What does AMD's acquisition of Ati mean for Microsoft?

[Rolf N]

I think You'll find that Intel doesn't need to look at the contract. They already know what can and can't be done. In the past Intel have gotten quite upset with transferring of Licenses due to corperate acquistitions.

You mean when S3 Graphics became part of VIA, yes?

The problem with that analogy is that VIA disagreed and, IIRC, won the dispute (after years of delaying of course).

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I think it's far more likely that we'll see Sony competing with AMD/ATI in the chip sector than we will see AMD/ATI competing with Sony in the console sector.

Hmm.. What would a Sony/nVidia partnership do to the landscape?

I expect the same as I presume with AMDTi - they'll be business as usual with two sperate corporate entities, who also work closely on joint ventures without worrying about contracts between them. You might see a Cell with nVidia GPU components launched alongside nVidia's own GPUs for the PC space. You might well see nVidia only GPU's in high-end Cell workstations (though that's probably likely now anyway without any real partnership!). Sony aren't likely to be in a position to challenge the PC space where nVidia make most of their money, so that landscape would remain unaffected.