True enough - it was a pretty bad prediction considering the issues with the economy at large that have been triggering those deep and broad selloffs. As such, I will not dig myself a deeper whole by doing the "just a bad day on the street, see you at 37 next week" - I will just say that IMO the results were excellent and as such, market should price them in when/if the jitters about the economy as whole calm down. Whether I am right about either of these items remains to be seen.
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NVIDIA: Record Q3 + $1.85B in cash
- Thread starter Arun
- Start date
True enough - it was a pretty bad prediction considering the issues with the economy at large that have been triggering those deep and broad selloffs. As such, I will not dig myself a deeper whole by doing the "just a bad day on the street, see you at 37 next week" - I will just say that IMO the results were excellent and as such, market should price them in when/if the jitters about the economy as whole calm down. Whether I am right about either of these items remains to be seen.
PortalPlayer also much smaller in terms number of employees, which means much smaller ongoing investment in the form of salaries. None of of NVIDIA's acquisitions have been all that large in terms headcount. If they really wanted VIA's x86 maybe they would buy that piece or do something like the 3DFX deal.
It's seems likely they have in-house x86 expertise with some of those Stexar people. The question is, as JHH posed at some financial event, are they going to build x86, go with ARM, or will it be something different?
This is one reason I created the other thread about x86 vs ARM. NVIDIA is getting to be quite a formidable player and I bet there are a lot of companies in the industry who appreciate the very efficient economics and pretty substantial technology they bring to the table. And with computing at a crossroads, there seems to be the potential for some innovative stuff.
It's seems likely they have in-house x86 expertise with some of those Stexar people. The question is, as JHH posed at some financial event, are they going to build x86, go with ARM, or will it be something different?
This is one reason I created the other thread about x86 vs ARM. NVIDIA is getting to be quite a formidable player and I bet there are a lot of companies in the industry who appreciate the very efficient economics and pretty substantial technology they bring to the table. And with computing at a crossroads, there seems to be the potential for some innovative stuff.
Regarding VIA: Yes, their license would be cancelled, which kinda kills the point. However, I firmly believe it should be possible to negociate a new license, and there are legals reasons why Intel cannot simply refuse that.
Or just wait until 2011. Until them, they should negotiate with AMD, not Intel for a license for x86 64. Maybe with intel AND AMD for a combination of SSE. x86-65 purely would not be good. x86 is public domain anyway, but its no good to make 286 nowadays. But again, I should check more for details
Yeah, and PortalPlayer had less revenue and higher margins, so they didn't show up in financials as much as VIA potentially would. However...PortalPlayer also much smaller in terms number of employees, which means much smaller ongoing investment in the form of salaries.
VIA has plenty of cash reserves, so if you want to wait for them to go bankrupt, you're going to wait long. Also, it is key to understand that they are pretty much losing all their markets and that soon they'll be a x86 company anyway.None of of NVIDIA's acquisitions have been all that large in terms headcount. If they really wanted VIA's x86 maybe they would buy that piece or do something like the 3DFX deal.
Their Intel FSB license expired in April 2007, which means they can no longer develop any new Intel chipset and that existing ones could no longer be produced as of April 2008. At the same time, they have lost the vast majority of their market share on the AMD platform in recent years due to NV, and I suspect AMD's acquisition of ATI is just going to squeeze them to near-zero eventually.
As for GPUs, S3 still hasn't released their DX10 stuff, and I'd be relatively surprised if it was super-competitive (but who knows). The rest of VIA's business is basically a bunch of commodity peripherals and analogue. While I doubt NV would care much about being able to sell that stuff (let alone because it's not super-high-margins), I think it would be in their best interests to have the IP in order to be able to integrate that eventually (possibly on-package rather than on-die?)
If your arguement is "VIA has too many employees", then the obvious answer to that is to wait some more until they get rid of more of them in a desperate attempt to be adapt to their new x86-centric business model, or in order to make themselves a more desirable acquisition target. By early 2008, things might be quite different and it is true that now may not yet be the best time to buy.
Yes, but x86 designs take time to develop obviously. Even if they started, say, 6 months ago... That still puts availability in 2H10, I'd suspect.It's seems likely they have in-house x86 expertise with some of those Stexar people. The question is, as JHH posed at some financial event, are they going to build x86, go with ARM, or will it be something different?
VIA's CN will literally be available within 6 months apparently, and if an acquisition happened early enough it should be realistic to achieve an integrated solution by mid-2009. That's a significant head start compared to the alternatives and the competition.
Mostly this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VIA_Isaiah and the associated engineers: http://www.centtech.com/company.htm
I would value the core at about $200M (given the existing R&D that went into it, and the fact it would allow NV to release a x86 product much earlier than any other alternative), and the associated engineers at about $100M.
The other groups still have about 1000+ engineers AFAIK. Some are in the USA, but the majority are in Asia. Given most ways that are often used to evaluate a company's value related to the number of engineers, it should be easy to see $600M isn't very expensive at all if they can get it at that cost (as explained before, I substracted VIA's cash position to their current market cap and added a nice premium).
My understanding is Via's x86 license is non-transferable in the case of a sale?
its probably transferable, cause Via's license is there own license, they didn't get it from anyone else
Intel is pretty strict with their licensing agreements... AMD's license certainly isn't transferable should the company change ownership.
Intel is pretty strict with their licensing agreements... AMD's license certainly isn't transferable should the company change ownership.
its not Intel's license thats the thing, it was reversed engineered by Cryrix and the court ruling was Cryrix has their own license if I remember correctly when Intel went after them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VIA_Technologies
On the basis of the IDT Centaur acquisition,[1] VIA appears to have come into possession of at least three patents, which cover key aspects of processor technology used by Intel. On the basis of the negotiating leverage these patents offered, in 2003 VIA arrived at an agreement with Intel that allowed for a ten year patent cross license, enabling VIA to continue to design and manufacture x86 compatible CPUs. VIA was also granted a three year grace period in which it could continue to use Intel socket infrastructure.
http://www.via.com.tw/en/resources/pressroom/2003_archive/pr030408patentcase.jsp
VIA is now hold by Intel... of course, we dont know the details of the agreement.
On the basis of the IDT Centaur acquisition,[1] VIA appears to have come into possession of at least three patents, which cover key aspects of processor technology used by Intel. On the basis of the negotiating leverage these patents offered, in 2003 VIA arrived at an agreement with Intel that allowed for a ten year patent cross license, enabling VIA to continue to design and manufacture x86 compatible CPUs. VIA was also granted a three year grace period in which it could continue to use Intel socket infrastructure.
http://www.via.com.tw/en/resources/pressroom/2003_archive/pr030408patentcase.jsp
VIA is now hold by Intel... of course, we dont know the details of the agreement.
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