nVidia to acquire AMD?

[spikey_richie]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/dis...6_License.html

Interesting... discuss.

[Steve Lux]

I don't think that deal would pass SEC scrutiny. As AMD now owns ATI there would a monoplistic conflict. nVidia/AMD would have to sell off ATI, and I just don't see a buyer out there. I don't think Intel would want ATI - why should they pair up with a second class GPU maker? - Unless they had already invested a good bit in GPU research that they think they could implement to synergistically dominate that market.

[vaio]

Not a graphics guru.........are Nvidia really that big a company?
Is Steve's comment about ATI backed by fact or is it a personal opinion?
When I got my 1900xt I got the impression that ATI were leading in the quality stakes.

Maybe Sony could buy ATI?

[Brucifer]

I don't think that deal would pass SEC scrutiny. As AMD now owns ATI there would a monoplistic conflict. nVidia/AMD would have to sell off ATI, and I just don't see a buyer out there. I don't think Intel would want ATI - why should they pair up with a second class GPU maker? - Unless they had already invested a good bit in GPU research that they think they could implement to synergistically dominate that market.

Not only that Steve, but if Nvida was unable to arrange an x86 instruction set transfer of AMD's cpu related knowledge/experience/assets, and SEC/whomever objects to ATI/Nvida combining, then what would be the purpose of the purchase/takeover??? The story may make nice copy for an article to gen up some talk, etc., but when looking at the likely posible reality of such a deal it really doesn't look neither feasible or well thought out. And then the issues of without a CPU challenger to Intel, what good would that do Intel or the market? You can't put IBM's chipmaking into the quotient here because IBM doesn't play around in the desktop world. But anyway I agree with you that the SEC would halt it on the monopolistic issues.

[PcManiac]

http://techreport.com/discussions.x/14149

Just ran across this on a discussion at work...

[Brucifer]

heh heh heh............ sure some people out there with some positively *wild* ideas. But there's some really interesting reading. I liked the one where one gent made the comment about why would IBM want back into the pc desktop world when they've been divesting so much of it and besides the power chip is still alive and well... Too bad IBM just wouldn't start popping out the power chip like amd and intel pop out their cpus!! I think the majority of it is just like the supermarket tabloid chatter. Just something to fill up a news page with that doesn't really amount to anything.

[Danish Dynamite]

wasn't there a story going around a few months ago that intel was buying nvidia ?

[Brucifer]

That's what I was referring to when I said that all this is just like the supermarket gossip tabloids talking about the movie stars and all. Just a bunch of gossip to fill a newsprint page.

[Steve Lux]

Not a graphics guru.........are Nvidia really that big a company?
Is Steve's comment about ATI backed by fact or is it a personal opinion?
When I got my 1900xt I got the impression that ATI were leading in the quality stakes.

Maybe Sony could buy ATI?

ATI makes pretty good stuff, but Nvidea has far more market share. Such things have a market inertia to them - and honestly ATI seems to find its self repeatedly playing catch-up to Nvidea.

I'd like to see AMD bring ATI expertise into a project to convert a GPU into a math co-processor designed to handle compression and conversion algorithyms - offloading the work from the CPU that doesn't do such work very effeciently. So much of what a processor is expected to handle is just math.

[Brucifer]

I really wouldn't be surprised Steve but what that was an intent of AMD when they acquired ATI, until they got caught up in the quagmire of the cpu chip problems and all. Maybe they will still get there hopefully, and along with it releasing a good software development kit to go along with the gpu/cpu combo.