ATI + AMD would present a similar situation. Now, at the time, Intel was dominating the market much more than they are now, but it still presents a similar risk.

Is anyone afraid that this could lead to fewer choices in the video card market?

Re:FTC may not allow it

[drinkypoo]

The only place there's likely to be less options is in the AMD chipset market. I could easily see nVidia giving up on AMD if this happens. It would reduce the number of AMD chipsets with integrated nVidia graphics, which I don't give one tenth of one shit about, since that's low-end graphics anyway.

Re:FTC may not allow it

[Anonymous Coward]

Intel is doing that right now.. what are you talking about?

Re:FTC may not allow it

[lspd]

Remember when Intel started to make video cards and motherboards? The FTC forbade them from doing it. ATI + AMD would present a similar situation.

Don't forget VIA+Cyrix+S3.

Re:FTC may not allow it

[Anonymous Coward]

ATI is an Ottawa based company and although it does trade on the NASDAQ, I'm not sure how much leverage the FTC has over a Canadian company.

Re:FTC may not allow it

[darthnoodles]

Actually they are based out of Markham.

Re:FTC may not allow it

[dorbabil]

I'd think that the only reason why that was the case was that Intel had an essentially legal monopoly in the processor business, and by making other peripherals (presumably to be sold cheaper than the competition, or that would work better with intel chips) they would be using their monopoly position to hurt competition.

Neither AMD nor ATI have that issue. I believe they are both beat by Intel and nVidia in their respective busiensses, atleast in terms of marketshare.

Re:FTC may not allow it

[nuzak]

> Remember when Intel started to make video cards and motherboards? The FTC forbade them from doing it

Cite please?

Re:FTC may not allow it

[MajinBlayze]

Cite please?

You must be new here

Re:FTC may not allow it

[SpectreHiro]

Neither AMD nor ATI have that issue. I believe they are both beat by Intel and nVidia in their respective busiensses, atleast in terms of marketshare.

If memory serves, they're both beat by Intel in their respective businesses. Last time I checked, Intel was still the #1 provider of graphics chips. Scary, ain't it?

AMD CPU with NVIDIA GPU?

[TheGSRGuy]

Will ATI GPUs perhaps get some advanced optimizations? What if I want to use an NVIDIA GPU with an AMD/ATI CPU?

Re:AMD CPU with NVIDIA GPU?

[grumpyman]

Will ATI GPUs perhaps get some advanced optimizations? What if I want to use an NVIDIA GPU with an AMD/ATI CPU?

Yeah maybe 2-3% gain on 10-15% of games/apps :) Well, isn't that what enthusiasts consider as 'major advantage'?

Re:Shut up your ignorant chinaman.

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, Dude, chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature. Asian-American, please.

Wonder what the FTC thinks

[pslam]

Even if it's true, I wonder what the FTC thinks about a public company spreading merger rumours about a rival. Isn't that downright illegal?

Would certainly piss me off enough to release the lawyers if I were AMD.

Re:Wonder what the FTC thinks

[mojotooth]

RTFA. Intel is merely telling its customers and potential customers exactly what it would mean if the rumors that were reported by OTHERS actually came to pass. Others in this case being Forbes. Since Intel can point to this article, exactly what kind of complaint would the FCC have?

you are stupid loser!

[Anonymous Coward]

as subject says.

Re:you are stupid loser!

[Anonymous Coward]

No you are!

when Intel, AMD, Nvidia, and ATI fight, we custome

[bobdapunk]

I agree in the short term we will win. What happens down the road when ATI are the only cards you can put in your AMD box and nvidia cards are the only thing that you can put in your intel box. Surely this won't happen, but the common interface (PCI-E or whatever comes after it) will offer less performance. I doubt that nvidia would produce a card for the AMD/ATI slot until after the market is shown to be viable, and if that happens nvidia will be at a disdvantage since ATI won't have to pay to license the coherent HT technology.

I see these mega mergers as offering few choices to customers in the long run and that is a bad thing (think Wal-Mart, Best Buy, cable/telcos and there cheaper, less desirable products. Then down the line the lack of competition lets companies get away with murder, like the cable and dsl companies are now)

Here is my comment

[Anonymous Coward]

interesting that given the.......[click next to continue]

Decent combination of analysis

[Tyler Too]

It's nice to see technical and financial analysis combined in the same article. It's a lot better than "we heard this over dinner at a Taiwanese hotel" anyway.

