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148 Comments
- usherzx, on 10/12/2007, -5/+38the rumors were true
- HappyScrappy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+29They don't have any choice.
Look at Apple choosing Intel.
They couldn't possibly choose AMD.
Intel could sell Apple a CPU, a north/south bridge and a graphics controller all in one go (and in only 3 chips, one very small). From AMD it would require a CPU from AMD, a north/south bridge from another company (nVidia) and a graphics controller from another (nVidia?). And it needs separate graphics RAM (besides the system DDR2). And it would cost a lot more.
This is already killing AMD in the laptop market. Higher cost, more board space and having to deal with more vendors makes making an AMD laptop dicey.
And by this time next year, Intel will have the CPU, north bridge, south bridge and graphics controller on a single package (multiple dice, but a single package). This will make Intel much cheaper than AMD and put AMD far out in the cold.
Now all you gamers may complain that integrated graphics suck. Hey, I agree, I have a 7800GT in my system too. But 90%+ of the market doesn't need separate graphics, and AMD needs to remain competitive in that 90% of the market.
AMD has to do something like this to survive in a competitve marketplace. They don't have to merge, but they have to at least announce a joint venture to sell integrated graphics and north bridge/south bridge as a single SKU to large-scale customers. And by next year, they need to by able to put them into a single package.
The good news is by this time next year, if AMD juices up performance and gets the power down on their CPUs a bit, they'll be on even footing with Intel in desktops (again) and laptops (for the first time). - skylog, on 10/12/2007, -1/+24here is a link to the 8:00 am est conference call for those who are interested:
http://www.amd.com/announcement - Visceral, on 10/12/2007, -1/+22Please baby Jesus, let this mean AMD will force ATI into providing better drivers for Windows and *gasp* even Linux!
I also wonder if this will effect Apple choosing ATI over Nvidia for intergrated graphics. - commandar!, on 10/12/2007, -1/+20Do you realize how impractical that would be? Yields would be abysmal and prices would be through the roof.
Modern GPUs have significantly higher transistor counts than the CPUs do. - Kwipper, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18Is this offical now? Is this 100% for real?
If so.. does this mean that Intel will try to buy Nvidia?
If so..then we can have Tag-Team matches!
Intel/Nvidia vs AMD/ATI
Battle Royale! - commandar!, on 10/12/2007, -3/+17Geez, this doesn't look good. I'm in bigger denial than I was over Apple-Intel.
This has the potential to shake up the entire industry and in a very bad way. Less competition and fewer choices are always a bad thing for the consumer in the long run.
I'm getting the sick feeling that given the problems that AMD is already having lagging behind Conroe, this may end up being remembered as a huge miscalculation on their part. Only time will tell. - CornStarch, on 10/12/2007, -8/+21This is technically inaccurate because a.) they haven't announced the deal yet b.) it hasn't been approved by the share holders yet and c.) we don't know how much they will be buying it for.
- mateo60, on 10/12/2007, -3/+16Could someone explain to me why this makes sense? I understand that they want their own chipset, blah blah blah. But the nForce chipset is such a good one.
Also, damn, thats a lot of money. :) - ChileanGoD, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10I bet the company will announce it and people will still flag it as inaccurate. Ahhh.. living in denial. *covering ears and singing very loud* "..No!... this is not true!"
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10no one is seeing this as a basic company take over. ATI is profitable, amd wants to make money off their business. simple answers are often the correct ones.
this doesn't mean amd will merge ati or attempt to produce some crazy system on a chip nonsense.
at most amd might use some patents and engineering talent to produce thier own onboard video. you certainly won't see them making amd only ati cards, that would make no business sense. amd aren't in a position to monoplise anything. - rbvmusic, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12Yeah but we had like a months worth of front page stories on digg about AMD and ATI merging. This is another one and it isn't even the official announcement, just that there's going to be one tomorrow. I say thank God that this thing is over so we don't seeing these rumors popping up practically every week.
- colincornaby, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7If anything it looks like AMD won't be doing SLI anymore, only crossfire. NForce looks to be... dead.
- XorSystem, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8So are we going to be seeing more annoying game ads, this time saying Made for AMD, Works Best on ATI?
More importantly, can someone explain what this will actually mean to the consumer? - ender78, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Because it was just a rumor at that point. This is the first true news we're getting that points to the merger.
- commandar!, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6The thing is, we're talking about three very interrelated markets with a very limited number of players. In CPUs, there's Intel and AMD. In GPUs, there's ATI, Nvidia, and Intel. In chipset design, there's ATI, Nvidia, Intel, VIA, and SiS.
