You got CPU in my GPU...

[Xerxes]

1UP (http://1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3151127) and Business Week (http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8HUTO9G0.htm?sub=apn_tech_down&chan=tc) report that AMD are in the process of merging with ATi.

Apjit Walia said speculation has raged for years that ATI or other graphics chip companies would be bought by AMD or Intel. He went on to say the move would be a mistake for Intel, which besides being the world's biggest chip maker is also the world's biggest supplier of graphics chips.

Analyst flapping gums got stock prices rising so somone listening to this guy. What's your take on a AMD/ATi merger?

[Abash Alarmist]

Fuck. While I love AMD, I have a love hate relationship with ATI...I prefer the unified driver support from nVidia, and just want their cards the most. I would of figured an nVidia/AMD merger before ATI...

[Slack3r78]

Wow, the summary's rather misleading. Where is this reported as anything other than pure fantasy speculation? "In the process of merging" would suggest it's definitely happening. I've seen nothing to suggest such.

[bone4ahead]

Yes, this news item is very misleading. Read the article before you start flaming.

[Steele Johnson]

and Intel is in the process of merging with nVidia. Hmmm...

[Rirath]

Worst thing I've heard since the merger of Maxtor and Seagate, but honestly, who cares anymore. Once my CPU hit 3ghz and my hard drive hit 250GB each and my GPU can run any game today on decent settings, but settings are optimized for years from now... (and can still barely touch my consoles)... none of it really matters to me anymore.

Wake me in a few years when the dust settles and we have uses for today's bleeding edge. The enthusiast' line is killing today's PCs, and it's leaking into consoles to boot. (PS3) Yeah, there has always been bleeding edge, but now the tiers and prices are higher than ever, with little to nothing to justify it.

I've been in this since 286's (nothing compared to some of the vets, I know) but I'm getting quite tired of this game.

[Syl]

This is weird because of how close AMD is with Nvidia when it comes to chipset devolopement. They use Nvidia to show off all the special effects, and Nvidia is the highest sellling AMD chipset.

I can't imagine them merging with ATi just like that, when they work more closely with Nvidia. I can't imagine them merging with Nvidia either.

[Jukey]

prices are higher than ever, with little to nothing to justify it.

I've been in this since 286's (nothing compared to some of the vets, I know) but I'm getting quite tired of this game.

Apparently, you haven't been paying attention to computer prices during that period as prices have dropped, not risen.

From the Congressional Budget Office (http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=3448&sequence=4#t2):
In the computer and components industries, two sets of factors--technological and market--interact to set the direction and level of prices. In the short term, conditions on both the supply and demand sides of the market (for example, the amount of production capacity and demand for a particular integrated circuit) cause prices to fluctuate around the underlying downward trend. Over the longer run, however, the technology trajectory, as it has been termed, sets the underlying direction of prices--which has been decidedly downward for the past 30 years.

Even if prices had risen, nothing to justify it ignores some pretty major advances in CPU tech alone:

The Intel 80286 came out in 1982 with 134 thousand transistors, at 8-20MHz.
My cpu came out in 2004. It is a Pentium4 3.2E (Prescott). It has 125 million transistors. So roughly 1000 TIMES as many as the 286, and 160 times faster.

[Evil Avatar]

Funny, I don't buy ATI any more and I'm on the verge of not buying AMD any more. If they combine forces, they just make themselves that much easier to avoid.

[CraweN]

Funny, I don't buy ATI any more and I'm on the verge of not buying AMD any more. If they combine forces, they just make themselves that much easier to avoid.

Why? IMO you get more performance from amd vs the price you pay.

[MasterEvilAce]

I like AMD and ATI. Not sure why everyone hates them so. My nvidia card gets slower and slower through each driver update, where as my ATI gets faster, and actually more stable.

I also enjoy AMD. I think they seem to run cooler and usually would seem to outperform intel for cheaper.

Maybe it's changed since a few years ago, though.

Either way, less competition = worse for everybody.

[LycoLoco]

I'm a fan of AMD through and through for desktop systems, but ATI has just underwhelmed me. NVIDIA has had a much stronger showing for quite some time, whereas ATI is playing catchup both in the abilities of their cards as well as in the driver department. I honestly can't see the two companies combining doing well for either one. Let's keep these separate, because this isn't a Reeses' peanut butter cup we're talkin about.

[MasterEvilAce]

I'm a fan of AMD through and through for desktop systems, but ATI has just underwhelmed me. NVIDIA has had a much stronger showing for quite some time, whereas ATI is playing catchup both in the abilities of their cards as well as in the driver department. I honestly can't see the two companies combining doing well for either one. Let's keep these separate, because this isn't a Reeses' peanut butter cup we're talkin about.
Yeah, ATI hasn't released anything amazing in awhile :(

[Frogleg Special]

ATI should get a boost in Direct X card development based on their, err.. "father-son" relationship with Microsoft. So short to mid-term outlook is good.

