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It's Official - AMD Buys ATI
FrankNFurter writes "It's been a rumour for several weeks, but now it's confirmed: AMD buys ATI. What implications is this merger going to have for the hardware market?" In addition to AMD's release, there's plenty of coverage out there.
Good lord... I hope not.
*shudder*
OK, so not very close to reality considering what would be involved. AMD bought into ATI because it wants to focus on CPUs, not chipsets.
However, it does make for an interesting point of interest: the three primary components of PC architecture today are the CPU, GPU and chipset that bind the two together. AMD had two parts of the equation, and ATI has two parts as well, though one of these parts overlap. Now AMD is one company that has end-to-end solutions? There's got to be something interesting coming out of that marriage.
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
Well, that could be a very good thing. Those specifications will also help driver-makers a lot. It might also help to get the linux drivers which are pretty poor for ATi at the moment.
The AMD-fans/nerds are more linux-minded then Intel (IMHO), and AMD probably knows this. They can really make a business-blow by releasing this, in the mind of open-source.
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Since (in my opinion) NVidia has taken the lead in GPUs, I hope that ATI will be boosted back into a competitive state and price wars ensue.
Again, to me this is nothing but great news for the end-consumer.
My work here is dung.
I think the marketplace has been very well-served by the two dualities that existed before this move: ATI and NVidia beat each other's brains out, as did Intel and AMD. This new dynamic with 3 players does not seem, to me, to promise anywhere near as many benefits for us, the customers. Will ATI become more AMD-centric? Undoubtably. Will NVidia (which has been a great AMD booster) become less supportive of AMD processors? Probably. As this plays out, it seems to me that NVidia will basically be an Intel graphics house (including Macs), and ATI will melt into AMD, becoming mostly an internal chipset house. In the end we lose a very healthy competition between NVidia and ATI. We gain, perhaps, a stronger AMD to keep Intel honest.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
...for people like me who were in the AMD/nVidia fanclub? I've always had countless problems with ATI cards both at home and work, generally down to driver issues so I really don't want to switch to ATI, I'd personally rather go the Intel/nVidia route if this will have some adverse effect on using nVidia kit with AMD kit. I'm not sure this is good for the market either if there is some kind of lock in to ATI if you used Intel, it was kind of nice knowing you could choose between 2 processor manufacturers and 2 graphics chipset manufacturers, now it kinda feels like the choice has been dented somewhat in that you can't mix and match so well.
Here's what I don't get. If they do that, how do you upgrade the memory bus bandwidth so that it's futureproof to a degree? Memory on graphics cards changes all the time. It's not just a GPU and Memory. It's everything in-between as well. Power voltages... ect.
I read thru most of the comments on this page, and several people came close to what I think the real reason for this deal is, but no one nailed it. To me, this is a simple example of business 101. AMD has always been a niche vendor. Recently they have begun to spread out, but it is obvious from all the comments on this page that they are still a "gamers" chip. Where Intel and Dell made it big was low-end, mass sale business computers. Intel has their crappy but good enough integrated video chipset which is a part of the vast majority of motherboards. In order for AMD to really be a big player, it needed to a) build it's own integrated chipset from scratch or b) buy a company that already makes integrated video chipsets. Option b won, and while it might cost more initially, it should pay off in the long term.
I believe this will not stop nVidia from making nForce boards, and it would be stupid of AMD to stop production of ATI 3d cards. I think this may increase the quality of ATI's support for Linux, but I don't think it will be anything drastic.
Why would AMD do that?
No company would kill off a profitable product line just to spite their opposition. Undoubtedly ATI's deal with Apple is profitable, and just because Apple uses Intel processors doesn't mean that such a transaction is any less profitable than it was before.
Companies don't act in that way, they look out for their bottom line. Unless there's something that would cause that business to become less profitable, ATI is unlikely to give up the block of sales they get from Apple. Is it better to cede that entire block of sales to the competition just because they don't use AMD processors? You don't win in business by reducing your sales, and having ATI graphics cards in Apples gives AMD/ATI a foothold in a very profitable market. It makes no business sense to give that up.