All three technologies rely heavily on the other. The CPU business is very dependent on the chipset business in particular. A large part of AMD's uphill battle in the past was that there just weren't any good chipsets available for their systems, meaning they could have a fantastic CPU hampered by a poor VIA chipset - as was the case in the early days of the Athlon. This hinders adoption and, therefore, market share.
There really wasn't a good AMD-based chipset out there until Nvidia rolled around with the NForce series. ATI makes chipsets as well, but they've only just very recently gotten together a southbridge design that's stable enough for anyone to actually use.
If AMD actually acquires ATI, they run the serious risk of driving away the developer of the best chipsets for their platform. In the long run, that could end up hurting AMD. It's not so simple as a no strings attached aquisition. - TiMMY8765, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I am hoping they plan to let the graphics cards continue to work on all types of systems, and just take over the chipset division so that they don't have to rely on VIA for their chipsets.
- commandar!, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I'm not sure how practical that is. Sure, Intel's done it for years, but things aren't so simple for AMD, even from the simple matter of production. Intel owns 11 chip fabs. AMD has 3, one of which isn't fully operational yet and another of which would likely need an overhaul to produce modern GPUs + Chipsets.
AMD does have the 4x4 initiative, but I really can't see why it wouldn't be smarter to make it an open protocol that anyone can plug into. And of course, this all ignores how closely Nvidia has worked with AMD in the past, with the NForce chipset having become AMD's 'official' chipset in all but name. If you've been to trade shows and talked to reps from both companies, the introduction of things like AMD's and Nvidia's CSIP programs were always very tightly tied together. In the case of CSIP, ATI has a similar program as well, but I never got the impression that they were nearly as serious about it as Nvidia. I can find CSIP Nvidia boards without trying, I've yet to see an ATI board with a CSIP logo. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I'm guessing it goes toward yachts, expensive cars, summer homes, etc...
- Alteron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Hah Hah Hah, All you nay-sayers were wrong, they were bought.
- commandar!, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5They could do it, yes. But if the plan is to keep the status quo, it'd seem far wiser a move to simply leave the status quo at just that, rather than merge with a company the size of ATI while running the risk of other major negative implications on the rest of their business.
There has to be some kind of overarching reasoning behind this, and I suspect the 4x4 platform may be at the heart of it. However, if that's so, this is the first time AMD's made a platform related move that I've considered a serious mistake in years. - Superfluous, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7***** you to all the people who buried the story that said this weeks ago.
- Erroneus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+414:00 CET if anyone was wondering.
- Gunde, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6The Germanic luciferian death cult globalist elites hits again.
- highfructose, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Crap. Goodbye nForce, you served us well.
- silviumc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3It's absolutely true
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_543~110899,00.html - GrendelT, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5:o( I would much rather see AMD acquire nVidia, but I'm sure they have good reason.
- ender78, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4The thing that scares me now is that we will no longer have video card vendor Independence.
Benchmarks will now truly be a thing of the past due to optimizations for one processor over another. - alphager, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3nope. Integrated graphics mean "not for the leet uber gam0r" and "quiet, nice office machine".
- deanlowe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3If the deal happens, ATI will not stop making products for the Intel platform. In case you didn't know, Intel still has almost 80% of the desktop market. They'd be crazy to give that up. This is also a way for AMD to make some money if Intel take back some market share.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I've had way more difficulty with NV drivers than the ATI ones. Even though I have identical 7800GT cards with identical BIOSes running in a high end nF4 SLi based mobo they utterly refuse to work. My other PC has a pair of X1800 and they just worked from day one (just a pity about that big stupid external cable linking them).
Of course, this is just my own experience and I'm sure there are people who have found just the opposite. - jer2eydevil88, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"The last thing they want to do is alienate nVidia, a major partner in chipsets and in HyperTransport-compatibility."
I agree entirely with this statement as I bought my first AMD because of my experience with Nvidia and the reviews online. If it wasn't for the Nforce chipsets many people wouldn't have had the faith in AMD systems lasting them years, even with all the known bugs specific to the generation of the chipset the Nforce is a damn fine competitor in any market. - nTensify, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4"Do you realize how impractical that would be? Yields would be abysmal and prices would be through the roof."
Hasn't stopped IBM, CELL HOE!!!!
"Modern GPUs have significantly higher transistor counts than the CPUs do."
I wouldn't say "significantly", but generally higher, yes. Intel's latest, the Core 2 sports a hefty 291 million transistors, with the previous Pentium D sporting 376 million. In contrast, the Radeon X1950XTX (waaaayyyy too many X's; R580 Core) has 384 million transistors, and nVidia's latest and greatest 7900 series has 278 million transistors (which is actually fewer than its previous generation).
