Thursday, February 14th 2008

Analyst Believes NVIDIA May Acquire AMD Despite Possible Loss of x86 Licensing

American Technology Research analyst Doug Friedman believes NVIDIA could acquire Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) despite AMD's x86 license from Intel being non-transferable. Friedman believes that AMD and Intel's long term roadmaps are a threat to NVIDIA and cites mounting pressure from AMD's stock holders as a reason for its vulnerability to a buyout from NVIDIA. AMD's recent troubles with its quad core processors and ATI's recent weakness in the high end graphics market have only exacerbated this pressure. Friedman sees AMD and Intel's plans for integration of CPUs and GPUs as a threat to NVIDIA and believes NVIDIA anticipates this future competition as well. Combining this information with rumors that Intel is attempting to develop discrete graphics adapters of their own leaves NVIDIA in a possibly weakened position. However, AMD's extensive cross-licensing of x86 and other technologies with Intel would not be NVIDIA's only obstacle. They would also face possible anti-trust investigation from United States and European Union law enforcement agencies.
Source: X-bit Labs
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82 Comments on Analyst Believes NVIDIA May Acquire AMD Despite Possible Loss of x86 Licensing

#26
mab1376
this would be horrible there would be practically no competition in the CPU and GPU market... except for VIA :laugh:

but seriously, prices would skyrocket!! :banghead:
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#27
ShadowFold
magibegS3 should come out of nowhere and buy up AMD, now that would be a surprise.
Or maybe Intel :twitch: that would be kinda cool since Intel is making GPU's now too and ATi would fit right in :)
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#29
TUngsten
is that related to Chef Boyardee? wait, heard of that......
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#31
trog100
now if the grafix card king bought the baby cpu maker and cpu king bought the baby grafix card maker.. all kinda cosy and divied up so to speak..

the cpu king let em keep the license to keep the monopoly situtation acceptable.. hmm..

trog
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#32
ShadowFold
trog100now if the grafix card king bought the baby cpu maker and cpu king bought the baby grafix card maker.. all kinda cosy and divied up so to speak..

the cpu king let em keep the license to keep the monopoly situtation acceptable.. hmm..

trog
Nvidia and AMD + Intel and ATi? Is that what your saying? I kinda like that idea too. Would be really weird tho.
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#33
jocksteeluk
It would be smart for Apple to buy AMD if anyone.
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#34
das müffin mann
god no if apple bought them they would make a minor tweak every generation and charge up the ass for them, i would rather have it go to nvidia or intel
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#35
Unregistered
If this happens it isn't the end of the world. Intel are moving rapidly towards the discrete graphics market, and an AMD with the resources of nVidia and ATI could create a very wide range of products, with a massive production scale, in both the GPU and CPU markets. Also, this would finally marry the two most brilliant GPU design teams in the world and all of their technologies.

In any case I don't see this happening. There have always been tongues wagging about AMD, because they're either way up, or way down - but they will bounce back, given time, and Intel will slip again given time.
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#36
imperialreign
v-zeroIn any case I don't see this happening. There have always been tongues wagging about AMD, because they're either way up, or way down - but they will bounce back, given time, and Intel will slip again given time.
as will nVidia. Both Intel and nVidia have done so before, and it's usually when their competition appears to not be a threat.

either way - a lot of people have been "talking" about AMD since the beginning of the year, both negative and positive. Their stock has been all over the board over the last 2 months, also -

the way it appears to me, really, is that AMD is getting their foundation straight. They're stabalizing themselves and getting rid of old debt. Once they're on their feet, they should be back on the rise.

Otherwise, there are too many independant companies that woudln't agree to such a merger, and would probably be willing to loan AMD the money to keep themselves in operation if need be - and I wouldn't be surprised if it was a middle eastern company of some sorts, as AMD has partnered heavily with other businesses from that region of the world before.
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#37
zOaib
you all need to go and buy the hd 3870 x2's as souveniers (sp?) the last king from ATi , :D
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#38
pt
not a suicide-bomber
jocksteelukIt would be smart for Apple to buy AMD if anyone.
GOD NO!
that is worse than nvidia buying AMD
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#39
Kreij
Senior Monkey Moderator
Intel would have real problems buyin AMD because of the processors.
Nvidia would have a hard time buying AMD becuase of ATI

IF AMD split off ATI and sold it to Intel, and then was bought by Nvidia, that would work.

