“On Monday, AMD agreed to acquire graphics powerhouse ATI Technologies in a surprise $5.4 billion deal that will radically alter the landscape of the PC component industry.
ATI will become ‘the ATI business division,’ within AMD, and its chief executive and president, Dave Orton, will become an executive vice president reporting to both AMD president and chief operating officer Dirk Meyer and AMD’s chief executive, Hector Ruiz. The deal, if agreed to by shareholders, will total $4.2 billion in cash and 57 million shares of AMD common stock, which the company is valuing at $18.26 per share,” Mark Hachman reports for PC Magazine.
“The deal was not expected, primarily because AMD had always positioned itself as a vendor that allowed its customers a choice of components. Intel’s Centrino platform combines a processor, chipset, and communications chip,” Hachman reports. “That would seem to indicate that either ATI or AMD will see to develop communications processors, or else put a number of communications chip companies in play. AMD has traditionally encouraged its OEM vendors to buy components from both Atheros and Broadcom.”
Full article here.
AMD’s press release here.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. ATYT was just on one of my screens and I was about to pick up some shares – now I guess that’ll be put on hold.
Looks like AMD will be branching out more to try and keep up with Intel.
This seems weird. For some reason I always associated AMD with Nvidia and Intel with ATI. Although if Macs would start using more Nvidia processors (isnt the iPod already using one next gen?) then I would be veerrrryyyyy happy.
Perhaps the new Macbook Pro’s at WWDC this year with Intel’s Merom processor will have new Nvidia graphic cards?
If this happens, ATI/AMD could withhold ATI cards until Apple designs AMD-compatible motherboards. It could get nasty.
This is a very interesting turn of events due to the fact that Intel has been swelling itself, making more than just processors.
Now what does Apple have in store for the next version of the Towers?
Is this ATI sale the reason why we don’t see many video card upgrade options for present PPC PCI-Express based machines?
Does the executives at ATI know something we don’t? Processors like the Cell from IBM don’t need no stinking video card.
With the trend from processor makers to pack even more cores what’s most likely going to happen is we won’t even need video cards anymore to run 3D games. Since these games like to take over all the hardware anyway, the future engine will run on one or two cores with the rest of the cores in a 8 core Mac Pro handling the 3D video.
Apple will love this because it creates a higher turnover for their boxes.
This makes sense because with the future HD disks, BlueRay and such, computer makers can eliminate the video card loophole.
Jesus I’m brilliant.
Just ask yourselves, why isn’t there any third party PCI-Express video card upgrade options for PowerMac’s?
The Henchman:
If multi-core processors will eliminate the need for individual video cards then AMD just bought a 5 billion dollar buggy whip company. This still begs the question, what advantage is there for AMD to purchase ATI if video cards are becoming obsolete technology?
I bet Intel’s CEO is talking to the one from Nvidia today
So .. does this mean that the price for top end ATI graphics will be slashed by forty percent?
What happens when AMD decides that ATI products will work when used with AMD processors. This would probably be a bad business move, but it would further differentiate the choice of processors.
Should I be happy now that my Macbook has the integrated graphics card??
Intel is copying the main architectural ideas of Sun’s Niagara family of processors — huge numbers of very small cores. Intel has openly admitted that it learned a lot about CPUs from Apple and that, in a couple of years, you will see the results hit the market.
How about an Intel Altivec in a core — or two — or more?
Forget AMD. Intel took years to wake up, but they finally did. Now I know why Jobs and Otellini are buddies.
could be that ADM is going to build the ATI video technology into the processor?
What do I know about these things? not much.
oops! AMD rather
All the Mac looneys who think Intel Core 2 Duo is some heaven-sent super-chip need to take a step back: having Macs from BOTH Intel AND AMD would not be the end of the world!!!
Remember when Macs came from both Moto and IBM? How quickly the cultists forget.
AMD might have some awesome chips coming out, maybe even faster than Intel’s new silicon, so why would you not want to be able to have them in Macs? I’ll sure be able to have them in PCs!
Two great companies get together:
“Hey, you got your video card in my computer. Oh yeah, you got your CPU in mine.
Introducing the new: “AMD/ATI””
Ever notice how the best computer technology companies begin with the letter “A”:
Apple
Asus
AMD
ATI
Peace.
Why buy the whole company when you can hire a few top dogs?