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

[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.

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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... :/

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

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

[vertinox]

Those two made a great team. Right?

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.

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...

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.