AMD - ATI and nVidia

[Exter-C]

I wonder if a merger between AMD and ATI would cause adverse side effects with the AMD / nVidia relationship. many people claim that the nVidia boards are amoungst the best for the AMD chip (i have no experience using them personally except in the Sun x2100 server which has a _seriously_ crap second interface in it). However I am sure there could be some adverse side effects which would potentially hamper one of AMDs biggest alternative chipset providers.

Re:AMD - ATI and nVidia

[Anonymous Coward]

Good point, but I am wondering exactly what kind of an impact an AMD/ATI relationship would have on AMD's relationship with Nvidia. I can't imagine that Nvidia would like to see AMD working that closely with its competitor, and it might affect Nvidia's committment to supply chipsets for AMD.

AMD-ATI not a good fit

[mabhatter654]

It doesn't make sense for AMD to do this. nVidia has been their premier partner for years, why would they go ATI now after ATI just signed on to the VIIV deal with WinTel? nVidia would be better for the future. Both companies are mavericks in the industry, both have been bitten heavily by WinTel holding them back. AMD + nVidia could make the next Apple... or better! end-to-end PCs completely outside the WinTel homogeny... ATI is just a lackey to whatever agenda MS & Intel are peddling.

The Biggest thing I'd hate to see is the Alt OS support.. AMD banks real money on Alt OSes, where ATI views them as trouble... in that respect nVidia would be a better match because AMD would provide Fab allowing costs to be lower. Lower costs mean better support for OSS, combine with AMD chips it could provide a complete solution off the shelf.. just add OSS.

The only thing I see is that ATI has the inside contracts already... AMD desperately wants into the "big leagues" of the computer world. Customers that already use ATI video and like ATI's business (remember, OEMS don't care about performance or drivers as much as bottom line and buzzword compliance) would be heavily leaned upon to try out AMD chips with a good discount. ATI also has some interesting patent agreements with Intel and Microsoft that AMD & nVidia got cut out of in the last 5 years or so... but that means AMD would be planning to "roll over" or "sell out" to the Wintel homogney rather than keep fighting... very sad.

Re:AMD-ATI not a good fit

[darthnoodles]

The Biggest thing I'd hate to see is the Alt OS support.. AMD banks real money on Alt OSes, where ATI views them as trouble... in that respect nVidia would be a better match because AMD would provide Fab allowing costs to be lower. Lower costs mean better support for OSS, combine with AMD chips it could provide a complete solution off the shelf.. just add OSS.

This wouldn't apply for ATi somehow? Just because ATi doesn't have good Linux support now, does that mean that they would refuse to provide better support given more budget for it?

Re:AMD-ATI not a good fit

[Tyler Too]

It's because AMD can't afford NVIDIA. Read the article, dude.

Re:AMD-ATI not a good fit

[ACMENEWSLLC]

Lets see. All my Compaq/HP servers have embeded ATI video cards and run Intel chipsets. My HP desktops run AMD chipset, and have embeded ATI video cards. All my clones have ASUS and AGP nVidia video cards.

What does this mean to me? Anything?

All I really want is a vendor to make a STABLE release of their drivers for my 500 PC's. I hate having to figure out which driver worked best with a certain video card. Unified driver, my ass.

Wonder what the FTC thinks? maybe not

[wjsroot]

Not to spread rumors but...

Maybe they havn't released the laywers because there are merger talks...

If they arn't trying to cover it up or anything it may be because they are actually talking about merging and are close to doing it.

Maybe this would make crossfire take off more too.

Re:Wonder what the FTC thinks? maybe not

[pslam]

Even if there really are merger talks I would still release the lawyers because it would then be a blatant attempt to scupper the deal.
Seriously, this is almost criminal behaviour. Perhaps it even is.

if it doesn't result in better Linux drivers, BFD

[Locutus]

I've got a Radeon Express 200M in a laptop where an old ATI driver worked great with the 128MB of onboard RAM but later versions of the driver are crap. Newer versions of the ATI driver require setting both Video Sideport+UMA memory to 128MB each! And 3D performance was cut in half while also losing 128MB of system memory. So if this merger is true, if it does not mean better GNU/Linux drivers, I'll stick with Nvidia cards thankyou. And that might mean I go back to Intel CPUs if AMD forces the ATI video systems on equipment makers.

