Thursday, February 23rd 2012
AMD Talked to NVIDIA Before Acquiring ATI: Report
According to a Forbes report which cites former AMD employees, AMD approached NVIDIA for a merger, before going on to acquire its rival ATI. Well before 2006, AMD's CPU designers envisaged the basic concept of an APU, where with advancements in silicon fab processors, chip-designers could add other components to a processor, such as an integrated GPU that's reasonably powerful. AMD lacked an integrated graphics chipset of its own, back then. These were some of the prime-movers of AMD's hunt for a GPU company, which was then much healthier, as it then had a promising and competitive CPU lineup.
According to the Forbes report, AMD first approached NVIDIA with the idea of a merger. Back then, AMD and NVIDIA had extremely cordial relations, as NVIDIA had a large market-share in motherboard chipsets for AMD processors. Apparantly, NVIDIA's boss Jen-Hsun Huang insisted on going on to become the CEO of the proposed AMD-NVIDIA combine, an idea that didn't fly too well with AMD's Hector Ruiz. AMD then went on to acquire NVIDIA's cash-strapped rival ATI Technology, which went to make AMD's Graphics Products division before being restructured and fully amalgamated with the rest of AMD.
The report provides a fascinating insight into the paths AMD and NVIDIA each followed, how their paths crossed at one point, and how the two went on to follow two entirely different ones. Forbes notes AMD going on to work on ever more powerful GPUs, while NVIDIA works on highly-competitive mobile processors. NVIDIA declined to comment on that story.
Source:
Forbes
According to the Forbes report, AMD first approached NVIDIA with the idea of a merger. Back then, AMD and NVIDIA had extremely cordial relations, as NVIDIA had a large market-share in motherboard chipsets for AMD processors. Apparantly, NVIDIA's boss Jen-Hsun Huang insisted on going on to become the CEO of the proposed AMD-NVIDIA combine, an idea that didn't fly too well with AMD's Hector Ruiz. AMD then went on to acquire NVIDIA's cash-strapped rival ATI Technology, which went to make AMD's Graphics Products division before being restructured and fully amalgamated with the rest of AMD.
The report provides a fascinating insight into the paths AMD and NVIDIA each followed, how their paths crossed at one point, and how the two went on to follow two entirely different ones. Forbes notes AMD going on to work on ever more powerful GPUs, while NVIDIA works on highly-competitive mobile processors. NVIDIA declined to comment on that story.
58 Comments on AMD Talked to NVIDIA Before Acquiring ATI: Report
AMD powers the Wii, will also power the Wii U.
AMD powers the Xbox 360 and its successor.
AMD will power the PS3 successor.
AMD has several 28nm GPUs out in desktop discrete and nvidia is tripping with Kepler still a month and a half away.
If AMD's CPU division just completely dies, the GPU division will split off and stay competitive.
Tegra 3 is fast and sips power in some scenarios but in a (very) limited amount of devices. It isn't selling nearly as well as Snapdragon S3, OMAP 4460 and Exynos 4120 which will all have successors in a small time frame. AMD is moving toward the mobile market, albeit a bit late. Currently they only have x86 low power solutions instead of RISC. (ARM)...
I would have been surprised had AMD Not talked this over on a few occasions
Im with you insane, for the reasons you state but also because within time AMD will have its APU's in Everything
remember, not long ago AMD were touting an optimised approach to game design ,bare metal :cool:,no API style, and with all games made to run on its gpu's primarily that becomes vvvvvvery easy:toast: and the whole fanboy debate might be gone:eek: if they pull anAMD gpu/ ARM APU from their hat ,seriously if you see the way intel and nvidia are squareing upto this future, it is so going to be, its awaiting the software only and thats being written ,i think:p
intel are leaning towards business machines instead of personal pcs, yeh they arent going anyware in the home market but importantly they realise for them and their products ,business is where they are going to be earning future revenue unless their gpus start pulling their weight and since they too are trying to further combine the gpu and cpu functionality they might yet do a decent APU
and nvidia are in full flow trying to get APU designs drawn out and minted asap.
they all now know exactly where AMD's going with its APU's and HSA and have realised that in any benchmark an APU that is well specced and designed Will soon be able to destroy a cpu and a gpu in almost every situation and using less power too , they are all trying to get shaders inter mixed with cpus and at many perfornmance and price points, because theirs going to be a lot more competition soon, Arm 64 asissted:twitch:
Instead what we got was a poorly advertised economic alternative to the big companies on the block (I.E.Intel and Nvidia)
AMD/ATI still doesn't seem to get that what people want in the technology world is the Greatest, Fastest, and Latest technology. That is the whole definition of the technology world. It doesn't matter what your selling, CPU's, GPU's, Tablets, what ever? Everyone who is into technology wants the latest and greatest.
That doesn't mean that there isn't room for an Economical cheaper alternative to the latest and greatest. It just means that people would rather buy that cheaper alternative from a company that also has the name recognition of also being the best. Which is not what AMD/ATI has.... they just have the reputation of being average and nothing else!