That would also be excellent. Intel would pour money into the ATI products (as they assimilated them into the Intel line) and GPUs could move forward at an increased rate because of Intels resources (45nm GPUs?).

I pretty sure Intel/ATI would win that one handily. Intel has deep pockets.
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#40
happita
AMD will be on the rise after a short while, it just sucks for them that they have close to no funds compared to Intel and Nvidia which is why their struggling so much. Hopefully they'll get back on their feet and start turning up a small profit at least.
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#41
ChillyMyst
imperialreignas will nVidia. Both Intel and nVidia have done so before, and it's usually when their competition appears to not be a threat.

either way - a lot of people have been "talking" about AMD since the beginning of the year, both negative and positive. Their stock has been all over the board over the last 2 months, also -

the way it appears to me, really, is that AMD is getting their foundation straight. They're stabalizing themselves and getting rid of old debt. Once they're on their feet, they should be back on the rise.

Otherwise, there are too many independant companies that woudln't agree to such a merger, and would probably be willing to loan AMD the money to keep themselves in operation if need be - and I wouldn't be surprised if it was a middle eastern company of some sorts, as AMD has partnered heavily with other businesses from that region of the world before.
hell u know what, after having met some of the higher up's in intel years back, i can see intel if push came to shove helping keep amd alive, if only to keep their anti-trust and monopoly issues from getting worse.

also apple would suck if they bought amd out, but if they bought into amd it may be good, because it wouldnt raise prices, it would give amd a larger market image, i mean imagin all those mac commercials having an amd logo in them!!!

i hate mac, but it would be GOOD for amd's sales in the pc maket, and if anything it would probbly raise the quility of the mac's since they would probbly get better videocards in them as well!!! (no more x1300 in a high end mac!!!!)

i dont see this going off no matter what tho, nvidia would be screwed if they tryed to buy amd, it wouldnt get past the monopoly laws, nvidia is the only other real chipset maker, amd is the only real compotition for intel in the pc market, yeah via has chips but they arent even in the same market as the LE semperons at the moment let alone the same market as a c2 celeron......

i never trust these things, in the past i have seen stuff like this that said intel was going to buy cyrex or amd, never happened.

humm, to bad amd dosnt got some extra capitial, they could buy via :P
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#42
flashstar
I've said it before, and I'll say it again....

IBM SHOULD BUY AMD!!

IBM is the only company with the capital to rescue AMD at the moment I believe. Plus, they came up with X86 before Intel. It'd really stink if some Asian/ oriental company bought AMD. They would try to cut corners and really sink AMD's reputation, etc. I'm not sure where ATI would be after something like that happens.
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#43
das müffin mann
ibm would be a great choice for them they have oodles of cash, and then the market would get much more competitive , the only good thing i could see about apple taking over amd is that they would have apples mighty marketing machine behind them, regardless of how much apple would ruin amd, their market campaigns would sell millions of units based off of that
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#44
btarunr
Editor & Senior Moderator
NO WAY! :eek: I don't want a AMD takeover by NVidia. I'll completely quit PC gaming if that happens.
Posted on Reply
#45
Easy Rhino
Linux Advocate
i dont see how nvidia could possibly buy amd. sure amd's stock is patheticly low, but they are still a valuable company with a ton of product floating about. nvidia is just a gpu manufacturer. personally i hope that some independent business group buys amd, sacks their entire management, and rebuilds the product from the bottom. then maybe we will have real competition for intel.
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#46
das müffin mann
Easy Rhinoi dont see how nvidia could possibly buy amd. sure amd's stock is patheticly low, but they are still a valuable company with a ton of product floating about. nvidia is just a gpu manufacturer. personally i hope that some independent business group buys amd, sacks their entire management, and rebuilds the product from the bottom. then maybe we will have real competition for intel.
thats probably our best hope atm if a buyout does occur, even if a buy-out never happens--the AMD ceo's and their R&D department need to kick them selves in the ass to make themselves better than Intel again, i miss those days
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#47
aGeoM
Polaris573American Technology Research analyst Doug Friedman believes NVIDIA could acquire Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) despite AMD’s x86 license from Intel being non-transferable. Friedman believes that AMD and Intel’s long term roadmaps are a threat to NVIDIA and cites mounting pressure from AMD’s stock holders as a reason for its vulnerability to a buyout from NVIDIA. AMD’s recent troubles with its quad core processors and ATI’s recent weakness in the high end graphics market have only exacerbated this pressure. Friedman sees AMD and Intel’s plans for integration of CPUs and GPUs as a threat to NVIDIA and believes NVIDIA anticipates this future competition as well. Combining this information with rumors that Intel is attempting to develop discrete graphics adapters of their own leaves NVIDIA in a possibly weakened position. However, AMD’s extensive cross-licensing of x86 and other technologies with Intel would not be NVIDIA’s only obstacle. They would also face possible anti-trust investigation from United States and European Union law enforcement agencies.

