AMD Has to Buy ATI to Survive….

24 Jul, 2006 at 7:29am ET Article published in Tech

The Inquirer gives it’s thoughts on the much rumored and newly announced AMD-ATI merger

A very smart game developer told me that with one quarter of the raw power, a CPU can do the same real work as a GPU due to a variety of effects, memory scatter-gather being near the top of that list.

Basically, GPUs are a dead end, and Intel is going to ram that home very soon. AMD knows this, ATI knows this, and most likely Nvidia knows this. AMD has to compete, if it doesn’t, Intel will leave it in the dust, and the company will die. AMD can develop the talent internally to make that GPU functionality, hunt down all the patents, licensing, and all the minutia, and still start out a year behind Intel. That is if all goes perfectly, and the projects are started tomorrow.

The other option is to buy a team of engineers that produce world-class products, are battle tested, and have a track record of producing product on the same yearly beat Intel is aiming for.

This is an angle I hadn’t considered…

Source: The Inquirer

Comments

24 Jul 2006 ~ 8:34am mirage

Omega65 wrote:

The Inquirer gives it's thoughts on the much rumored and newly announced AMD-ATI merger

This is an angle I hadn't considered...

Source: The Inquirer

I saw on Yahoo News, AMD just announced that the rumors were true and it is indeed buying ATI. But, I am not sure if AMD is investing for its future or getting into trouble. I have two main concerns. First, Nvidia has been supplying the best computing platform for AMD with its chipsets. Now they will be competitors, and I am not sure how Nvidia will react to this. ATI brings in some chipset technologies in addition to AMD's own experience, AMD might be betting on this. Second, If they want to continue development of ATI's high-end GPU products now they will not only be competing with Intel for the CPU market, but also with Nvidia for the GPU market. AMD's life has been tough due to fierce competition in the semiconductor market and it seems to be getting even tougher. I am sure they know what they are getting into and I hope they can get what they are expecting out of this.
24 Jul 2006 ~ 8:46am csimon I guess we could have expected Intel to pull its bus liscence ...or not renew it as stands. http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=33225
24 Jul 2006 ~ 10:07am Garg Hmph. The whole thing looks bad for consumers. But if AMD really would have gone down without cooperation with ATI, then I guess it could have been worse.
24 Jul 2006 ~ 10:10am Sledgehammer70 did anyone think that AMD could possibly drive the mobil portion of ATI and chipsets but drop the Graphic cards? I mean It is far fetched, but it could be an idea od AMD's... they have always been super buddy buddy with Nvidia. just makes me wonder what is going to happen in the next few months....
24 Jul 2006 ~ 10:30am mirage

Sledgehammer70 wrote:

did anyone think that AMD could possibly drive the mobil portion of ATI and chipsets but drop the Graphic cards? I mean It is far fetched, but it could be an idea od AMD's... they have always been super buddy buddy with Nvidia. just makes me wonder what is going to happen in the next few months....

That is exactly what I was also suspecting, otherwise AMD will be spreading itself too thin to focus on competition with Intel.
24 Jul 2006 ~ 11:05am Garg If that what happens, I wonder what'll happen to nVidia's prices?

Although ATI's disappearance could leave some room on the low end for XGI to compete and gain some market share.
24 Jul 2006 ~ 11:17am mirage I think, there will be interesting technological developments in the GPU space. I doubt AMD is planning to compete with Nvidia by selling GPUs on the traditional graphics cards. They should be aiming for Intel. I am speculating now; if they are planning to integrate the GPU with AMD CPU and use even higher performance HT interface to connect it to shared system memory, it will be a killer competition to Intel, and ofcourse indirectly to Nvidia. They are planning to release quad-core processors, isn't it ridiculous to let them stay idle while GPU is so much stresses out? The most important factor that is keeping the CPU away from graphics is relatively slow memory interface, and as I said, this can be addressed with higher performance HT interface. I think we are going to say goodbye to today's beefy graphics cards in the near future. Check out XBOX 360 architecture, that is what I am talking about.
24 Jul 2006 ~ 11:39am Sledgehammer70 TBH I think Intel will jump on with nvidia or we might just start seeing Intel based GPU's....
24 Jul 2006 ~ 12:31pm GHoosdum Because the Intel GMA is such a stellar performer!
24 Jul 2006 ~ 12:37pm Sledgehammer70

GHoosdum wrote:

Because the Intel GMA is such a stellar performer!

I would like to be the first to present the Intel GMA 90000XMMX
24 Jul 2006 ~ 1:02pm Garg

Sledgehammer70 wrote:

I would like to be the first to present the Intel GMA 90000XMMX

Is that the extreme edition with 40 jiggabytes of cache and SSE5?
24 Jul 2006 ~ 1:07pm Sledgehammer70 no! no! It has 1 Terabyte of Memory with Nanotube tech on the GPU . Intel has been working with TI a has the core running at 1Watt TDP and is pushing a massive 518GHz. They are working on a new Dual version which they have dubbed "Intel I Win" or the IIW connection... soon to become an industry standard.

