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ATI and AMD Seek Approval for Merger?
Krugerlive writes "The rumor of an ATI/AMD merger/buyout has been out now for sometime. However, this morning an Inquirer article has said that a merger deal has been struck and that the two companies will seek shareholder approval on Monday of next week. In the market, AMD is down as a result of lackluster earnings announced last evening, and ATI is up about 4% on unusually high volume." This is nothing but a rumour at the moment, a point that C|Net makes in examining the issue. From the article: "AMD has always boasted that it only wants to make processors, leaving networking and chipsets to others. AMD does produce some chipsets, but mostly just to get the market started. Neutrality has helped the company garner strong allies."
NVidia would seek a partnership with Intel (Although some news articles reported that they felt that Intel
were holding back progress in 3D graphics performance).
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
I always thought that AMD and Nvidia were the better combo. Besides the ATI Drivers suck for Linux, where a large percent of the enthusiast market's interests lie. Isn't AMD still more of an enthusists processor until it can get into one of the top vendor's machines?
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
As much as I like AMD, I have to say that if Intel and nVidia teamed up they would probably beat the crap out of AMD + ATi.
And if AMD and ATi merge.. It sort of seems like a punch in the face to nVidia. Leaving them wanting to talk to Intel. Leading to... what?
For a long time there have been two beasts in the CPU market and two beauties in the GPU market. AMD and Intel in CPUs, and ATi and nVidia in GPUs. If they marry respectively, the offspring might have the good qualities of neither and the bad qualities of both. I think overall the consumer would probably (more than likely) lose out.
So, I really kind of hope this is just a rumor.
TLF
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
AMD
T
I
The market's view of this is visible from the fact that ATI is up and AMD is waaaay down.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I'm a big AMD fan. But I'd be really upset to loose the nForce line of chipsets. In my opinion, it's a must for any AMD user. And I think it would be very difficult to come up with a good replacement.
I also worry that chipsets for AMD based motherboards will not work so well with my nVidia video card. Not an ATI fan at all.
I'm going to be watching these guys very closely. This would sway me away from AMD.
As anyone familiar with the botched ATI graphics system in the Xbox 360 knows, whatever competence ATI may have had in the past is long gone.
The Xbox 360 is the first console ever to have PCs outperform it before the console has hit store shelves. In the past, consoles have had at least a year or so before PCs could touch them.
What the hell is AMD thinking?
AMD needs to come up with its own bogus SPEC score generating compiler to grow in the market, not a fucked up GPU maker.
There is a company out there that has an FPGA in a 940 pin socket. What about putting a GPU in it? Dual channel memory, HT link to the main processor, HT link to a DAC from the GPU [make mobos with fixed DACs on the board].
That'd be hella cool.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Nvidia makes the best chipsets for AMD. Why would they want to merge with second-rate vendor? I hope AMD doesn't become as unstable as ATI drivers.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Doesn't this story look like a Dilbert-ish situation - the companies themself don't even consider merging but because "the word is out" and "everybody knows they'll do it" it somehow becomes a reality?
-- Sig down
You need to bear in mind that the GPU is the critical component in most systems, but makes almost no money for the vendor and has a relatively low volume. There is precisely no reason whatsoever for AMD to want to merge with ATi or to buy them up. That would be expensive and earn them little. In fact, given how much they've made from their component-neutrality, sacrificing that might mean they'd actually lose money overall.
On the other hand, CPUs are high volume, high profit, and AMD is gaining market-share. It is an ideal target for a buy-out, particularly as ATi can't be doing that well in the GPU market. Buying AMD would be like buying a money-printing-machine, as far as ATi were concerned. Better still, AMD is a key player in bus specifications such as HyperTransport, which means that if ATi owned AMD, ATi could heavily influence the busses to suit graphics in general and their chips in particular.
(Mergers are never equal, as you don't have two CEOs, two CFOs, etc. One of them will be ultimately in charge of the other.)
If the rumour is correct, then don't assume AMD is the one instigating things - they have the most to lose and the least to gain - and don't assume either of them will be around when the mergers and buyouts finish.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
ATI and AMD shouldn't merge because ATI's drivers suck.
I think that's the concensus on here, certainly the linux drivers are apparently awful.
My AMD64 desktop machine has an NVidia graphics card which works much better than the ATI rubbish built into the motherboard. But I'm not using that machine to write this. In fact, other than for occasional gaming, that machine rarely gets switched on.
I tend to use my laptop. Which has a Centrino chipset.