Because of all this Buying Nvidia wouldn't have worked. Nvidia has a CEO who is not satisfied with being average. He wants to be the best!!!
I still hope AMD/ATI can turn it around! It seems the ATI sector of the business still wants too. I think AMD is holding AMD back right now. Just my personal opinion!
At that moment, ATI maybe less market part, but they had the fastest chip, way better than nVidia. The x1950XT/XTX was much more better than the 7900GTX, and that makes it also for the x1900XT/XTX.
AMD release their first Phenom a year after, like november 2007. Intel had their Core 2 duo on end of summer 2006. So if we do a time line:
AMD released their first DDR2 CPU, Windsor, end of may 2006: x2 5000+
AMD announced to buy ATI, July 2006
Intel released their Core 2 duo on July the 27th
nVidia released their G80 on November the 8th
Early in 2007, ATI was now AMD
May 2007, HD2900XT
6 months later, Phenom 9500/9600.
I don't know where AMD was in a bad situation when they announced to buy ATI before the Intel core architecture, and before the G80, so ATI was a good thing to do, since they have very fast chip, and their chipset for AMD was very very good.
They had already done a lot of thing before the complete transaction on end 2006/Begining 2007. Intel was doing their own chipset and graphics chipset. AMD needed this to continue the battle. They just sit on their ass with the X2 (should have release the AM2 version much more faster, since Intel was already on DDR2.
Well, I still think that Intel has been unfair during the P4 time, and AMD hasn't been fast enought. If the first Phenom was there at the same time of the Core 2 duo or before, it would be maybe different. With Graphics part, they went from really bad vs the G80, and they came with HD3k that wasn't that bad, then 4k where they were taking alot of market share to nVidia.
Anyway, too much talked, I voted no, since AMD and Nvidia didn'T had the same vision of the futur I think. On paper, that would have been good, since AMD had their own Fab, but I am sure the result would be the same as now, and maybe more bad, since nVidia worth more than those 5.4 billions...
I would of been very happy if they merged but not the CEO of nvidia to take charge of both company's
But to be honest here doing very well with ATi so i cant complain..
My only STRONG issue with Jen-Hsun of NV was his bloody arrogance.
It doesn't matter who does it first, it only matters who does it the best for the consumers buying it.Seems to at least be somewhat earned arrogance. Nvidia is doing extremely well for themselves.
But, AMD is probably better off with ATI because of that alternate possibility.
Back when AMD did this, Nvidia was the largest (and best imo) supplier of AMD chipsets, and SLI was pretty much an AMD exclusive tech (did anyone actually use the intel nforce's prior to the 6 series)
Actually, now i think about it, pretty much AMD's entire time as the best CPU suppliers (basically not long after the pentium 3's launch until core 2) Nvidia made the best chipsets for them, even for the first few generations of being AMD branded, ATI's competing chipsets were awful.
Heck your the only that has said he has had bad...yeah it was YOU not the company or product.....
I beg to differ. There are many examples how customer satisfaction is something obscure and hypothetical. Also the thing called marketing is something even more devious and suspicious. If you studied it or just read about it you should know that it is invented just to sell products to people that don't want them. Advertising is also another tool in this bag of "magics", but I agree that it is needed in some occasions - new company that nobody knows, or completely new product that people should be aware of. But nowhere they teach you to make products that actually people need(please note "need" not "want"). And all the other "deeds" companies do to make you "believe" and walk you to the store. Fanboism was born because of that. That's why I like when companies don't overuse these "magics" and let people think for themselves if they really need or not their products. This commercially driven society we live in is something very strange and I don't like the trend. So that's why I like to think for myself what I "need" not "want". Sure from time to time I oblige to my "urges" of new "toy" but try to keep it "real". This is my opinion and I don't expect you to think likewise, just wanted you to understand my point of view. Like you say "Keep it real bro" :)
The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on. :rolleyes:
Feels strange to read that proverb in English !
GPU powered Physx, not so much.
Nvidia is doing just fine, and is in no way hurting from passing on the deal.3dfx still beat them both to the market with multi-card setups. Feb '98 they introduced SLI on VooDoo2 vs Oct '99 for the Maxx. but really, that's just picking nits. Who had it first is pretty much irrelevant in today's market.
And, actually, I had a bad time with Crossfire (and a handful of other driver bugs), too. That's why I went with single gpu nVidia this round. May try SLI at some point to get a feel for the other side of the coin if another cheap 580 comes my way, but a single powerful GPU will do for now.
But, would also happily go back to AMD if they offered what I want in a single gpu at my next upgrade point, and I knew the bugs were squashed.There is no real need in the markets we are discussing. Almost nobody NEEDS powerful computers. We just want them. It's all based on consumer wants. If a company doesn't produce what the consumer wants, and doesn't make the majority of their customers happy, they cannot be successful, and cannot turn a profit. These companies are not forcing people to buy their goods, so the idea that they do nothing to satisfy their customer base is a false notion.