Then again, if you REALLY want to see significantly higher transistor counts, one can look to Intel's Itanium II "Monticeto" core with 1.7 BILLION transistors. - nTensify, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"They couldn't possibly choose AMD."
True, but I think your conclusions are a bit wrong, see below.
"Intel could sell Apple a CPU, a north/south bridge and a graphics controller all in one go (and in only 3 chips, one very small). From AMD it would require a CPU from AMD, a north/south bridge from another company (nVidia) and a graphics controller from another (nVidia?). And it needs separate graphics RAM (besides the system DDR2). And it would cost a lot more."
While this is true, it's also true that Apple is no stranger to using more chips than necessary on a platform to insure a good user experience. The truth is, even while Apple has the ability to buy all of that from Intel, it may end up that all they continue purchasing from Intel at any date is the CPU (as the chipset market is pretty competitive, even though we hardly ever hear that), and unintegrated solutions offer better performance anyways. The real idea here is that (as a platform), Intel's platform uses /less power/ to get the same amount (or more) work done than the AMD platform, and with Apple's enclosures, this is the #1 key, especially as they start to express mobility more and more in their computer design.
The Mac Mini is a laptop without an LCD panel attached, then you have both of Apple's laptop platforms, then you have the iMac which is a laptop with a bigger monitor and no integrated keyboard. Then you have the XServe. Only _ONE_ of Apple's computers (PowerMac/Mac Pro) can deal with high heat density situations, without being incredibly noisy and/or inoperable due to high temperatures. Contrast this with every other current computer manufacturer (including some of those manufacturers who use desktop processors in laptops), and you can see Apple's stance.
"This is already killing AMD in the laptop market. Higher cost, more board space and having to deal with more vendors makes making an AMD laptop dicey."
Not to mention AMD's laptop chip, the Turion 64, generally isn't as powerful as its competitor. AMD can really stick it to Intel where it counts (servers, mid-high end desktops), but they have virtually zero capacity in the mobile sector.
"And by this time next year, Intel will have the CPU, north bridge, south bridge and graphics controller on a single package (multiple dice, but a single package). This will make Intel much cheaper than AMD and put AMD far out in the cold."
I wouldn't bet on the South Bridge yet, but definitely the North and CPU on-package, along with voltage regulation logic to remove those nasty voltage regulators from the motherboards and allow computers to go even denser (and use a single cooling system!!!!!! one heatsink here we come!)
As for the rest of your conclusions, I pretty much agree. AMD needs a chipset capacity, and, more than anything, a graphics card capacity. ATi has both, but there are plenty of other, less expensive, more profitable targets to look at, and I feel AMD is being shortsighted in this and not looking at the whole sector (even though this merger has probably been long time in the works, I find it too much of a coincidence that AMD wants to build their next Fab in New York, literally minutes away from ATi). The last thing they want to do is alienate nVidia, a major partner in chipsets and in HyperTransport-compatibility. - Sithseth, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Your looking at this wrong. Amd had the resources to be able to make their own gpu line, and chip set line, (honestly, they are already making tons of microchips as it is), but by buying out ATI, they'd take out a would be competitor, and gives them an easy slide into the whole chip set/gpu market.
Also, not to mention how well they can now integrate ati and amd products into the next gen computers. Even if they had good "ties" with nvidia, this basically allows them to smash nvidia out, and then who will intel get their gpu's for their compy's from?
I think long term, this will play a pivotal role in amd taking out intel. - satori3000, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I would just like to see AMD improve ATI's drivers period... they've always been very weak on driver support.
There goes the last Canadian vestige of Graphics companies. Matrox is still around, but they got their asses handed to them 7 years ago. - commandar!, on 10/12/2007, -5/+7That's what I've been trying to figure out as well. The only thing AMD gets out of this is IP and some engineering talent.
They alienate Nvidia, who has always been a close partner, if not push them outright into a closer relationship with Intel. They either have to outsource chipset production anyway to somebody like Chartered or TSMC or use up already limited fab space on chipset production in house. And they don't have the cash to purchase ATI outright, so even funding the deal is a problem. Yes, AMD would do well to have first-party chipset technology, but this seems to be going about it totally wrong.
I just don't see what they have to gain, unless they're planning on making the 4x4 initiative a proprietary one, and that would seem suicide to me. - Phantom76, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3This will redefine the meaning of "Integrated Graphics".
- sinbot, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6Do you mean built in crossfire?
SLI is the nVidia name.
This sucks though, I don't like ATI or Intel.... - commandar!, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2AMD doesn't have the cash onhand to buy ATI outright, so what will likely happen is a stock swap - IE: ATI stockholders will receive X number of AMD shares per ATI share. Basically, ATI's old owners will receive ownership in the newly merged company. What percentage of the total company that is is the kind of thing that makes an aquisition like this take months of negotiations before it actually happens.
