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Microsoft and Nvidia Have Acquisition Pact
An anonymous reader writes "Infoweek is reporting that Microsoft has obtained the exclusive right to match any buyout offers for Nvidia. The obscure pact was uncovered in SEC documents, and apparently stems from Microsoft's licensing of Nvidia chips for the Xbox. But its real value now lies in the fact that Nvidia has become a major player in tablet chips, including chips for Windows 8 slates."
when XBOX was using nvidia chips (thats XBOX1, 360 uses an ATI system) Nvidia was a smaller company in a fairly new and fairly niche industry catering JUST to game geeks.
its not the same playing field in 2011
I just go to nVidia and tell them I'm going to buy them out for $10 trillion?
Please don't let the only decent linux graphics card vendor (sorry, AMD's still not up to it and intel's not powerful enough) get too much in bed with microsoft.
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
Nvidia made Nforce Pro chips for severs / workstations as well some good intel / amd chipsets. Also made good intel chipsets before Intel locked them out.
Microsoft is not a hardware company and would most likely kill nVidia. Out of Microsoft's major hardware projects, the 360 was a complete failure in the hardware department, Surface, while neat is hardly a gamechanger, and the first Xbox had a major ergonomics flaw (I mean, were the controllers designed for giants or what) at first, and the internals were pretty much just generic PC hardware.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
ATI should be screaming from the rooftops about this -- the competition authorities should NOT allow such a deal to go through. Microsoft has control of DirectX and if they buy one of the two major GPU makers, they are bound to do their usual thing and cut the other guy out one way or another. I see that as a very bad thing for the future of GPUs on the desktop, and also for GPU-based scientific computing.
I hope the folks at Nokia read this. I'm sure Elop has put lots of little legal bombs in every contract Nokia has with M$. Not that there is any real hope for Nokia now, in any case.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
According to the article, MS have an option to match a hypothetical offer from somebody else for Nvidia.
They may not want to match such an offer should it ever arise.
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
I'm certain Microsoft will maintain the development of the excellent proprietary drivers for Linux should they ever acquire nVidia.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Somebody should add these latter day Microsoft agreements to the Wikipedia article.
A summary of the agreement is in the 10-Q here under '8. Microsoft Agreement': http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1045810/000101287000004766/0001012870-00-004766-0001.txt
If I understand correctly, it seems nvidia was concerned it wouldn't be able to deliver the chips that microsoft wanted in a timely manner. So microsoft paid $200 million up front, for anticipated chip purchases, with only the possibility of getting $100 million back if they decided to cancel (the rest would be converted into preferred stock). This would give nvidia $200 million to use to develop the chip, and they would only have to pay back $100 million if they couldn't. In exchange for the $200 million up front microsoft got the right of first and last refusal with respect to any offer for 30% or more of nvidia.
Could be interesting if MS bought NVIDIA and Apple then bought AMD. I doubt Apple would want to use MS chipsets following an aquisition. Apple would get the benefit of controlling their Mac chipsets too. Intel wouldn't be too happy about their prestiege client leaving them and MS would control some of the best phone/tablet chipsets available for years to come.
So I guess this is why AMD bought ATI instead of nVidia. Because of the relationship between MS and Intel, Microsoft would have just vetoed the purchase. It always seemed like AMD buying ATI instead of nVidia was a dumb idea and I guess we now know why. I mean, nVidia made ALL the good AMD chipsets for years, plus usually seemed to have the better graphics hardware (arguable, but at least whenever I was buying).
You read it here: Microsoft and NVidia has Rules of Acquisition they have to follow!
The clause in the development deal was solely intended to protect Microsoft intellectual property from falling into the hands of someone non-MS approved. Microsoft put a lot of money and other resources behind NVIDIA when they needed a hardware partner for the first Xbox console. All of those detailed API and design specs are archived somewhere at NVIDIA.
This is not an alarm that NVIDIA is being shopped around for purchase. IMHO they are doing too well and worth too much to be folded into another company.
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
AMD is on record as saying it wants to be the first pad tablet to run x86 software on Windows 8 betting it can outdo the arm. Asus is rumored to include the cpu/gpu combo which will be out next year.
http://saveie6.com/
M$ is acquiring / making deals with companies which are key to Linux -- related to Gnome (Novell), KDE & Qt (Nokia), Skype (ok, it was weak but could become important) and Nvidia (the _only_ hardware recognized as allowing video h/w in Linux) -- I don't whether they want to suffocate ("cut the oxygen of") Linux (actually, they probl think "Ubuntu") or they plan to get cozy to pinguins as a last resort against Apple.
It's getting me nervous.
If that's the way you think about things, you should be getting nervous. And it doesn't have anything to do with Microsoft.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
This does not bode well at all for Linux gaming. For the 10 years I've tried them ATI cards (more specifically their drivers) have never worked well in Linux. If M$ gets a hold of Nvidia I wouldn't be at all surprised to see NVidia's support for Linux wane as well.
This may not bode well for Linux gaming. For the 10 years I've tried them ATI cards (more specifically their drivers) have never worked well in Linux. If M$ gets a hold of Nvidia I wouldn't be at all surprised to see NVidia's support for Linux falter as well.
... - Nokia, Skype and now nVidia have been took over by Microsoft recently (and are no longer my favourites).
How about my favourite fruit - Apple? Go for it, Microsoft.
MS is irritating. first the want to acquire skype now nvidia. they will kill skype and Nvidia. they might just be better purchasing ARM from Apple. MS should concentrate on improving their code and syncing with Games for Windows Live for better graphics and performance instead of taking a shortcut by taking over Nvidia. It's time they put out money for R&D like how Sony did for their PS3. Take a larger step ahead because they are really lagging behind.
I imagine that the EU would probably block such an acquisition, since the Tegra is quite widely used on Android tablets and some phones as well IIRC. Their significance in the graphics card market and its impact on Linux and the Mac is unlikely to escape notice either.
So I guess this means backward compatibility is out of the question for MS's next console? They'll probably have to do the same thing as they did with the 360, require per-game emulation that doesn't quite always work.
Twinstiq, game news
This deal is 11 years old. The relevant text from the filings reads as follows:
On March 5, 2000, we entered into an agreement with Microsoft in which we agreed to develop and sell graphics chips and to license certain technology to Microsoft and its licensees for use in the Xbox. Under the agreement, if an individual or corporation makes an offer to purchase shares equal to or greater than 30% of the outstanding shares of our common stock, Microsoft may have first and last rights of refusal to purchase the stock. The Microsoft provision and the other factors listed above could also delay or prevent a change in control of NVIDIA.
The same text appears in Nvidia's 10K filings going back at least as far as 2008, which is as far as I searched.
http://sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001045810&type=10-k&dateb=&owner=exclude&count=40
This means that MS can duke it out with Intel, who desperately needs better graphics than their vaunted R&D team seems able to develop in-house. AMD's acquisition of ATI is looking like genius in the future arena of merged CPU/GPU chips.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Did you people bother to read the source before you post garbage?
The deal is that if there is an offer to buy 30% or more of Nvidia stock M$ would have the right to match the offer before a deal is closed. That means, if someone tries to buy 30% of Nvidia's stock, M$ would be offered the chance to match the offer, if it is willing to match the amount it gets the stock, but if it declines, the stock will be sold to the third party who made the offer. That is quite different from M$ making a deal to acquire Nvidia.
And oh, the deal is a decade old.
This farce is a perfect example of sensational headline + illiterate readers = FUD