LoB

A change in the way AMD works?

[John Jamieson]

I think AMD would have to be feeling very insecure before they pulled this move. They have always been very good at leaving room for partners, and not squeezeing them out.

Remember, AMD pulls out of the chipset market any time they can to make room for the partners.

Even though this story seems to have "lots of legs", I still do not see it.

But...

[gripen40k]

Why would Intel be saying this? I would like to know what Intel people have to gain by spreading rumors like this, 'cause this type of rumor mongering isn't really hurting anyone's impression of AMD or ATI (not that intel would want to ruin ATI's image). When you think about it, it only makes you want to look to AMD in the future, and away from Intel's new line of 2-core processors. Hmmm, I'm not saying that a merger like this would be bad, I just really want to know what some of the Intel guys are up to... On another note, AMD might really have something here, and the author really has something there with AMD's intro of the cHT. That alone is an indication that AMD might either buy out or partner up with ATI. I can't see AMD pulling the cHT off without dedicated support from a graphics producer. Anyways, just thinking aloud... or should I say, thinking... onto my keyboard... or something to that effect... :/

my opinion

[Gno]

Hey what's with all the ATI hatin? Right now there not the best but who cares? I still like them. They procide good preformance at a resonable price. I had an intel 256MB generic graphics card in my PC that was terrible. It has worse preformance then the ATI radeon 7000 I upgraded to. I now have a Radeon 9600 Pro I've overclocked that sucker and I can run most everything on highest or high settings. (I also have 2GB of Ram and a 3.1ghz proccessor) I think if AMD and ATI merge witch seems unlikely beacuse of AMD releationship with Nvidia, It will provide AMD with more firepower against Intel. Who's to say if Nvidia graphics cards will not work with the hypothectical new AMD/ATI boards? That would be an incredably stupid move for AMD. If you ask me this whole thing sounds really streched and smells like bullsh*t.

From a Gamer

[Frightening]

As an enthusiast I would not like to see this go down. AMD is great, but not everyone likes ATI. Buggy drivers, slow to catch on tech development(only recently got Pixel Shader 3.0) and relatively sensitive boards(personal experience)..these phrases are what come to mind.

Granted, nvidia is slightly evil (their Software Product Manager goes by the name of Andrew Fear) but that just makes them badass, and gamers couldn't care less for their association with MS. Try

What's with the headlines though? Sounded like "celebrity frolicking" gossip. Will they hold conferences in Namibia?

Re:From a Gamer

[CompSci101]

Actually, ATI is much more in bed with Microsoft than nVidia is at this point.

Traditionally, ATI has given their best support to their DirectX implementations, whereas nVidia has always paid close attention to OpenGL.

Further, this generation of consoles has seen Microsoft and Nintendo choose ATI, while Sony has nVidia in their PS3.

I think nVidia has been a much better member of the community (re. their Linux and OpenGL support) than ATI has ever been.

C

Re:From a Gamer

[darthnoodles]

slow to catch on tech development(only recently got Pixel Shader 3.0)

You do know that ATi was the first to have:

Support for DX 9.

Support for Pixel Shaders 1.4 over 1.3.

Looks like they will be first with proper unified shaders.

256 bit memory bus.

But you're right (*sarcasm*) they lag way behind and are stupid because they didn't have 3.0 FIRST!

Re:From a Gamer

[theelectron]

I agree with you that ATI seems to get the technology on their chips faster but they seem to have trouble more often getting those features to work correctly right off the bat. Does it matter if they have Pixel shader 1.4 on their chips first if I can't use it reliably?

And from a user/developer standpoint nVidia supports the community (the WHOLE community much more than ATI does. I choose nVidia hands down.

Well... Look how well that worked for 3dfx and STB

[vertinox]

Those two made a great team. Right?