- xLiKx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2holy crap, nice move by AMD
- nTensify, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"AMD doesn't have the cash onhand to buy ATI outright, so what will likely happen is a stock swap - IE: ATI stockholders will receive X number of AMD shares per ATI share. Basically, ATI's old owners will receive ownership in the newly merged company. What percentage of the total company that is is the kind of thing that makes an aquisition like this take months of negotiations before it actually happens."
Where X = 0.2229 shares of AMD common stock, and the remaining $20 bucks per share (about $16) will be made up of AMD's $5.4 billion dollars cash (about 2.5 billion of it is a loan from Morgan Stanley). - deanlowe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2If it's not just under 80%, like every web site I've read says, what do you say Intel's market share is?
- livestradamus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2this better mean better ATI cards support for Linux
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Nice thought though. Even just a single core CPU with integrated graphics and chipset functions would make for a very attractive notebook PC (except for gaming). Just imagine the potential power savings, coupled with an OLED screen we could at last get reasonable battery life.
- addisonj, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The fact is that neither company has what i would call "rock solid" drivers, but i think that is just the nature of this industry. though i do commend Nvidia on their linux support though ATI is still been made workable (got compiz running on my x850 till my linux bugged and i am to lazy to fix it)
- nTensify, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"Nvidia's market value is much higher than ATI's. AMD can't afford to purchase ATI outright as is, meaning they're going to have to pull some kind of stock exchange at a minimum if they're serious about pulling this off. Trying to aquire Nvidia would be an order of magnitude more difficult, if possible at all."
While nVidia may be worth more to the market in terms of brand recognition, successful sales, etc., nVidia isn't much bigger in the books than ATi (nVidia's roughly 2 billion dollars ahead, and ATi is much less profitable than nVidia), and AMD is purchasing them above their market value.
That said, nVidia would have nothing to gain in any merger and everything to lose (fire nVidia staff? When they're doing this good? Illadvised). - Araya213, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Don't be so paranoid, It's not going to be like that. It's all about making money and going proprietary on pc parts is suicide.
- n1ckdrake, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2AMD confirms ATI acquistion
Chip maker borrows $2.5 billion to 'transform the industry'
By INQUIRER newsdesk: Monday 24 July 2006, 10:15
AMD CONFIRMED its acquisition of ATI this morning, three days after the INQUIRER let the cat out of the bag.
While we doubted the chip-maker could afford to buy out the Canadian graphics chip firm, it turns out CEO Hector Ruiz went cap in hand to his bankers and borrowed a cool $2.5 billion.
Ruiz crowed the deal would "reinvent our industry," as he appeared in New york with ATI CEO Dave Orton.
AMD agreed to acquire all of the outstanding common shares of ATI for a combination of $4.2 billion in cash and 57 million shares of AMD common stock, based on the number of shares of ATI common stock outstanding on July 21, 2006.
The total comes to $5.4 billion.
AMD said the deal was 'unanimously approved' by the board of directors of each company, but it is still subject to ATI shareholder approval.
AMD said it had obtained a $2.5 billion term loan commitment from Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, Inc. to help it finance the deal which has captured the imagination of industry-watchers everywhere.
Crowed Hector: "Bringing these two great companies together will allow us to transcend what we have accomplished as individual businesses and reinvent our industry as the technology leader and partner of choice. We believe AMD and ATI will drive growth and innovation for the entire industry, enabling our partners to create differentiated solutions and empowering our customers to choose what is best for them."
Dave Orton, President and CEO of ATI claimed all of the companies' product lines would benefit. "Joining with AMD will enable us to innovate aggressively on the PC platform, and continue to invest significantly in our consumer business to stay in front of our markets," he reckoned
Orton will join AMD to as an executive vice president of the ATI business division, reporting to the AMD office of the CEO, comprising Ruiz and president and chief operating officer Dirk Meyer.
But hundreds of other employees will lose their jobs as the new giant seeks to cut operating expenses by around $75 million by the end of 2007.
The combination of AMD's processor expertise with ATI's 'strengths' in graphics, chipsets and consumer electronics, would result in a "new and more formidable company," the pair claim.
The combined company would have achieved approximately $7.3 billion in total consolidated sales during the last four quarters with a workforce of approximately 15,000 employees, according to the joint statement today.
ATI will pay AMD a termination fee of $162 million should the deal yet founder. The transaction is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2006. - billbradford, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I can only hope that AMD decides to improve the ATI linux drivers situation.
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