From what I've heard, AMD tends to be pretty Linux-friendly, and very helpful to open-source developers who want to, say, implement AMD64 support and that kind of thing – so will this mean that ATI might start giving a damn about us too? I dunno, probably way too far-fetched, although I can't stand how my brand-new Athlon 64 box can't run 3D because ATI's stupid drivers pretty much don't work on my distribution... either way, though, so long as at least one of them keeps churning out good chips, more power to 'em!
Creative misinterpretation is your friend.
right.. because as we all know.. Linux support == market leader.
They may become a market leader for Linux desktops (GPU's aren't needed in servers where Linux is popular).. but Linux desktops are only 1-2 percent of the desktop market...
so even if they gain all of it.. they still won't be a market leader in GPUs.
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
Probably because most Slashdotters are not driver hackers nor OSS purists, they are developers, gamers, and power users -- and Nvidia's hardware (and driver support for the hardware) is phenomenal.
Your gripe is not baseless, though: would it kill Nvidia to open up a bit? Perhaps the renewed competition will encourage them to do so, although it's equally likely that they will take the opposite tack and circle their wagons ever more tightly. As long as they provide excellent binary drivers for Linux, I doubt that they will feel much incentive to go Open Source...
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
Consider for a moment, that Intel does provide usable OpenSource drivers for their Video Chipsets.
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It's not just the nerds being more Linux minded - AMD has, to some extent, bet the farm on the K8 being the king of the server room, since the entire core was designed from the off to be highly scalable across multiple CPU's. ANd now we're seeing that most of the big advances (new "enterprise" sockets, K8L stuff) are going to benefit the servers before they benefit Joe Public.
AMD knows that, whatever market share it has in the desktop arena, Linux is a major player in the HPC and 2P+ spaces and knows that Linux sysadmins won't tolerate buggy chipsets or flaky binary drivers that may end up being unsupported under kernel 2.8 or whatever. Hopefully AMD has the nouse to do an Intel and make their chipsets open spec across the board a la Intel, enabling excellent support under Linux and any other OS that happens to come along. I know for a fact that sometimes shoddy chipset support under Linux has been a turnoff for me in the past and I've lusted after some of Intel's chipsets on my own A64 systems.
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Whilst I use the nVidia blob (actually I'm using a Matrox Millennium II at the moment, but I digress), the reason why people want open source drivers is so that if it doesn't work, they can make it work, rather than relying on nVidia to fix it.
Another benefit would be that if nVidia's drivers were GPLd, they could be included with the Linux kernel and X(org|Free86) if they were to a high enough standard, completely eliminating the current issue of having to kill X to install the drivers, and reinstall with every kernel update; an open source driver would be far simpler to work with for all users.
Whilst the blob is, IMO, better than nothing, I'd still much rather prefer good OSS drivers.
Apple first began offering ATI graphics and then Nvidia and most recently intel graphics.
iBooks always used only ATI graphics.
iMacs have used both ATI and Nvidia graphics.
PowerBooks have used both ATI and Nvidia graphics.
PowerMacs have used both ATI and Nvidia graphics.
The Mac mini and MacBook are currently using intel integrated graphics (high volume products)
The MacBook Pro and iMac both currently use ATI graphics (high volume products)
The PowerMac currently uses Nvidia graphics (low volume product)
Apple has enjoyed the benefits of being able to pit ATI, Nvidia and intel against each other to get the best prices for their chips.
I wouldn't be surprised to see AMD create a low cost chipset solution that we might see in a future Mac mini or iBook.
Nothing is going to change in the next year but this will give AMD an opportunity to work with Apple and pitch it's wares.
A.) Xbox, Nintendo
Analysis.....Good move.
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Ok, considered.... And dismissed.
I hate how people write off ATI and Nvidia as Open Source scrooges since their drivers are closed. The reality is that their code isn't all home grown and they couldn't open source it even if they wanted to. The copyright and patent holders on their licensed technologies wouldn't let them.
NVIDIA has stated many times that even if they wanted to open up documentation to their cards, they can't.
There are cross-licensing issues that prophibits them from releasing the specs.
So they release closed binary drivers for linux instead.
Stop whining people, they are doing the best they can.
