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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.
Intel buys Nvidia. Let the war continue!
..if this is a good thing or not. It might be good for the development and cooperation. Better integration == better graphics/faster machines?
But on the other hand, this could split the market and get things like todays uncompatible browsers. (Which is VERY annoying somethimes)
And we have a psychic
My blog: http://www.redcode.nl
this could be real good if AMD's acquisition of ATI allows them to produce full chipsets in the same fashion Intel has with its Centrino line. let the competition begin!
also, not official yet, as government regulatory bodies need to approve it.
Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted. - Aldous Huxley
... But hopefully they'll kick the ATI driver team up the arse and get a decent set of drivers out (for Windows and Linux).
"I may be full of crap about this game, and I may be wrong, and that's fine." -Jack Thompson
I was thinking the exact same thing. But I think that, if done correctly, this could really solidify both AMD and ATI as market leaders. If AMD pressures their new acquisition to create a half-decent set of Linux drivers, then this will all be worth the hassle. Or even if they convince ATI to open up the specs, that would be ok too.
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
System on a chip or at least integrated GPU and CPU cool.
I just wish it was Nvidia.
"If you like Battlestar Galactica, you're probably a huge nerd." -Stephen Colbert
But I did.2 197
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=3
-Charlie
AMD combines with ATI and has announced a new name for their company:
DAAMIT!
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=33 219
*head asploded*
I'm getting the 'gist' of why this transaction needs to happen. AMD needs GPU functionality on the CPU. I think everyone kinda expected that to happen at some point. The Inq. then takes a left turn in the plot and mentions 'mini-cores' which are multi-cores with massive amount of threads. Sort of but not really like Intels' hyperthreading times 32x. Shitloads of threads.
Bottom line?
ATI will work on AMD's new cores. I don't know if they'll work on something that'll plug into a PCIe slot still like nVidia.
nVidia will still be around making graphic cards for AMD. Just won't necessarily be anything remotely similar to what's out on the stores today. AMD doesn't like closed technology like Intel does. So it'll be an open platform still which is a 'good thing' (tm).
Forget about GPU's and chipsets. The main innovation has to come from these new GCPU's.
ATI was going to lose its Intel chipset business anyway with or without this takeover. So no big loss here.
Intel has about a year lead on this tech and probably be first out to market with it.
CPU cores change radically every 5 years or so. With GCPU's, think more in terms of GPU's and radical changes every year to 18 months. Crazy shit.
Plenty of space at FAB 36 to build the new cores and the recently announced plant they are building in New York. So no more costly production runs in Taiwan.
If AMD didn't do this, they'd be out of business in 5 years. Period.
I can't see this being good for customers. As we all know, ATI's products tend to be miserably supported, though this hasn't been the case for AMD thus far. How will this affect the nForce line of chipsets? Given ATI's past I'd much rather have an nForce than whatever ATI kicks out.
On the other hand, perhaps AMD will drag ATI out of it's rut, but I think it's just as probable that ATI will drag AMD down, and that's good for nobody.
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
Getting ANY of their stuff working under Linux is painful.
I'm running OpenSuSE 10.1 on my Thinkpad R51 with a pretty standard ATI Mobility Radeon and can I get the ATI drivers working? Can I hell. Always "no device for screen" or some such error. So I'm stuck with the OSS drivers which although are great for 2D, don't perform well enough for anything other than TuxCart.
On the other hand, the NVidia FX5900 in my desktop machine (also running OpenSuSE 10.1) was a breeze. Drop to run level 3, run installer, reboot, job done.
Bob
Listen to my latest album here
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...
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 wonder if this means no more ATI cards in Macintosh computers, seeing as how Apple uses Intel now? Or, even more interesting, could it mean Apple switching over to AMD?
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
This will sorta relieve some of the high-stress factor from the "Intel has killed gaming" theory. In which, most business and "consumer" machines that come with fast intel processors but crappy integrated intel graphics is a joke. These users think "hey I got a Penitum 4, 3.2ghz, I am going to go play Half-Life 2, only to not meet the minimum requirements. With AMD releasing PC's combined with low-cost ATI chips imbedded into their "consumer grade" PC's this could have a strong uproar towards the PC gaming market. PC's will get cheaper, and more people will have a computer that is remotely possible of gaming (unlike in the past). I see this merger as a good thing. We know that ATI will continue to run neck and neck with Nvidia which is a good thing, because if ATI dropped out of the ball game, then Nvidia would hold the 3d graphics chip as a monopoly. (unless you consider Savage and Matrox competition)....
So, we'll see how this shakes out. If, as others have said, AMD forces ATI to produce better drivers, and good Linux drivers, that may be a good outcome...
The other interesting aspect is (as it often is) Apple. Now AMD gets an instant slice of the Apple pie (sorry) since ATI makes most current Apple graphics chips. Interesting development there... Intel can't be happy.
I suspect the tension level just notched up at NVIDIAs headquarters as well.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Now that ATI is part of the AMD, the worst case is ATI division is given little attention, developers move to CPU core development, NVidia remains the only serious GPU vendor, and things go downfall from there.
A second worst outcome is Intel enters a pact with NVidia, so next gen NVidia cards are so integrated with Intel chipsets that they do not run well on AMD. If you buy an AMD platform, you can only buy an ATI video card. If you buy an Intel platform, you are bound to NVidia. This would suck bad as well.
I do not see good outcomes from this merger. Possibly better integration with AMD products is not something I as a customer would care about. ATI being focussed on GPUs only sounds much better for the customers than a division of a large computing devices company. At the very least, ATI is now somewhat concerned about Linux gamers, because it needs them. Who is to say that as part of a large and much more stable company, the ATI division will still give a rat's ass about Linux?
The best outcome possible - With the backing of AMD's large patent portfolio, ATI division opens up the specs to all of their GPUs. Programming manuals. Device driver instructions. Linux drivers improve in leaps and bounds. Linux users switch to AMD+ATI. Windows gamers switch to Linux. Microsoft crumbles under its own weight and withers. Sightings of Belzebub trying on skates are reported.
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.
NVidia seems to make better blobs than ATI, but it is still a blob:
...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.
The Wheel of time has turned again. GPUs are now general-purpose massively-parallel computers; they will be folded back into the CPU core, so that the general purpose CPU gains massive parallelism. Kind of like SIMD, but on the order of a million operations per instruction instead of 8.
The next 10 years will consist of a new type of external graphics hardware being built, which will of course, be folded into the CPU at the end of it.
See the entry in the Hacker's Dictionary / Jargon File for "Wheel of reincarnation":
-Mark
ATI linux drivers for AMD?
Dear AMD:
We, your faithful processor purchasers (yes, we have many), have long been forced to buy nVidia hardware because of ATI's poor quality drivers under Linux. Please work the same magic you did with the AMD64 and give us something we can be proud of.
The undersigned.
Seems highly unlikely to me that they'd stick a GPU into the CPU. Modern GPUs are a similar size to CPUs (if not larger) and need much higher memory bandwidth... so you'd be doubling the size of your CPU and you'd need a 256-bit 1GHz+ memory interface. And then the 'high end' users would just go and buy a PCI-Express card when the next generation came out, making the whole thing a total waste.
I could see perhaps that they'd stick a cheap and crappy GPU into a cheap and crappy CPU for the low end of the market, but with Vista coming out with all its eye-candy that may not even be viable for rendering the Vista desktop, let alone games.
Typing "init 6" and then making a cup of tea for when my machine comes back up is far more relaxing.
Not everything has to be done now, now, now. At least not in my world.
Bob
Listen to my latest album here
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.
The linux crowd (or at least a vocal minority of them), don't want drivers, they just want documentation for the card, they'll make their own drivers.
On the other hand, releasing either open source drivers, or a combination of binary drivers, along with documentation (so those who want to write their own CAN), would certainly be the best of both worlds.
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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.
Before this deal, AMD had about $3bn in cash. The Register says that Morgan Stanley will loan AMD about $2.5bn to get the deal done. This will leave AMD with no spare cash to fight the long war against the onslaught of Intel Core processors and upcoming quad-core Xeons - due this year. Disclosure - I just picked up 600 Intel shares at $17.50.
Zen tips: Pay attention. Don't take it personally. Believe nothing.
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'?
AMD is covering the remaining $2.5b of the deal with a commitment letter from Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, with the debt secured by "a pledge of the capital stock of certain material units of the company, accounts receivable and proceeds from any sale by Advanced Micro of its equity interest in Spansion Inc." The CFO is overly optimistic that the company can get rid of that debt "quickly," without layoffs, and with savings of $75m and $125m over the next two years. DJ Newswires says ATYT will no longer work with Intel, and the execs say that they can make up the lost sales with the severing of Intel-ATI ties. Pretty lofty goals, I'd say.
The problem is that Intel's integrated graphics is utterly incapable of running games, it doesn't even properly support DX9. On the other hand both Ati's and Nvidia's IGPs are DX9 compliant and lightyears faster than Intel's IGP. Thus we come to the conclusion that Intel is hurting gaming with it's crappy IGP, because you can't buy a similarly crippled IGP for AMD even if you wanted to. Luckily the next version of Intel's IGP will at least support the DX9 spec properly, as it wouldn't be able to display Vista's Aero UI otherwise..
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.
They borrowed $2.5 billion to pay for ATI. This is top of all the other debt that they owe, they still haven't payed off the massive cost of the 2 fabs in Germany and they also own a lot of stock in Spansion which itself is heavly in debt.
AMD has been loosing money for a lot of years (only in the last 2 years they started making profit)
Now they have a price war with Intel and they have to compete with Conroe, so they can't even count on making any profit from the next few quarters.
Looks like they are living on the knife edge.
The drawback would be a lockout for experimental 3D APIs. But it would be no worse than the binary driver situation we have now.
Taking into account all the fanboi anguish, let me point out the very simple fact that now ATI no longer directly competes with NVidia. You could say that the competition would be between AMD and NVidia now, but that's not quite right either. The fact is that the market has become so diverse that all these companies were already competing with each other, despite partnerships and deals.
...) The power and bandwidth demands for next gen GPUs are becoming more than expansion boards can handle. Instruction sets are becoming extremely CPU-like. Since the whole universe seems to be moving into Multi-processor designs anyway, perhaps we'll even see some kind of GPU-MMX style expansion of the x86 instruction set (call it v86 for now).
AMD, ATI, NVidia and Intel *all* make motherboard chipsets.
ATI, Nvidia and Intel all make video processors.
So do SIS, S3, and VIA.
Yet they all work (relatively) well with each other.
This isn't about marketshare, it's about technology. ATI does something that AMD wants, so AMD is acquiring the company for the tech. The market won't feel a thing, I promise you. Competition will continue, just like it did when Micron acquired Rendition (wipes a tear for his Verite v2200) and when NVidia bought out 3dfx (wipes another for his Banshee).
Since everyone's got their prognosticator's caps on today, I'm going to come out and say that, within 5 years, we'll be seeing GPU processors integrated into the motherboard, accessable to both ATI and NVidia (and Matrox, and S3, and
I think we're seeing a move back to specialization. We've already got separate Audio chips, separate networking chips, even chips to handle I/O for RAID and such. With the new market for Physics co-processors, I'm sure we'll only see more for tasks such as AI, and when the next big UI design is unleashed (either some kind of brain-reading technology, or a true 3d input system -- the WII is just the tip of the iceberg!) another co-processor will be made to handle that. With AMD's focus on integrating external processors with technologies such as HyperTransport, undoubtedly they'll be able to compete for a long time.
And the best part is, we get to choose from strong market competitors. As long as there is innovation, we win.
IMHO a much better - and cheaper - buy would have been that company (don't remember name) that has a really fast DirectX implementation in software. You don't even need a frame buffer any more, just put some circuitry in the north bridge that pulls data from main memory and spits it out over DVI-D. Let software on multiple cores take care of rendering.
For reference, I think we're still on track for software realtime raytracing by 2012. If we can do that, certainly software can rasterize polygons fast enough before then. The GPU as we know it is dead - good for ATI finding an exit strategy, bad for AMD spending so much money. What's nVidia's exit strategy? Intel already knows a lot about graphics.
A.) Xbox, Nintendo
Analysis.....Good move.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
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)
According to the merger telco. the only substantial argument for the merger from the company's side is that they want to get into the embedded device business. They hope to provide a platform for media processing on cell phones, TVs and the like.
The Q&A session is apparently already up at The Pirate Bay (though I didn't manage to download it yet): http://thepiratebay.org/details.php?id=3506714
Interesting that they think they'll be able to continue having a good relationship with nVidia. I'd guess it's just PR speak though for "as soon as the merger is complete, you're unimportant to us".
The CEO Hector Ruiz went on and on like a drone, repeating the same fluff over again (like background noise) and it wasn't until those few moments where his minions were allowed to speak something intelligible was said.
In a society that believes in nothing, fear becomes the only agenda ~ Bill Durodié
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.
Wonder if AMD will force ATI's hand to Finlay release a decent ATI video driver for Linux now?
Sig
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.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
"AMD doesn't like closed technology like Intel does. So it'll be an open platform still which is a 'good thing' (tm). "
Actually Intel has been a big supporter of OSS. They helped port Linux the Itanium and have provided all the documentation to their video chips.
I think you are confusing Intel with Microsoft. Intel has been one of the most open hardware companies.
AMD has also been very good. ATI like nVidia.... Well let's say not so good.
I really don't get this.
AMD could use some good chip-sets but they have made their own for the Opteron so I don't see what they gain from ATI.
AMD could use a good low end integrated video solution for low end desktops and servers. Yes it is true but servers almost never use nVidia or ATI graphics cards. When I set up a server I only plug the monitor in when I do the install and if something really bad happens.
I have to think this comes down to laptops. AMD has not done well in that market and a one stop shop for a laptop solution like Intel offers might be a good solution.
I wouldn't hold my breath on the good open source ATI drivers for Linux. Of course if it happens I might dump my nVidia based motherboard and Video card. I have been buying nVidia just because of their better Linux support for years.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
This is because x86-64 is an open standard. AMD released it as open when they announced it, because it was the only way to gain industry acceptance.
Once AMD got Microsoft's cooperation building support for x86-64 into Windows, they hardped on about the open standard. This protected AMD from Intel, who were already secretly working on their own implementation of x86-64. Normally, once Intel realized how potentially powerful x86-64 was, they were sure to create their own incompatible version (ala SSE and 3DNOW!) to try and derail AMD.
But the open standard stopped Intel from doing this. Microsoft pointed to the open standard, and told Intel flat-out that they were not going to support two versions of 64-bit x86.
x86-64 is an open standard. AMD's copyrighted implementation of x86-64 is called AMD64. Inte;'s copyrighted implementation of x86-64 is EMT64.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
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.
There is one obvious reason for the purchase, already stated by others. I'm just reiterating.
Next year, AMD will be shipping quad core Athlons and Opterons. But, if they wanted to they could replace one CPU with a GPU and have video on die. And if they wanted to they could replace a second CPU with sound, USB, SATA, Gigabit, wireless etc etc etc, and have an entire computer on a chip.
VIA has been trying to do this for years. AMD has the fab capacity to pull it off.
AMD could be the first company to enable the $150.00 PC to exist (by saybe 2009). Smaller than a mac-mini, dual core, and all you need to get it to run is slap some flash memory on board for a hard drive substitute, some DDR2, a cheap DVD drive and Voila! Instant computer.
Imagine a Dual Core Athy with a gig of ram, 20GB flash disk all in the form factor of about twice the size of an IPOD.
Oh you could put a screen on it too, DGMS.
This could be a great thing. My only advice for AMD / ATI is: Dedicate some resources to drivers, or better yet, open source the GPU API.
Raydude