Paging the SEC

[cpu_fusion]

A rumour is just a rumour, of course, but if anyone wasn't "reading tea leaves" and was passing this info on, then there is a very serious leak of inside information that could move markets. I am not a lawyer, but it's just this sort of crap that makes me think our markets are in need of some serious changes in the way information is spread.

Re:Paging the SEC

[jandrese]

I wonder what happens when some crazy Internet speculation turns out to be accurate? I mean what if Apple bought Nintendo next week (or vice versa), would the SEC investigate? Of course not, unless someone mysteriously invested a ton of money in one company or the other right before the merger. You can't be fined for idle speculation.

Beacuse two targets are better than one...

[Kid Zero]

in the crosshairs. Intel could crush AMD and ATI in one shot if they started executing correctly.

Here's a hint...

[Jtoxification]

It's a rumor, folks. Can you say, "sabotage" ? No need to spell it out; you just read it.

AMD+ATI Why not add SGI

[Pandishar]

If AMD wanted to really shock Intel, why not just buy SGI too. Move Altix from Itanium to Opteron and cripple Intel even more. I just don't understand why this has not happened yet. It would be the death blow to Itanium in my opinion.

Re:AMD+ATI Why not add SGI

[Anonymous Coward]

I just don't understand why this has not happened yet. It would be the death blow to Itanium in my opinion.

Itanium is dying on its own quite nicely, thankyouverymuch.

Competition

[blank89]

If AMD did have the resources to aquire ATI, it would at least heighten the competition between AMD and intel, and ATI and gForce.

Bullshit?

[tomstdenis]

From their outward actions AMD seems to work with Nvidia, VIA and ATI all alike.

An alliance with just one would go against everything they hoped to accomplish with their open platforms.

Of course I'm not part of the "need to know" crowd so don't take my word for gospel...

Tom

Sounds good

[Rorian]

I think a merger between these two can only work out well.. It means that I can probably expect much cooler desktop solutions (especially high-end/gamer solutions) from ATI/AMD, and if nothing else it pushes Intel and NVidia to be a little more competitive as the two rivals ramp up and combine their relative technologies to provide cheaper, more powerful hardware solutions.

Of course, this does all revolve around that evil marketing hype word, Synergy..

I hope this is just a rumour

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, I know everyone has their own opinions and I don't want to incite an ATI vs. nVidia flamewar but I've had absolutely nothing but trouble with ATI kit, every single time I've tried it or been forced to use it at work the drivers have been horrible and buggy. I really just do not like ATI, frankly if ATI and AMD will merge despite being an avid AMD supporter I'd just have to switch to Intel/nVidia, frankly I really do dislike ATI kit that much, it's just always been so problematic for me and simply hasn't improved through the years - even recently when I had the misfortune of having to reinstall Windows on a Samsung P29 laptop none of the ATI drivers would install, Windows simply wouldn't recognise them, in the end I had to manually extract them from the executable archive and force Windows to use the drivers - the installer told me the drivers weren't valid for this system even though they were, something I confirmed with Samsung, a quick poke with debug and a fair bit of research on Google. Of course it works fine now, but why should they be that hard to install when I can just grab nVidia's all in one package (which ironically despite support every nVidia card pretty much, is smaller in size than ATI's one card driver packages).

My take on this...

[Khyber]

AMD's HyperTransport + ATi graphics chipset = massive fucking amounts of bandwidth to GPU. Can we say "Fuck you, PCI Express?"

Sweet Secrets

[ol2o]

Wouldn't it be wonderful if the announced apples with intel chips was just a stepping stone for an AMD/ATI system.

ATI & X7.x

[wowbagger]

OK, what distro? What kernel? Give me details, because I know that I cannot get the fglrx drivers to work under FC Rawhide.

Re:ATI & X7.x

[Harik]

Debian unstable with a linus kernel.

I was astonished myself, but the stock DRI in debian supports my x800 in 3d, and multihead 3200x1200.

Re:ATI & X7.x

[DemiKnute]

Kubuntu Dapper Drake, stock kernel (I think it's 2.6.15-something, I'm at work right now).

