AMD buys ATI

[pchan]

The two main players of graphic cards. One is snap up by AMD.

Now left nVidia. Intel ?

[ROF]

nVidia and Intel have been battling each other. AMD and ATI have basically ignored both and have been doing their own things quite successfully. I look forward to this marriage of chipset makers.

[pchan]

Good point. nVidia's nForce and gForce chips pack a powerful punch. It's very stable.

[Wile_E]

This combining of companies really suck! I don't like it! I'd rather see ATI as a seperate independent company. They were doing fine. What the hell was ATI's owners thinking?

On a side note, I wonder if Dell will now stick with Intel embedded Graphics now that AMD owns ATI?

[lordsmurf]

I wonder if AMD will horn in, or just have ATI exist as a separate entity. Owning something does not mean a merger.

[MOVIEGEEK]

I wonder if AMD will horn in, or just have ATI exist as a separate entity. Owning something does not mean a merger.

Good point,I hope it's true.Recently Lite-On bought BenQ and we will probably see more aquisitions in the future due to lower PC sales.
www.bytesector.com/data/news_item.asp?newsID=4386

[igalan]

I expect that the Graphic division of ATI remains much in the same way as it is now, at least for some time. But probably the chipset division will be be integrated with AMD, and it will be done quickly. AMD needs a strong chipset line up, ATI help will come very handy here. I have no evidence; this is how I believe things will roll out.

That leaves nVidia, one of the main suppliers of chipsets for AMD processors, in an uncomfortable position. But for comsumers this is good, we will have more options, because right now ATI chipsets are lacking.

[pchan]

When AMD first delivered it's Athlon processor, they made it clear that they are not into the Chipset business. But they did come up with one chipset just to provide initial support for the Athlon platform. That was during Jerry Sander's time. Now, with Hector Ruiz at its helm, that strategy might have changed.

[VinnySem]

I wonder what this means for the future of nVidia nForce shipsets for AMD.

[SCDVD]

It's hard to say what this will bring to the consumer. The competition between ATI and nVidia has benefitted the consumer because of the price and performance competition between the two. So what the future holds depends on what AMD wants to do with it. I guess time will tell.

[ROF]

IT will be interesting to see whether AMD leverages this position or squanders it.

[Kairo]

I wonder if there will be any joint projects in technology development?

[oldandinthe way]

AMD desparately needs products with some profit margin. Intel has a huge manufacturing cost advantage over them. This is in wafer size and yield.

Although ATI may offer some integration possibilities, it will be more important to maintain ATI's margins.

[lenti_75]

until now, the war between ati and nvidia was nothing....now we'll have blood.... :P

[Specialist]

Here's the story:

http://tinyurl.com/z6qu5

Jerry Jones
http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Specialist]

More here:

http://tinyurl.com/qnjop

Jerry Jones
http://www.jonesgroup.net

[mecg]

What the hell was ATI's owners thinking?

"acquire graphics specialist ATI Technologies Inc. for about $5.4 billion."

I think I know what they were thinking....

[ZAPPER]

Me sees a radical split in technology, as different as PC and Macs in five years or so (Maybe sooner, if they already have something up their sleeves) ATI is into way more than just graphic chips. But hey, what do I know? I have a hard time telling the difference between a poker chip and a potato chip.



There is a legend that needs looking into that is kind of along these lines. Remember Atari? As in the old video games? Well when Atari was the only game in town it was mostly due to the fact that Atari was buying up all of the Intel chips that were made. Not that they needed them all, but to keep anyone else from getting into the market. When Atari sold out, the new owners thought that this was a waste of money and let Intel sell the chips that Atari didn't buy to other up and comming companies.

A few things happened. Atari pretty much died, because other games took off, and the Personal Computer age got going.



IMO (and keep in mind that everyone has one and so on) The raw processing power of chips is getting to the point that it is over kill for the mundane task being performed in say the everyday plainjane PC. What I see is a merger of components, sans board, that is an all in one chip or like a straight chip to chip process or configuration or architecture that will be most defenitly brand specific.

Maybe I an wrong, but if not, who will write the software, ATI? (sorry, I couldn't resist, AIW 7500 user here)

Most of what I have read about is the business mumbo jumbo about cost savings and productivity and so on in the business pages. What I want to know about is the tech side, because I am telling you that I smell a rat or a trap or a deception. Something big techwise should be coming out of this. Maybe a flop, maybe not. Maybe they want suckers like me to dump a bunch of money on their stocks with all of the hype. One thing is for certian, it will be fun to watch!

[SatStorm]

I remember my self few years ago RAVING against the combination of any AMD CPU and ATI graphic cards... (remember lordsmurf?). If you search the forum, you can see plenty posts of mine (and others from Europe), posting the terrible experience we had with ATI drivers combined with AMD CPUs (most of the time on Via combos), etc etc... Back on those days, encoding was an art and TMPGenc-ology the favorite subject of the forum.

Life make intresting turn arounds, that's for sure....
I bet AMD / ATI gonna work perfect together from now on...

[ViRaL1]

It sounds like a great opportunity to increase revenue and cut costs. Having a chipset and GPU manufacturer in house will allow AMD to offer systems at even lower prices with better integration and full support for all their extensions right off the bat. If nothing else, it will increase competition and help drive prices down.

[celtic_druid]

Your problem would have been between VIA and ATI, not AMD. Had problems myself with VIA chipsets and ATI cards not getting along.

[lordsmurf]

Yeah, it was a VIA issue. VIA was a major AMD board maker, still is, so I can see the confusion. VIA sucks. Piece of trash board.

Although, there is one issue with the ATI MMC timer and AMD CPUs that was never really resolved. You hear about it less because of the people who use DVD recorders instead. That is an AMD thing.

I really have nothing against AMD CPUs, the Athlons and other high-end lines. They're not as good at video as Intel, but they work fine all the same, on a good board.

Best case scenario: ATI and AMD left independent, just joint ownership. May help on Wall Street, who knows.

[pchan]

AMD might have something up thier sleeve. A combo chip with cpu + chipset + video for the mobile segment ? Mobile PC segment will continue to grow.

[dvd3500]

Our a new toaster

[Specialist]

Well, I think the article at the following link explains it all.

The AMD acquisition of ATI is HUGE:

http://tinyurl.com/gaals

"Last year, at Computex in Taipei, it was apparent that ATI and AMD were falling in love with the idea of using the powerful graphics processor to run computer programs, not just for animating video."

"At that show, software developers were invited to the launch of the new dual-core AMD processors, with prototype applications that ran, not on the x86 central processor, but on the graphics chip."

"Examples included video editors which could handle the output stream live, in real time."

In other words, they're working together to advance the concept of GPGPUs or "general-purpose computing on graphics processing units."

This moves much program complexity to the graphics processor, taking load off of the CPU.

Jerry Jones
http://www.jonesgroup.net