Another Nvidia Acquirement?

http://www.gamereplays.org/portals.php?show=news&news_id=341888

What sense do you make of this?

 

good because then intel has some real competition yet i think the prices of video cards will go up

maybe motherboards from Nvidia/Ati would be able to more seamlessly work together with cpu's

 

That's would be interesting to say the least, but I'd like to see a little more proof first.

 

I think I'd want a more reputable source to report on it first, but that could be interesting. Wouldn't prices go up though? Without another graphics card manufacturer they could charge whatever they wanted.

 

Not bloody likely. As was mentioned in the comments on Tech Report, nVidia would basically have to re-license x86 from Intel if this happened, and would also have to spin off ATI into it's own company again to avoid running afoul of antitrust laws.

 

This is a "rumor", which means that some guy just wrote whatever came to mind and posted it on a blog. Acquiring AMD would not benefit either company.

 

Maybe it was the OP

 

Actually, correct me if I am wrong but I think this is 100% wrong. If nVidia bought out AMD (which includes ATI), then nVidia would have a monopoly on video cards. The government would step in and stop it or make it very hard for nVidia to do this. I think it may even be illegal, i'm not sure.

 

i think they wouldnt have a monopoly on video cards as whole, they'd only have a monopoly on video card chipsets. arent video cards themselves are manufactured by at least a dozen companies, like xfx or evga?

also, there is probably a way to get around any illegalities by doing something similar to hp making compaqs, or seagate making maxtors. nvidia's recent moves are exciting, they must have a secret for making the physx technology useful on multi-core pc's.

 

I don't see it happening. First, as mentioned above, they'd have to relicense all the x86 tech that AMD has a cross-license for. Apparently, it's in the license language if they get bought out or go bankrupt, their license ends at that point.

Secondly, is Nvidia willing to assume AMD's debt? The CPU side of AMD has never historically been a profit engine for the company, and this last year or so hasn't helped much. Nvidia would have to find a way to digest AMD and get it running efficiently in a much shorter time scale than AMD has taken to get their act together after absorbing ATI.

Thirdly, there's a definite chance this merger (if it's more than a rumor) could get derailed by regulators. Nvidia and ATI, realistically, are the only 2 serious competitors in the discrete graphics arena. Sure, there's a niche player here and there, but in the end it boils down to Nvidia and ATI. Expect regulators to look very carefully at the market, and make their decisions accordingly.

Also, Nvidia would likely have to abandon their chipset business, as well. I highly doubt Intel would be interested in continuing their chipset tech licensing agreements with Nvidia if they were making CPU's as well.

Overall, I'd have to rate this merger as "highly implausible" with a dash of "just a rumor, nothing more" thrown in for taste.

 

Not by a long shot.

Intel still sells a ton of graphics chips, and their desire to do a discrete solution along with their Larabee solution is no secret. There are also other smaller players in the market as well, and should nVidia actually go this route there's an easy argument that for the health of CPU competition the GPU competition must suffer. Seeing as the CPU segment is much larger, more valuable, and more important to the future of PCs, it ould likely be an easy sell.

However speaking of the other smaller players, another option would be to acquire VIA, which would give nVidia their x86 license that legally seems more transferable than the more restrictive AMD license which is pretty explicit about takeovers of AMD. VIA also owns S3 (which just finally announced their DX10.1 Chrome solution after missing their initial Fall target). So they would still be acquiring another video player, but a smaller one.

nV's acquisition of an X86 license is vital to their longterm future, but for consumers the best thing would be for someone like Samsung or even the unlikely IBM to buy AMD, and not nVidia; because that acquisition would force more competition, not greater consolidation. Best for a company with fab and R&D capacity as well as deeper pockets to take over AMD without a noticeable blip.

IMO if nV buys AMD it's basically cutting it's profits, creating to much duplication and assuming too much debt just before entering a head to head battle with intel in the bigger higher risk markets; while a more specialized approach with VIA (the king of efficient processing with their Eden and Chrome CPU & VPU) would likely yield better results over a longer term.

Anywho this nV+AMD dance has been done before (even with IBM) and really it could happen, but it just doesn't make much sense. Unfortunately that doesn't alays means much because while intel+ATi & AMD+nV made more sense, it turned out to be AMD+ATi instead. And that too came after alot of rumours no one believed about either intel or AMD.

 

This is really interesting news, and potentially the most interesting rumour.