Source: X-bit Labs
:eek: What weakness is he talking about? HD3870 X2?
Posted on Reply
#48
Polaris573
Senior Moderator
Sales weakness (market share) and the lack of product to compete with the 8800GTX until very recently.
Posted on Reply
#49
ChillyMyst
flashstarI've said it before, and I'll say it again....

IBM SHOULD BUY AMD!!

IBM is the only company with the capital to rescue AMD at the moment I believe. Plus, they came up with X86 before Intel. It'd really stink if some Asian/ oriental company bought AMD. They would try to cut corners and really sink AMD's reputation, etc. I'm not sure where ATI would be after something like that happens.
amd would still lose their contract/licence on the sse and x86-64 instructions, IBM could just find a way to merge/join with amd in a more stable way, currently they partner on research into how to make faster cooler chips, slowly they should just make that link stronger.


as to sales weakness, its not just that its "mind share" people talk, and they see benches with the intel chips stomping the amd chips, even tho this dosnt mean shit for the normal user, any chip he gets today will have more power then he will ever make use of, its still perception.


this is like when i took echonolics and we had a long talk about why resessions happen, and what it comes down to is PERCEPTION, people see it on the news and in papers that we are headed into a ression and talk about it with others then prety soon they stop spending, and because most of the world is a consumer based ecoimy, this means that without people spending their $ and consuming stuff the ecoimy stalls out.

honestly, its more about psycology then anything, look how well the p4 chips sold all on the perception that intel=fast and mhz=fast, stupid people picked them up and where braggin they had a 2.6gz p4, and more times then not it really was more cpu then they needed since all the avg user does is download music and email and surf the net, but users who came into shops i worked at in those days where alwase shocked at how fast my little amd system was that only ran at 1.6gz and looked like hell(home built portable system, made from an old samsonite breifcase.....lol)

slowly many p4/intel users started to see that for their $ they got more from amd, and word of mouth spred, people started looking at reviews/benches and amd got a nice boost in market share from it, then intel FINNELY YEARS LATER got back on track with the core2 chips and dumped the p4/netburst designs.

now i still have people who REFUSE to upgrade their 3gz p4 chips because they just cant understand how a 2.x gz chip could be faster then a 3gz chip, and all the annalogy and explination in the world dosnt help them get it........(frustrating to be sure)

so even tho in reality the barc chips are still selling like hotcakes dispite the flaw(linux servers have an EASY fix for the problem that dosnt harm perf at all) people see the benches of the desktop chips being slitly slower then intels chips and assume they much suck then(dispite being ALOT cheaper for a quad)

again its all perception, really amd is picking up nicely now, and should endup doing just fine in the fairly neer future(im hoping the kuma and rana cores overclock well and are cheap :D
Posted on Reply
#50
aGeoM
Sorry I don't know nothing about Analysis, but the RV670 are in the market a couple months by now, should it be take in consideration by this analyst, and also considering that Cards are part from a platform "Spider" able to handle 4 GFX, Why should AMD/ATI be releasing High-end cards if they already have product to compete?

When AMD is marketing "Smarter choice", only smarter people can realize that. ;)

BTW Phenoms are not problematic, just some good bios and they rock. The problem (TLB) if exists is just in paper bcz we Phenom's users never saw it. lol
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