(P.S I can imagine ATIs situation is similar)
Actually, their competitors are unaffected because:
1. They have large enough staff to decompile and perform clean reverse engineering of NVidia's drivers, e.g., one team analyzes the decompiled code and takes notes (without copying code of course), another team designs improvements and implements based on that analysis
2. Their competitors own electron microscopes, making analysis of the chip internals relatively simple.
Now tell me: why are the likes of NVidia and ATI keeping their products undocumented and their drivers closed?
And to counter your argument: what happens in two years when ATI and NVidia decide your card is too old to support, and yet it still performs very well but you NEED the features in the latest kernel and latest x.org? Go ahead, buy a new video card -- oops, nope, sorry, they changed slot specs again, and PCI Express cards are no longer available because PCI-X finally gained market share in the consumer market and PCI-E ended up as short-lived as VLB did in the VLB vs. PCI war.
(do I expect PCI-E to die? No, it was a hypothetical example showing the potential problem with proprietary drivers)
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Really great idea NOT. This would create more or less a monopoly for high-end graphic chips for NVidia. Who else is there ? Intel with their cheap chipset graphics ? Matrox ? A handful of far eastern companies that produce cheap and sucky low-end graphics products noone uses ? Nvidia buying ATI would be the worse thing that could happen for the consumer, even worse than the Intel quasi-monopoly of the dark years before the Athlon. As the history of Intel-vs.-AMD cleary shows competition not only is good for the consumer but in the end also for the companies which are required to innovate and improve their products and to keep themselves strong and vital.
Now tell me: why are the likes of NVidia and ATI keeping their products undocumented and their drivers closed?
Because, if they DO PROTECT THEIR IP, The OTHER GUY has to waste TONS OF MONEY on reverse-engineering teams and highly-qualified people to reverse-engineer the processor via electron microscopes.
It's not the EQUIPMENT that is expensive, it is the PEOPLE. And, as you Linux zealots know FULL WELL, reverse-engineering is EXPENSIVE in terms of PEOPLE and TIME.
If you publish the specifications of your latest graphics chip for all to see, suddenly your competitors don't have to divert staff from working on next-generation architectures just to reverse-engineer your system. Instead, they can analyze your documentation in a fraction of the time.
It's a two-way street, so stop deluding yourself that there's only one side to the story. Publishing full specs for your graphics chips is like writing your competition a blank check. Intel is the only one who doesn't have an issues doing this because their graphics technology is always following.
And to counter your argument: what happens in two years when ATI and NVidia decide your card is too old to support, and yet it still performs very well but you NEED the features in the latest kernel and latest x.org? Go ahead, buy a new video card.
Yes. There are still many well-supported video cards sold in AGP. In fact, you can still get well-supported video cards in PCI, a fifteen-year-old technology. They're not top-performers, but beggars can't be choosers.
The video card market is transitioning to PCIe with surprising speed precisely because they do not want another VLB fiasco. The PCI -> AGP transition was slow because PCI still had a future for other types of cards, but the AGP -> PCIe transition was rushed to avoid market confusion. You can still buy plenty of AGP cards, but the big players have made it clear: there won't be any more improvements for AGP.
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That's complete bollocks. Nothing related to copyrights and patents prevents ATI and nVidia from releasing the specs to the X.org/XFree developers. Nobody's ever said "ATI must release the code to fglrx", not least because we know it's so awful we would want to start from scratch. ATI and nVidia's poor reputation in the Free Software community has to do with their refusal to provide non-NDA-encumbered documentation.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Except you've gotten it so screwed up it's not funny.
What the Free Software community has been asking for is for ATI and nVidia to quit developing their own proprietary drivers, and release the documentation necessary for us to develop our own. If they want to release the source to their own, then that's great, but we're not impressed by them.
So actually, ATI and NV are doing the exact thing you're suggesting is too expensive for them, and not going the cheap route. They are developing drivers. The Free Software community ("linux fanboy shit") is asking the exact opposite: we're asking for the information we need to develop the drivers ourselves. We don't want them to develop proprietary garbage (or rather, we don't care if they do), we want our own drivers.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
ignoring the obvious chipset arguement that seems to arise. could another posibility be that amd wishes to improve its floating point design? i mean, gpu's are essentially just huge application specific floating point units. i dont really have enough information or understanding of the extent of amd's current designs to know, but it would seem they could gain a lot of ip in that area.
dude.