Note: Rumors seem to be rising that this new Graphics card can turn 1,000,000 points in 3DMark 2006, and that the scores were achived on 4 30" LCD's provided by Dell, running at a massive 5120 x 3200 pixels...

"This would be so funny if true"
24 Jul 2006 ~ 1:35pm profdlp It looks kind of like Stonehenge, when viewed from above.
24 Jul 2006 ~ 2:28pm mirage Sledge, I think people have seen your news, Intel stock started increase today
24 Jul 2006 ~ 2:56pm Leonardo This is a very smart, strategic move by AMD for the long term. Chipset and GPU technology acquisition? That's irrelevant. AMD is buying engineers and the technological process. The combined knowledge pool under one roof should provide innovation and economies of scale that AMD could not do otherwise. This really is not about GPUs and chipsets - it's about future integrated systems. This is very forward thinking. AMD is willing to risk the confusion of the Wall Street financial analysts and the wrath of stockholders to make a tough decision that is necessary for their long term competitiveness.

If you haven't read the whole Inquirer commentary, please do. It's well thought out and logical.
24 Jul 2006 ~ 3:05pm Sledgehammer70

mirage wrote:

Sledge, I think people have seen your news, Intel stock started increase today

Notice I showed it on a Nvidia board so Nvidias stiock is up also lol...

and yes I know the above image really had nothing to do with it!
25 Jul 2006 ~ 3:00am WuGgaRoO god i hope they dont make some form of ugly red/white/green logo....
25 Jul 2006 ~ 3:00am WuGgaRoO double post sorries
25 Jul 2006 ~ 3:49am Leonardo Who cares about the logo. What will the company acronym be. Let's see - ATI + AMD. Hmmm.........DAMATI? DAMAIT? DAMMIT?
25 Jul 2006 ~ 3:52am TheHeartSmasher I think AMD is going to buy Nvidia now. This is to compete with Intel. Now that the two have combined, the only question now is what will they release now since they have been holding back.
25 Jul 2006 ~ 9:49am jradmin

President Pain wrote:

I think AMD is going to buy Nvidia now. This is to compete with Intel. Now that the two have combined, the only question now is what will they release now since they have been holding back.

I think that would get them to close into "Anti-Trust" territory.
25 Jul 2006 ~ 11:33am Garg

jradmin wrote:

I think that would get them to close into "Anti-Trust" territory.

Yeah, and they probably couldn't afford it, either.
25 Jul 2006 ~ 12:30pm profdlp

WuGgaRoO wrote:

god i hope they dont make some form of ugly red/white/green logo....

My Uncle Vincente would like to have a little talk with you.
25 Jul 2006 ~ 12:34pm Sledgehammer70 AMD bought ATI for the fact that they could afford ATI only... they would have bought NVIDIA if they could...
25 Jul 2006 ~ 4:58pm airbornflght

Leonardo wrote:

Who cares about the logo. What will the company acronym be. Let's see - ATI + AMD. Hmmm.........DAMATI? DAMAIT? DAMMIT?

hmmm. lets see here.

Advanced
Micro
Array
Technology
Devices
Incorporated

or, they could butche both names and get:

Advanced
Array
Technology
Devices

hell if I know, I am just having some fun:D
25 Jul 2006 ~ 5:07pm profdlp Next thing you know they'll start making violins...
26 Jul 2006 ~ 8:36pm EMT I think you guys saying that the GPU may be on its way out are right. Who needs a graphics coprocessor when every computer has two processors (ok cores) to start with?
26 Jul 2006 ~ 10:31pm airbornflght that is a good point, and will become ever more true when quad cores come out, the only thing that the gpu has going for it is that doesnt it use a special instruction set or something? I mean, even if I had a AMD FX-62, and just an onboard video card, it would still play games like crap, at least currently until they can code games to render on the processor.
26 Jul 2006 ~ 11:03pm Thrax

EMT wrote:

I think you guys saying that the GPU may be on its way out are right. Who needs a graphics coprocessor when every computer has two processors (ok cores) to start with?

I'm hearkening back to the old SGI and C64 architectures.
27 Jul 2006 ~ 12:25am Leonardo Wanna bet there will be new, defined classes of CPUs some day: 'server' CPUs, 'gaming' CPUs, 'office' CPUs, 'workstation' CPUs, and E-machines CPUs. (yeah, I know we've already got 'server' CPUs - Xeon, Itanic, Opteron, and a couple other small volume makes)