Sinatech: ATI/AMD Aquisition Agreement Reached: ATI facing a big shake-up

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Farid

Artist formely known as Vysez
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http://tech.sina.com.cn/it/2006-07-04/16001020773.shtml

http://translate.google.com/transla...1020773.shtml&langpair=zh-CN|en&hl=en&ie=UTF8

Rumours eventually become a reality.

July 4 at noon, a person close to the negotiations which side to the author revealed that AMD has reached a purchase agreement with ATI, the news will soon be officially announced.

The source also disclosed that the company is currently ATI acquisition side "a big shake-up" but he refused to disclose more, such as purchasing, pricing details.
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It's written in Chinese and it's on the internet, therefore it must be true.
 
Well, I haven't started writing out my long, anguished squeal of pain re the likely long-term implications for the graphics world.

But I'm at least starting to push the paras around in my head. :LOL: Because, y'know, its in Chinese and on the internet. Therefore it must be true. Should we call that "Vysez' Law"?
 
That's a big chunk of TSMC/UMC business out the window if this happens. I don't dare attempt to speculate on the future of the 3D graphics market, or any of its players. Scary stuff.
 
Y'know what makes me hesitate the most to buy into this? Even tho I know that it is not all that unusual for companies to keep toeing a particular PR line right up until they don't anymore?

Less than a week ago, Orton took multiple opportunities in their quarterly CC to flog the partnership with Intel re Conroe & CrossFire and all the joys that will come from that. I find it difficult to believe he'd have done that quite that way if talks with AMD had reached the point of seriousness where they could be wrapped up within a week.
 
trinibwoy said:
That's a big chunk of TSMC/UMC business out the window if this happens. I don't dare attempt to speculate on the future of the 3D graphics market, or any of its players. Scary stuff.
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Why scary?
 
geo said:
Well, I haven't started writing out my long, anguished squeal of pain re the likely long-term implications for the graphics world.
Click to expand...

I wonder what the exact implications would be, though, of an ATI acquisition.

I have too many questions right now before I can even begin to think of the impact. Such as, would AMD continue to remain in the discrete desktop/notebook markets (seems unlikely), and what about the consumer markets ATI is in, or would AMD pull out?
 
Well, if AMD does in fact buy ATI, then they will still use TSMC and UMC for graphics chips. It wouldn't be until quite a few years down the road that AMD "might" open up fab space for ATI products at Fab 36/Fab 38 (and whatever the Fab in NY is going to be called). It might in fact be a lot smarter to never port ATI designs to AMD's Fabs.

I still find it hard to believe these two might be merging. So many negatives involved... I keep harkening back to 3dfx and STB, and how going vertical with products would prove to be the wave of the future. While the analogy is imperfect, AMD would be going more vertical by integrating graphics design and production into their company. I think it might be a recipe for disaster.
 
It would suck to see the PC market split into AMD with ATI graphics and Intel with nVidia graphics. Especially since Intel pretty much defines the platform, so the Intel/nVidia partnership would probably win out.

I really doubt that AMD will acquire ATI though, more likely they'll reach some kind of business agreement where ATI will produce an integrated graphics chip with AMD. Hmm, perhaps the L3 cache AMD will be adding to its processors could function as a cache for the integrated graphics?
 
AMD's Q2 2006 Earnings Conference Call is due in the next week or so, so presumably if some form of acquisition/joint venture/stragetic alliance has been agreed, it would be announced just prior to that. :eek:
 
I'm guessing that AMD's license with Rambus would allow for ATI engineers to design a memory controller interface for their GPU's without any extra license cost? Also all ATI products are would be shielded from any lawsuits on products like interfaces in cellphones which Rambus has already hinted they feel violates their intellectual property.


As far as game consoles goes, this could be a huge win, "if" AMD/ATI could sign up a customer in advance to calibrate product roadmaps. The console market is expected to quadruple its size over the next 4 years. By 2011, a console can suck up a lot of volume, thus minimizing the risk of constructing a new bleeding edge fab.
 
Remember where this whole shitstorm started: by some industry analyst in a speculative article over a month ago... and now it appears on some chinese website as fact? Hardly believable. And then we had ATI pimping their Intel/Conroe ties as recently as a few days ago during their financial results conference call. It all makes no sense whatsoever.

Though, crazier things have happened I suppose...
 
_xxx_ said:
Why scary?
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1) I would rather have that AMD will continue to focus entirely on making top notch CPU's to stay competitive with Intel.

2) I would rather have that ATI will continue to focus entirely on making top notch GPU's to stay competitive with nVidia.

3) If AMD gets ATI it will mainly be in order to up their portofolio on integrated graphics chipset. I'm not into that (for a long time to come) and I feel that ATI will pursue the high-end graphics market much better without any of the compromises on R&D that AMD might dictate.

I want AMD, ATI, Intel and nVidia to stay as competitive against each other as possible. But that is just crazy me... ;)
 
trinibwoy said:
The number of unknowns.
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But movement is always good for the advancements in the market I think.

LeStoffer: I want to see new companies emerging. I want to see some new ideas instead of feature checklists looking more or less the same and trailing each other precisely. I want to see more competition in the market.
 
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