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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."
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.
This pact is more than a decade old, and you're worried about them getting "too much in bed with microsoft" because you now know about this deal? Paranoid much??
The first Xbox ... internals were pretty much just generic PC hardware.
Not even that. For a gaming rig, the Xbox internals were CRAPPY. The processor was basically a Celeron 733, only 64MB of RAM, and what was essentially a GeForce 4 Ti 4200 (the lowest-end of nVidia's DirectX 8 cards).
I just don't see the point of the pact if it doesn't really require anyone to do anything.
It requires Nvidia to give Microsoft a chance to buy them out before they sell to someone else. It is generally known as a right of first refusal.
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
At the time Microsoft wanted to assure their supply line. If Sony bought NVidia they could decide that they no longer wished to make certain products, like the chips used in the XBox. MS basically reserved the right to buy NVidia if anyone else tried to aquire them (which would also give them the rights to the chips as well making them then able to farm out the fabrication to another company)
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.