ATI (GPU maker) to be bought by a CPU maker?

[Yousuf Khan]

Rumours are that both AMD and Intel are interested in ATI, along with
Broadcom and TI.

ATI Shares Rally Sparks Takeover Rumours
http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Details.aspx?NewsId=14428

Yousuf Khan

 

[J. Clarke]

Rumours are that both AMD and Intel are interested in ATI, along with
Broadcom and TI.

ATI Shares Rally Sparks Takeover Rumours
http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Details.aspx?NewsId=14428

Not sure which of those might lead to an improvement. I suspect that Intel
would kick butt on the driver team, where a good butt-kicking is badly
needed, but that would also further consolidate their monopoly. If
Broadcom goes true to form the driver situation would get worse, I don't
recall AMD shipping much that needs drivers, and I'm surprised that TI
wants back into the graphics chip market.

An ideal situation might be for Intel to buy them, put some professional
management in place, and then be forced to divest.

 

[keith]

Not sure which of those might lead to an improvement. I suspect that Intel
would kick butt on the driver team, where a good butt-kicking is badly
needed,

Dunno. Intel has done a miserable job over the past twenty years with
everthing but processors (including graphics). ...and they're learning
the wrong lessons with processors.

that would also further consolidate their monopoly. If
Broadcom goes true to form the driver situation would get worse, I don't
recall AMD shipping much that needs drivers, and I'm surprised that TI
wants back into the graphics chip marke

When there is money to be made, noses sniff it out. ...until it doesn't
smell so well anymore. Another then picks up the scent. IMO, graphics
must be done by a small company of incredibly bright people (with a
stake). ...quite the opposite situation as processors.

An ideal situation might be for Intel to buy them, put some professional
management in place, and then be forced to divest.

I see this as the *worst* possible scenareo. Management churn isn't a
good thing.

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Not sure which of those might lead to an improvement. I suspect that Intel
would kick butt on the driver team, where a good butt-kicking is badly
needed, but that would also further consolidate their monopoly. If
Broadcom goes true to form the driver situation would get worse, I don't
recall AMD shipping much that needs drivers, and I'm surprised that TI
wants back into the graphics chip market.

An ideal situation might be for Intel to buy them, put some professional
management in place, and then be forced to divest.

I don't think anything can help their drivers unless they open-source
it. No change in ownership is going to help their drivers.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Pat]

Rumours are that both AMD and Intel are interested in ATI, along with
Broadcom and TI.

ATI Shares Rally Sparks Takeover Rumours
http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Details.aspx?NewsId=14428

Yousuf Khan

If Intel buys them, kiss off any overclocking. They'll probably lock the
GPU.

 

[J. Clarke]

I don't think anything can help their drivers unless they open-source
it. No change in ownership is going to help their drivers.

Of course it will. Intel has drivers for their hardware for just about any
OS that it can run on a machine that it can be plugged into and for the
most part they work very nicely. That is not the case for ATI. Open
sourceing the drivers may improve the situation for Linux but it wouldn't
improve it for anything that's not open source unless the OS vendor decided
to develop ATI drivers, which they are in general not going to do.

Open source is only beneficial if there is someone actually interested in
agressively developing the drivers.

 

[J. Clarke]

Dunno. Intel has done a miserable job over the past twenty years with
everthing but processors (including graphics). ...and they're learning
the wrong lessons with processors.

Miserable? Their motherboard chipsets dominate the market, their network
hardware is some of the best around, their RAID controllers are very good.
Their graphics hardware is not so great, but where else have they "done a
miserable job"?

When there is money to be made, noses sniff it out. ...until it doesn't
smell so well anymore. Another then picks up the scent. IMO, graphics
must be done by a small company of incredibly bright people (with a
stake). ...quite the opposite situation as processors.


I see this as the *worst* possible scenareo. Management churn isn't a
good thing.

It is if the current management is a bunch of bumbling incompetents, and
ATI's history with drivers suggests that the management in that department
is exactly that.

 

[George Macdonald]

If Intel buys them, kiss off any overclocking. They'll probably lock the
GPU.

Isn't overclocking ATI GPUs all unofficial anyway? It's not in the ATI
Control Panel, like it is with nVidia and the 3rd party stuff is kinda
flakey too.

 

[J. Clarke]

Isn't overclocking ATI GPUs all unofficial anyway? It's not in the ATI
Control Panel, like it is with nVidia and the 3rd party stuff is kinda
flakey too.

There was limited overclocking in the control panel for the XT boards for a
while, but it has since been removed I understand.

Intel though has been locking their chips down pretty thoroughly. AMD's
policy with the 32-bit Athlons was to ship unlocked for the first few
months then lock them down--I don't know if the 64s are locked.

 

[chrisv]

I don't think anything can help their drivers unless they open-source
it. No change in ownership is going to help their drivers.

I'm switch to nVidia, mostly because of ATI's poor support of Linux.

 

[Jason Gurtz]

Rumours are that both AMD and Intel are interested in ATI

....and Intel thought their anti-trust worries were bad now! Isn't it true
that Intel ships more video chipsets then everyone else combined (or
something close to that)?

OTOH, if AMD bought them it could send Intel reeling even further...

~Jason

--

 

[Ed]

Intel though has been locking their chips down pretty thoroughly. AMD's
policy with the 32-bit Athlons was to ship unlocked for the first few
months then lock them down--I don't know if the 64s are locked.

Part of the way AMD's Cool n Quite works is to lower the multiplier so
basically any chip that supports CnQ has the lower multipliers unlocked.
Only the A64-FX chips are truly unlocked AFAIK.

Ed

 

[Yousuf Khan]

...and Intel thought their anti-trust worries were bad now! Isn't it true
that Intel ships more video chipsets then everyone else combined (or
something close to that)?

OTOH, if AMD bought them it could send Intel reeling even further...

If AMD bought them, that would be the end of ATI's Intel chipset
license. And you might even find that all of a sudden ATI video cards
are suddenly incompatible with Intel chipsets.

I'd say the only safe choice of suitor is TI. Intel hates both AMD and
Broadcom.

Yousuf Khan

 

[chrisv]

If AMD bought them, that would be the end of ATI's Intel chipset
license. And you might even find that all of a sudden ATI video cards
are suddenly incompatible with Intel chipsets.

Oh, come on now. Video cards go into open-standard slots.

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Yousuf Khan wrote:




Oh, come on now. Video cards go into open-standard slots.

I am talking about little niggling problems that destroy the reputation
of a company's products. Think VIA vs. Creative Labs products.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Tony Hill]

...and Intel thought their anti-trust worries were bad now! Isn't it true
that Intel ships more video chipsets then everyone else combined (or
something close to that)?

Last numbers I heard had Intel's share of graphics chips at about
35-40% with ATI and nVidia both ranging from about 20-25% and the
remaining 10% being made up of a variety of other companies (VIA and
SiS are the biggest, mainly with integrated graphics on low-end
systems). I don't think Intel has ever managed to get more than 50%
of the graphics chipset market, but they definitely are the #1 vendor
of graphics chips on a per-unit basis. On a dollar basis, my guess is
that nVidia is #1, since Intel's graphics chips are all integrated
ones and mostly sell for very low prices.

OTOH, if AMD bought them it could send Intel reeling even further...

I really doubt that AMD would buy out ATI, it would involve spending a
lot of money to get into a business with high costs and high risks and
all the while it could piss off one of their key partners (nVidia).
Intel doesn't seem too likely either IMO, they've tried their hand at
buying out a video card maker and found that really they could only
succeed in the integrated market. I doubt that they're up for attempt
number 2 at the high-end add-in graphics market just yet, given that
their first attempt failed pretty badly.

The only company mentioned that seems at all like a good potential
match to me is Broadcom. They've got a more diverse portfolio of
computer-related chipsets, reasonably good alliances with some major
manufacturers (though their relationship with Intel is strained to say
the least) and they've got the money for such a buyout. Still I
wouldn't hold my breath on this one, it all seems to have started from
some off-hand comments by some analyst.

 

[chrisv]

I am talking about little niggling problems that destroy the reputation
of a company's products. Think VIA vs. Creative Labs products.

I think Creative created their own problems.

 

[keith]

I think Creative created their own problems.

Intentionally through "creative" interpretation of the specs. I wouldn't
buy a CL product on a bet! Do they even matter anymore?

 

[David Kanter]

Last numbers I heard had Intel's share of graphics chips at about
35-40% with ATI and nVidia both ranging from about 20-25% and the
remaining 10% being made up of a variety of other companies (VIA and
SiS are the biggest, mainly with integrated graphics on low-end
systems). I don't think Intel has ever managed to get more than 50%
of the graphics chipset market, but they definitely are the #1 vendor
of graphics chips on a per-unit basis. On a dollar basis, my guess is
that nVidia is #1, since Intel's graphics chips are all integrated
ones and mostly sell for very low prices.


I really doubt that AMD would buy out ATI, it would involve spending a
lot of money to get into a business with high costs and high risks and
all the while it could piss off one of their key partners (nVidia).

That's forgetting about the fact that AMD's cashflow situation is
precarious at best. Honestly, they should be paying down their debt
rather than buying companies...although the fact that the EU throws
money at their doorstop might alter that a little bit.

Intel doesn't seem too likely either IMO, they've tried their hand at
buying out a video card maker and found that really they could only
succeed in the integrated market. I doubt that they're up for attempt
number 2 at the high-end add-in graphics market just yet, given that
their first attempt failed pretty badly.

Yes, and it's quite obvious that add-in video cards today are like the
RISCs of 10 years ago...

Except that there are a hell of a lot more gamers than users that
require RISCs.

The only company mentioned that seems at all like a good potential
match to me is Broadcom. They've got a more diverse portfolio of
computer-related chipsets, reasonably good alliances with some major
manufacturers (though their relationship with Intel is strained to say
the least) and they've got the money for such a buyout. Still I
wouldn't hold my breath on this one, it all seems to have started from
some off-hand comments by some analyst.

I don't see what advantage that would be for either of them, also I
don't know what BCOM's financial situation is like. OTOH, TI probably
has enough money and cash flow to swallow ATI and not blink...

David