Beans - HEXUS.beans :: NVIDIA again considering acquisition of AMD?

[matty-hodgson]

i'm gonna build my own CPU and beat the lot of them

[drunkenmaster]

amd/global foundries are about, eleventy billion times richer than Nvidia, who would bring nothing to the table at all.

ASk yourself this, Global foundries(who own 45% of amd and amd own 55% of them iirc) have essentially limitless pockets, what does Nvidia offer them at this point in time. Market share? Nvidia are losing it daily, about to lose their 250million pay off by all accounts that they thought their insurers would cover. Their insurers seem set to announce to due to long term lying of the underlying problems from Nvidia they aren't liable, which will make it public and obvious that Nvidia have had faulty products for many generations. Dell have switched to ATi in a big style recently also.

But again this is the problem, Nvidia don't have a middle/low range, their high end is a massively expensive huge core that isn't the future of the graphics market so design wise they have an obsolete design that Ati, price/yield/profits wise is wiping the floor with. Nvidia have no manufacturing nor, well, anything whatsoever to offer.

If they produced their own chips then maybe Global foundries would buy Nvidia out to merge all the companies, gain a fab or two quickly to spin both Nvidia/ati cards through and all would be right in the world.

Not even April the 1st so this might be the worst story I've seen in a long time. A company whose share price has dropped, are losing market share, have nothing of value except designs for old chips, have chipsets no one want. A company with very little cash on hand, is going to buy out a company which is largely owned by Global foundries, who together could buy out Nvidia 100 times over and still have enough money to run several large countries? not hugely likely is it.

Yes, without question Nvidia would WANT to buy AMD, they need cpu's (as its looking increasingly likely they along with physx will be cut out of the next gen console market completely) and they need a platform rather than just a product. Intel and AMD can offer the likes of Dell an entire system, intergrated gfx, mobo's, chipsets and cpu's. Nvidia can offer mobo's and graphics, a distinct disadvantage. If Nvidia had more money and AMD were in significant debt they might try a hostile takeover, but the backing AMD have dwarf's that of Intel's now. Nvidia would love a platform, and a x86 licence, and manufacturing capability, but they can't afford, well, any of that.

[Jimbo75]

Yeah sure, a $200m/quarter loss company with 5000 employees will take over a $400m/quarter loss company with 15000 employees.

[Daydreamer]

I dont know much about big business but it doesn't seem plausible that a smaller company would be buying a far larger one.

You would think it more likely that Intel would consider aquiring nvidia.

[Crevan]

I dont know much about big business but it doesn't seem plausible that a smaller company would be buying a far larger one.

Porsche took over Volkswagen 'bout six months ago

Also, does AMD really have more cash in the bank than Nvidia? I'm just curious.

[Arthran]

except porsche and veedub have always been closely linked, making parts for each other, unless im mistaken, porsche has always owned a large part of vw.

[Kato-2]

Wouldn't anti-trust laws kill this stone dead.

[Crevan]

except porsche and veedub have always been closely linked, making parts for each other, unless im mistaken, porsche has always owned a large part of vw.

Not exactly always, but about 4 years ago they took 15ish percent stake in VW, and have slowly but steadily been increasing it, until one day they owned it. I've read a story about their takeover, it appears it's been quite a surprise to many.

Anyway, it doesn't change the fact that a smaller company acquired a bigger one.

[PeterStoba]

It's not going to happen, end of.

[Lateknight]

Porsche own a majority share stake in VW, but don't own it.
In building up this share stake they have bought themselves a poo load of debt (to the tune of 9bn euro - would have been a load more if they hadn't earned themselves 6bn euro scalping some hedgefund managers a few months ago)
Porsche have decided to abandon their pursuit of owning VW (they cant afford it !!) and are now looking to merge with VW instead. Although VW are not hugely keen because of Porsches debt.

So to sum up, the Porsche/VW example is not an ideal one.

[explicit4u]

As long as AMD//ATI run the price division then im happy with it, nvidia has awful pricing so i would be against it being in charge.

[Crevan]

Porsche own a majority share stake in VW, but don't own it.
In building up this share stake they have bought themselves a poo load of debt (to the tune of 9bn euro - would have been a load more if they hadn't earned themselves 6bn euro scalping some hedgefund managers a few months ago)
Porsche have decided to abandon their pursuit of owning VW (they cant afford it !!) and are now looking to merge with VW instead. Although VW are not hugely keen because of Porsches debt.

So to sum up, the Porsche/VW example is not an ideal one.

When AMD bought ATI, they got themselves into financial limbo for a few years. And we're not talking ideals here - just smaller companies going after bigger ones (successful or not is a different issue).

In any case, it's just a rumour, wild speculation at this point is normal

[OilSheikh]

God, please let me never see the day whenn NVIDIA buys off ATI/AMD. It will then be a monopoly and we cosnumers will suffer. And, let's not forget rebranding of same product to trick us!

[AntiTalent]

I see nvidia as the worst-positioned company for the introduction of Larrabee.

Check http://alienbabeltech.com/main/?p=7747

Yes it's months away right now, but if they can make a Larrabee chip comparable to the GTX 285 (see link above), then there's no reason they can't go after the money market - of low-mid range chips.

I can see Intel putting the squeeze on Nvidia and AMD/ATI with this sort of tech, but whereas AMD has the capacity to take a similar design route, what can Nvidia do?

Personally I'd like to see AMD and Nvidia do well, their competition gives us fairer prices. And I have a moral objection to giving Intel my cash in general, so they won't be seeing my money unless they come up with something that completely blows away the competition.

Like other posters in this thread, I'm highly skeptical of this happening.

[vicx]

Does it have to be a merger?

What they really need is an alliance where they dedicate some engineers to a shared software platform for GPGPU computing that isn't Microsoft or Apple based.

Intel saw the writing on the wall - Wintel is not something you can rely on in the future. Something spurred them into building Moblin and its probably a hedge.

AMD and Nvidia are very reliant on Microsoft delivering DXcompute and that is not something you want to do. Once upon a time a hardware graphics company called SGI had to rely on Microsoft delivering an API ... it did not end well for them.

[Aerows]

This is the best thing NVidia could do for themselves. AMD has great potential, and married to the marketing of NVidia, they would give Intel a serious run for their money. Intel's greatest downfall is the fact that their graphics division is atrocious, and NVidia's is that their chipset division is horrible. AMD rectified their horrible chipset dependence by acquiring ATI, they now have great chipsets. An AMD/Nvidia marriage would be fantastic for consumers, because it would force Intel to do something about the shovelware graphics they put in all of their parts. They would no longer be able to foist that crap off on the market.