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AMD A Ripe Target For Buyout?

Posted by Zonk on from the change-of-pace dept.

SpiceMonkey writes "AMD stock was up 6.74% on Monday on rumors that AMD is a prime buyout target. After their purchase of ATI, they've been pressed to maintain their aggressive policy of chip production increases. As a result, the AMD message board on Yahoo! is full of speculation on who has their eyes on the company. Many folks there think that IBM is the right buyer for the company. There's no firm word that AMD is even being considered for purchase, but it's certainly and interesting prospect."

4 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. Barcelona will answer this question. by lavid · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It really depends upon how barcelona performs. It's been a long time since AMD spit out a new architecture and it will be interesting to see if they blew all their creative juices on the A64 arch 3 years ago.

    AMD would have to change their "x86 everywhere" rhetoric if they were to be bought out by IBM, that's for sure.

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    If Bush wants to kill the terrorists, he should jump off a cliff.
    1. Re:Barcelona will answer this question. by arivanov · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Not entirely true. I remember seeing somewhere that the next Power will use hypertransport and share bus and IO architecture as well as being socket compatible with AMD. It should be able to slot into the same boards. All you will need will be to replace the BIOS with a PPC boot loader.
      Also AMD is not actually pushing x86 everywhere. It is pushing hypertransport everywhere. It has licensed socket and bus specs to various specialised chip shops and has said that it actually sees its CPUs occupying only a fraction of the sockets in the tomorrow datacenter. The rest will be occupied by specialised kit (power included).
      In fact, I would not be surprised if we see a chimaera which has PPC and AMD chips on the same MB in less than 3 years.

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  2. Apple by scstsut · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Though it won't happen. Bask in ruminations of what would happen if Apple bought AMD.

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  3. yes & no by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    The boom/bust cycle is fairly predictable and there is no reason to think it won't continue. Additionally, AMD is a good candidate for an LBO because one of the biggest issues facing the company is a lack of sufficient capital. If they had a private equity firm pump them up they could get in a better financial position and do a major expansion. AMD has proven they have the ability to go toe to toe with Intel, they just can't sustain the fight and thus fall back into waiting for the next boom. I think they are a great candidate because they have the potential to break out of the boom/bust cycle through a few fairly simple (but expensive) steps. Now is a great time for it too because they are so incredibly undervalued, as soon as their next-gen CPU is released they're stock is going to return to higher levels again.