I didn't use the Kubuntu packages for the ATI drivers, but downloaded the complete package off of ATI's website (again, don't have the version in front of me, but it's whatever the latest version was last week). Used ATI's crazy program to create Ubuntu packages which I then installed. Ran the aticonfig program but had to rework the xorg.conf file (nothing major, the aticonfig duplicated the device and screen sections instead of replacing them). Essentially I just did the standard installation process, and didn't do anything special.

But it's running X7 with the fglrx drivers now.

I am having some issues with weirdly high CPU usage, but that happened with the ati driver as well, so I think that's a kernel deal.

New Company Name

[TED Vinson]

AMD + ATI = DAAMIT ???

Appropriate, since that's what many people yell when the graphics lock up in the middle of a good game...

ATI Drivers (was: Re:Heaven?)

[Blakey Rat]

For what it's worth, I've been using ATI graphics cards since the Radeon VE, and I've never had an issue or complaint about their drivers at all.

Re:ATI Drivers (was: Re:Heaven?)

[kerrle]

Then you've not asked much of your hardware or you've been extremely lucky. I've owned a Rage3D, Rage128, and Radeon9600XT, and infuriatingly bad drivers were just par for the course.

Their Linux support has always been sub-par.

They did get somewhat reasonable in Windows towards the end with the Radeon, but then they introduced that insane .net based control panel in Windows - WTF were they thinking?

Doesn't matter to me - I went back to Nvidia and have enjoyed just not having to mess with things.

Re:ATI Drivers (was: Re:Heaven?)

[Planesdragon]

They did get somewhat reasonable in Windows towards the end with the Radeon, but then they introduced that insane .net based control panel in Windows - WTF were they thinking?

that .net is a free-beer environment that the OS author is heavily pushing?

yeah, that'd be it. .Net is not Passport. Not having .Net on your Windows box is like not having MSHTML or MSI. Sure, it'll work, but you'll keep running into software that presumes that you actually install this sort of thing.

Re:ATI Drivers (was: Re:Heaven?)

[kerrle]

I don't mind having .net installed - the point is that if you've actually used the control panel, you'd see that it's incredibly resource intensive and poorly designed.

For something that only requires the simplest of option panels, they instead have a themed window with video previews that is clunky and only gets in the way of what people actually want to do in driver control panels. I'm hardly the first person to complain about it.

Re:ATI Drivers (was: Re:Heaven?)

[Planesdragon]

1: oddly enough, the ATI videocard/northbridge on my laptop SAYS it has that panel, but it doesn't show up.

2: I wonder of ATI's control panel appelet is anywhere as bloated as Nvidia's "NView" widget.

Re:ATI Drivers (was: Re:Heaven?)

[kerrle]

Yes, it actually is worse than even Nvidia's NView bit, and though I use a Geforce, I'd happily admit that their NView config stuff is poorly done on Windows. It works okay most of the time, but the config panels are a mess.

Re:SGIs already on our team

[klagermkii]

I think letting Intel carry on thinking there is just a bit of hope for the Itanium while it sells its miserable few Itaniums through SGI is working quite nicely at crippling it. Just keep pumping tons of R&D into that dead end!

Re:Well... Look how well that worked for 3dfx and

[Anonymous Coward]

My 3dfx card has open source hardware-accelerated DRI drivers.

ATI's Linux support is crap

[Anonymous Coward]

ATI's Linux support is crap. I'd hate to be faced with a situation wherein I had to give up my AMD64x2 4800+ CPU for some Intel processor that was clearly inferior, just to run 3D graphics on X. Perhaps after the acquisition AMD would open up ATI a bit more and allow a decent driver to be written.

Linux docs

[newt0311]

Besides, you run Linux, you should be used to sub-par documentation ;)

Funny, I would think that of people who run windows. windows has no defined documentation system. in Linux, we have man and info, 2 of the best documentation viewers there are. Linux rather has too much detailed documentation. The documentation in Linux is by no means sub-par.

Just think...

[Anonymous Coward]

If AMD did the open-source driver thing for ATI, they could steal virtually every NVIDIA Linux customer right out from underneath them. And then NVIDIA's PR genius would be left babbling incoherently about how "no one asks for open drivers".

A man can dream, can't he?

The merger would totally make sense

[melted]

Think about it, AMDs official plan for world domination is two fold -

1. Multicore processors (and Moore's law)
2. Highly specialized co-processors - hardware solutions are at times orders of magnitude more efficient than software for the same problem.