You know - that one that Intel brought out for laptops? The one that's hugely, massively successful in one of the main growth areas of hardware sales? Everyone wants a laptop... or a home media centre based on a pc but doesn't run like one... Everyone is buying Intel. Why? Because to all intents and purposes all the laptops come with Intel centrino sets. It's dead easy - they're dead easy to support, all the bits work together, no conflicts. AMD? Sure nice chips but who makes Turion laptops? Acer... Asus... and... um... some other companies... Perhaps Alienware? HP make a couple, Fujitsu Siemens make a couple but these aren't their high-end desirable laptops. It's like "well if I spend money I get a centrino, otherwise it's a toss-up between Celeron - the cacheless wonder - and a chip that sounds like a sticky nut treat..."
Who makes Centrino laptops? Dell, Sony, Toshiba, Fujitsu Siemens, Samsung, Panasonic, whatever IBM are calling themselves now - oh and Acer and Asus and Alienware too but - oh yes, and one really important company who basically stuck 2 fingers up to AMD - Apple. I'll bet Apple choosing Intel hurt. But everyone's buying laptops with Centrino chipsets in... No-one's really buying AMD... because AMD don't provide a chipset and an easy way for manufacturers to just kind of put their machines together in a lego-style fashion.
Does it make business sense for AMD to tie up with the chipset and motherboard manufacturer that also happens to make graphics cards? Hell yes. Does it make sense for AMD to try to get into the laptop market in a meaningful way? Probably. Will their driver support get any better? We can hope...
At first glance, this is a stupid idea for AMD, but upon reflection, it isn't that bad. We've got to look at the 5 year picture for a deal of this size. What will AMD need to do to be more successful in 5 years than they are today? Well, despite what the teenage gamers will say, it actually doesn't mean having the highest FPS in Quake 5. The stable, highest volume, and generally profitable sales are in corporate servers and workstations. That's Dell, HP, and to a lesser extent Gateway, Lenovo, et al. So, what do they need from AMD or Intel? They want cheap, fast, reliable supply, few defects, and ease of integrating into the individual computers. After several years of the Athlon and Opteron, AMD is only now starting to get a toe hold in workstations and a reasonable share of server CPUs.
IMHO, AMD would be well advised to start shipping it's own chipsets, just like Intel. It just makes things easier for their most important customers, the big OEMs. They have one less vendor to worry about. There's less testing required, since presumably AMD would test the CPU and chipset together. And it's less risky for both customers and AMD since AMD has a very strong incentive to make sure that chipsets will be available for their platform on time, whereas third parties have different priorities.
Then there's the whole GPU angle. Why shouldn't GPUs be produced in company owned, i.e. tweaked for performance, fabs? They're every bit as complex and big and expensive as CPUs. Bringing that in house should give a nice bump to performance. And what is a GPU going to be in five years anyway? On the AMD platform, all the tools are in place to allow the GPU to work much more like a cheap DSP/co-processor than we've ever seen before. If the Opteron wasn't an Itanium killer, maybe a couple Opterons and a couple "GPU-DSPs" will do the trick. Even for regular workstations, imagine just plugging a GPU into a free socket on the MB? That would fit very nicely in the middle of the graphics market... way better than integrated, but way cheaper than an add-on card.
Lastly, AMD needs a way to use the last generation fab equipment a little longer. Making chipsets would let them use the fab equipment for an extra few years. They lost that cost efficiency when they spun off the flash business. Fab gear is expensive, so it's kind of a waste for them to be yanking it out everytime the minimum for a marketable CPU moves higher.
Five years ago AMD needed partners and an ecosystem to support their own platform and survive as a company. The next five years are about turning the CPU market into a duopoly.
I have a few shares of AMD. And I'd like to see this deal happen, but only at a decent price (from AMD's point of view). Hmm... this post turned rather long...
Stock trading volume on ATI spiked today and price went up. Volume tells you traders are looking to make some quick cash on the spread between today and the announced merger price. Increase in ATI price says people buying stock think it's a good deal for ATI.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
I dont care what all other comments say. This is good news.
The AGP slot has been getting faster and faster. The GPU has been getting bigger and has been doing more. There is an obvious need for a physics core and multicore CPUs. Clearly this is leading to adding the GPU to the CPU on the same chip, or at least very close to it, like the L2 cache on the slot1 Intel CPUs. After a certain AGP/PCIX bus speed, the AGP or PCIX slot will become less feasible, and it will be important to put the GPU as close to the CPU as possible.
Now think of the PS3. Its a revolution. Its not here yet, and its release is not being managed very well, but the ball on multicore CPUs (not just dual core) has gotten rolling. The Ultrasparc T1 has shown the world that multicores can be real and actually work. Not to mention the fact that most computers bought today at least has a mediocre GPU somewhere in it. This means AMD needs a GPU to add to its multicore CPUs as another core. They've already added the northbridge to it havent they? And that has saved us money hasnt it?
Intel has one-upped AMD recently with its Core chips, and AMD sounds like its really gonna one-up Intel with chips that should take the market away.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky