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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.
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
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 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.
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
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.
"System on a chip or at least integrated GPU and CPU cool."
A die holding an AMD core and an ATI GPU may be 'neat', 'fab', 'brill' or even 'ace' - but 'cool' - I think not!
AT&ROFLMAO
See the entry in the Hacker's Dictionary / Jargon File for "Wheel of reincarnation":
-Mark
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.