ATI is a company that knows just about everything there is to know about one kind of highly specialized vectorized processors - GPUs. Their expertise could no doubt be expanded to things like array processing, audio/video encoding in real time, matrix calculations, etc. etc. Plus, they make pretty decent chipsets. Plus, they've cornered off the console GPU market almost entirely.

What I would also like to see is a "blend" between FPGAs and regular processors that would enable long running apps to reconfigure parts of the system as they see fit. If I load a multitrack audio editor, I'd like my computer to have hardware acceleration for effects, such as filtering, distortion, reverberation. If I want to run a router, why not reconfigure parts of my hardware to do routing-specific tasks on a hardware level? Etc. You get my drift.

Re:The merger would totally make sense

[Anonymous Coward]

"Plus, they've cornered off the console GPU market almost entirely."

Xbox 360: ati (ibm)
PS3: nvidia (ibm+sony+toshiba)
Wii: ati (ibm)
Xbox: nvidia (intel)
PS2: sony (sony)
Gamecube: ati (ibm)

Um, for GPUs I see 50%. If you do it by market share then Sony has over 50% of the console GPU market.

For CPUs, IBM is going to do well out of the next generation no matter what happens.

Free drivers.

[DrYak]

the Free driver really isn't worth much.

But, at least there IS some free-as-in-speech DRI driver effort for ATI gfx boards (as do also Intel)
The same cannot be said for nVidia gfx boards (at least not yet).

You misspelled "Exploiting"

[foamrotreturns]

Exploiting^H^H^H^H^Hring the ATI/AMD Rumor
Sorry, but this is just Intel taking advantage of the rumor to try and get nVidia pissed at AMD. Until I hear this directly from AMD, I will consider it FUD.

Re:Well... Look how well that worked for 3dfx and

[BarlowBrad]

...who?

Inverse more logical

[StarWreck]

I think the inverse of an AMD/ATI merger would be more logical.

nVidia releasing the nForce 2 chipset for the AthlonXP was the best thing that had ever happened to AMD. Then AMD enjoyed continued support with nVidia's nForce 3 and nForce 4 chipsets. Sure there's an nForce 4 for Intel but its sales are exceptionally small even while its the most common chipset now being sold for AMD. Even with the new AM2 socket from AMD, nVidia's new chipsets have already taken a vast lead over any other.

On the other hand ATI's chipsets, while supporting both AMD and Intel, don't move huge numbers in either market. Intel made chipsets dominate the Intel processor market. However, Intel's latest and most popular enthusiast chipset the 975X fully supports ATI's CrossFire technology.

You can clearly see that AMD is heavily linked with nVidia and Intel leans slightly over towards ATI to give them a helping hand. A merger either between AMD and nVidia or Intel and ATI would be much more logical than a merger between AMD and ATI.

A little success is a dangerous thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

The last thing AMD needs is to get fat and bloated. Focus on what you do and do it well.

ATI & AMD?

[faolan_devyn_aodfin]

As a Linux user I really want to see this means that ATI will either open up their specs or make better drivers. I am forced to use a ATI Radeon 9600 which runs four times faster under Windows than it does under Linux. This is just money down the drain and it's ashame to see such a beautiful piece of hardware to be given such craptacular support. I bought the card so they should provide the service of at least letting me take full advantage of its features in the OS of my choice. I don't care if they release binary-only and lock up the source code, if it come to that then just don't include it in the kernel--keep it a separate download so the FOSS advicates don't have a cow. But my point in case, it can't be that much trouble for them to write decent drivers for Linux.

On the other hand, I think that partnering up with AMD would be a good move. I prefer them over Intel, and contrary to popular belief gamers aren't the only people who prefer the power AMD provides. If AMD and ATI were to merge their technologies they could create faster and better systems that could top any Intel setup. And with the proper drivers were made for Linux systems. I would gladly use one of those bad boys.

But for many others like me who choose Linux this option would not be viable if AMD and ATI don't release the proper drivers to make the system work decenty. In essence, as long as AMD does not force us into using tech then graphics intensive users will choose NVidia because their drivers are par on performance wise on all their supported OSes. And that is how it should be.