 

I can't see this happening, this would create a monopoly in the graphics market sector and they don't usually allow that.

 

Speaking of Via and S3, I wonder if their new 8800 competing Dx10 part will actually be any good. Their last card had great paper spec's but preformed pretty poorly. But it had some good features. Like multi card capability that actually did scale 100% in some games. I saw one boxed on Ebay awhile ago and really wanted to buy it, but I was outbid. It'd be funky to be able to say you were playing Call of Duty 4 on an S3 S27.

and it wouldn't be a monopoly on the cards. After all, how many vendors are there even for Nvidia? Just on video chips in the gaming market - don't forget you have companies like Intel and Matrox manufacturing graphics solutions as well, and S3, etc. At worst, it'd be a monopoly on a sub-bracket of the video card market.Intel sell far more graphics solutions then either Ati or Nvidia.

 

Not going to happen. Unless it`s the end of the GPU world competition...

 

Sure.

Just like Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly on PC operating systems. I mean, after all, look at all the different flavors of Linux you can get!

S3 exists in the discrete market but is not competitive with nVidia. Intel isn't even there yet. If nVidia bought AMD there would be NO competition in the discrete graphics market.

 

The difference being that more people buy intel than vs nV&AMD than Linux & Apple versus M$.

There would be alot of consolidation in the high end market, and probably no more boutique cards after the G100/T200, but as intel is already planning to enter the low-mid market and S3 is already launching a new product in the market, arguing the 'significant barriers to entry line' to the FTC probably wouldn't fly coming from intel, especially after their own trials with AMD. And with the change after this, nV could easily argue without such a merger (or one with VIA) their future is in quesion as well, and once again, you're left with a single 2 players standing.

With the way it's looking like it may be either nV or AMD dying in the future without some mergers happening, it's unlikely you'd see much opposition to anything that creates an entity realistically able to start competing with intel.

Personally still prefer nV+Via and AMD+Samsug/IBM or something similar.

 

While this would be a pretty cool development, it would cause some major problems and really start to limit the hardware market. You'd have two mega-giant hardware companies with competing chipsets, GPUs, and CPUs. This just feels dangerous to me. Too much power between two powerful companies, a bit like the early Cold War.

My gut tells me that keeping Nvidia/AMD/Intel/VIA/IBM separate for now is safer and better for the market until one or more of those companies becomes irrelevant in the market (i.e. if Fusion destroys the need for discrete GPUs, Nvidia needs to hop in bed with one of the others).

Still, the goof in me wants to see what an Nvidia/AMD could do against an Intel. Two titans trading nuclear punches. It'd be an amazing battle, at least a first. This would all be provided that Nvidia didn't get bogged down with the merger/buyout like AMD did with ATI.

Also, as someone mentioned before, the x86 processor license would have to be reinstated by Intel after an AMD buyout. AMD could possibly get around this with some questionable maneuvering. For instance, Nvidia could sell out to AMD for a minimal amount of cash (something ridiculous like .01 dollar a share) and then turn the reigns over to Nvidia after the merge. Of course, I am sure this violates the terms of the x86 license anyway and probably violates a bunch of business laws in the U.S. as well.

 

Interesting rumor for sure.

 

"Acquirement"? Is there such a word? I thought the word was "acquisition"...

Anyway, I highly doubt this rumor is true. Maybe the whole Micro-Yahoo thing going on had inspired the author of this article to cook this one up.

 

It's called Anti-Trust. Under US law, NVIDIA would possibly have to sell its own graphics business (yeah right) or the ATI division.

Although Intel still sells the most graphics chips (think business: integrated gfx) there's a risk of monopoly. Compaq-HP was approved only because there were SOOOOO many other players in the PC market. With only ATI, Intel, NVIDIA--and as a faint fourth, Matrox--as serious players, it'd be hard for the US gov to approve #2 and #3 merging.

Would NVIDIA buy AMD's CPUs? Why?

 

Despite my love of Matrox, they are not a viable fourth player, it's S3 with their upcoming Chrome 400 product that would be the fourth player.

Also, alot of people don't thikn they'd have to sell ATi, although it'd make more sense than simply firing people and closing duplicate resources. However the problem is basically strip ATi from AMD, and AMD is in the same poor future scenario as nVidia is.

Perhaps the benefit would be selling ATi to VIA.

But right now I wouldn't even guess what the FTC would decide until the case came before them, by then market realities may be very different.