AMD to Enter the FPGA Market, in Advanced Talks to Acquire Xilinx

[btarunr]

AMD is planning to enter the FPGA market by buying out one of Intel's largest competitors, Xilinx. The Wall Street Journal reports that AMD is in "advanced talks" to acquire the San Jose-based firm which specializes in FPGAs of all shapes and sizes, including large, high logic cell-count FPGAs under the Virtex UltraScale brand, the main competitor to Intel's Stratix 10. Xilinx is valued at $26 billion, although analysts estimate the AMD acquisition to go down at close to $30 billion, making it one of the largest tech acquisitions of the year, after NVIDIA's buyout of Arm from Softbank. An FPGA lineup would give AMD a near complete portfolio of computing hardware IP: CPUs with x86 and Arm licenses, GPUs, GPU-based scalar compute processors, semi-custom SoCs, low-power media processors, and now FPGA.



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[Anymal]

30 bills? Too big chunk to chew?

 

[InVasMani]

I like the idea of it especially since Intel has FPGA's and Nvidia is acquiring ARM possibly depends how that trade goes through or not. The price is quite a chunk of money, but AMD's been on a roll lately. I like this prospects of this acquisition more than a lot of others they could make though.

 

[okbuddy]

Xilinx is the FPGA king

 

[Space Lynx]

they really should hire more gpu driver engineers first... not trying to be mean or anything... lol

 

[Unter_Dog]

Have a huge project using Xilinx FPGA......... getting worried........ugh

 

[natr0n]

Those clone/emulation consoles use fpga. Really cool chips.

 

[chaosmassive]

this is the first AMD major acquisition since ATI purchase,
I really hope that they don't overpaid it otherwise, they might not even be able to financially recover this time and perish for good.

 

[Anymal]

this is the first AMD major acquisition since ATI purchase,
I really hope that they don't overpaid it otherwise, they might not even be able to financially recover this time and perish for good.

6 vs 30, piece of cake.

 

[InVasMani]

I think that Xilinx is a good acquisition target for AMD, but 30B is a enormouse chunk of money. I guess the question is projected growth relative to acquisition cost and debt they'd have to leverage.

 

[delshay]

they really should hire more gpu driver engineers first... not trying to be mean or anything... lol

Within the company of Xilinx I would assume they have highly skilled programmers.

 

[R-T-B]

Those clone/emulation consoles use fpga. Really cool chips.

Unlikely. They are probably developed on FPGAs but FPGAs tend to be pricier than ASICs and there is no call for them in an emulation style console where costs are generally cut as much as possible.

 

[sollord]

I wonder if this is going to turn out to be some financial gymnastics for a merger to get around some license agreement stuff

 

[ratirt]

AMD reaching for ARM as well. How about that.

 

[Mysteoa]

AMD reaching for ARM as well. How about that.

They already have a license.

 

[CyberBuddha]

Can anyone explain what is AMD looking for with Xilinx acquisition? I am lacking deeper understanding. What benefit would AMD gain?

 

[ratirt]

They already have a license.

For x86 but not for ARM.
You are right. AMD has the license already. damn

 

[Vya Domus]

For x86 but not for ARM

Anyone can have a license for ARM. Well, for now ...

 

[bencrutz]

6 vs 30, piece of cake.

what?

 

[chaosmassive]

what?

in case you don't get it, he referring to ATI acquisition was valued at 6Bil (5.6 to be precise) which was super-overpaid at that time.

 

[Valantar]

what?

View attachment 171287View attachment 171288

I think it was a reference to the price of ATI vs. this acquisition.

Can anyone explain what is AMD looking for with Xilinx acquisition? I am lacking deeper understanding. What benefit would AMD gain?

The ability to deliver more solutions to enterprise customers, mainly. FPGAs have tons of uses in HPC, datacenter and similar usage scenarios. Not really relevant at all for consumers.

Unlikely. They are probably developed on FPGAs but FPGAs tend to be pricier than ASICs and there is no call for them in an emulation style console where costs are generally cut as much as possible.

You're thinking of the wrong type of consoles. These are premium "retro gaming on modern TVs" consoles. Though there's no emulation; the FPGA-based ones run native code. Some are DIY solutions, others are pre-made.

 

[Vya Domus]

ATI acquisition was valued at 6Bil (5.6 to be precise) which was super-overpaid at that time.

Thing is there weren't many GPU silicon manufactures at the time, they got a rather unique collection of IP, FPGA makers are a dime and a dozen on the other hand. Buying Xilinx for 30 billion looks like an order of magnitude worse idea.

AMD isn't Intel yet, they shouldn't shell out billions on companies like it's nothing.

 

[bencrutz]

in case you don't get it, he referring to ATI acquisition was valued at 6Bil (5.6 to be precise) which was super-overpaid at that time.

ah, i see, thanks for clarifying it

 

[ratirt]

Thing is there weren't many GPU silicon manufactures at the time, they got a rather unique collection of IP, FPGA makers are a dime and a dozen on the other hand. Buying Xilinx for 30 billion looks like an order of magnitude worse idea.

AMD isn't Intel yet, they shouldn't shell out billions on companies like it's nothing.

Maybe they have cash to spare and they don't want to just keep it but invest in something that has future. This acquisition would improve AMD's portfolio and as you may all think, AMD is not Intel, it doesn't make much sense. AMD and Intel are huge companies and they are thinking about the future of the companies and since both have enormous number of advisors who think what the strategy will be and how the companies will evolve in the future to come. I'm sure AMD has a plan for this acquisition just like NVidia has a plan for acquiring ARM.

 

[silentbogo]

The ability to deliver more solutions to enterprise customers, mainly. FPGAs have tons of uses in HPC, datacenter and similar usage scenarios.

And most importantly telecom and high-speed networking. I think AMD is after that 5G infrastructure sweet pie, since xilinx already has a decent portfolio of comms&accelerator solutions.