[Roc Ingersol]

... and my love-steak is in the process of merging with Rebecca Romijn's baby cave...

[Voodoo]

RBC Capital Markets analyst Apjit Walia said "recent checks in the PC-food chain suggest" the pairing "may be likely."
That is a very stupid statement. nVidia is the group that has been supporting AMD CPUs, be it through chipset or GPUs. ATI has stayed relatively neutral, save for its recent dealings with Microsoft and DirectX v10. If AMD was going to couple with any GPU developer, it would be nVidia. Their nForce5 is proof that nVidia is still the lead supporter of the AMD product.

[cppcrusader]

Once again analysts with no real knowledge of the industry shoot their mouths off again. Why would AMD buy ATi? Now if he had said AMD may buy nVidia that would have been a little more believable.

[Citizen Philip]

I used AMD since they had a cartridge AMK K6, I believe it was. And I like ATI. I certainly wouldn't mind it, however the article is nothing but some dork shooting his mouth off.

The only company I don't like is Intel. Heat, noise and wattage.

[BenSkywalker]

One reason ATi would be far more attractive to AMD then nVidia is ATi is a significantly less expensive company to acquire(market cap of less then half of nV's). The impression I have gotten reading all of the various speculation about this is it is simply a good way for AMD to use spare fab space.

[Slack3r78]

The impression I have gotten reading all of the various speculation about this is it is simply a good way for AMD to use spare fab space.

Wrong. That's one of the reasons this rumour makes no sense. AMD does not have any "spare fab space." AMD is running all their chip fabs at full capacity and selling every single chip they produce. In fact, AMD has begun contracting out some of their fabrication to Chartered Semiconducter because their plants just plain can't keep up with demand. Neither ATI or Nvidia have fabrication facilities of their own so AMD has nothing to gain there.

The only thing AMD stands to gain from a deal like this is IP and some engineering staff. In all honesty, ATI's chipset technology isn't all that fantastic either - they've only recently developed a usable southbridge. Motherboard makers had previously been substituting in a southbridge made by (recent Nvidia acquisition) ULi because previous ATI SBs had a number of issues.

I'd love for there to be a good, solid first party AMD chipset, but I'm not sure that acquiring ATI would really make a lot of sense in this regard. AMD's worked rather closely with Nvidia on the NForce line of chipsets, and they've proven to be top-notch.

AMD would seriously risk Nvidia shifting their focus to Intel platforms, which would cost them in the enthusiast market. Things like SLI have been AMD first technologies, with Intel support coming along much later. It's the reason why AMD SLI setups are much, much more common than Intel SLI rigs. I just can't see AMD risking their partnership with AMD over an acquisition that has questionable logic behind it at best.

[BenSkywalker]

AMD does not have any "spare fab space." AMD is running all their chip fabs at full capacity and selling every single chip they produce.

What exactly is Fab25 up to? That's right, uber low margin flash memory which the global market currently is seriously overstocked on- they aren't close to capacity. 110nm can be much better utilized. Also- where did you get the impression that Fab36 was remotely close to capacity? They just started shipping volumes of anything quite recently- they are still at a rather small percentage of their capacity. Fab30 is the only AMD fab that is firing on all cylinders right now- and that plant is going to become outdated for processors long before it can still be utilized for chipsets and low to mid tier GPUs.

[Slack3r78]

What exactly is Fab25 up to? That's right, uber low margin flash memory which the global market currently is seriously overstocked on- they aren't close to capacity. 110nm can be much better utilized.
AMD's more or less handed Fab 25 over to Spansion, a joint venture between AMD and Fujitsu. The flash memory business is what more or less kept AMD afloat through some of the leaner years, but they've slowly been moving away from it as it's become more of a bleeder than anything these days. Spansion's the result of that.

Also- where did you get the impression that Fab36 was remotely close to capacity? They just started shipping volumes of anything quite recently- they are still at a rather small percentage of their capacity.

Fab 36 is still in the process of ramping up production, yes, but even when it's at full throttle, AMD's production capacity will still be relatively limited. Even if you did count Fab 25, that would give AMD a grand total of 3 fabrication facillities. Compare that to Intel's 11, five of which are 300mm plants. Either way, my point was that AMD doesn't have capacity to spare at this time, which is true. AMD knew what timeframe Fab 36 would be coming online over, and still contracted Chartered to assist with production - that would suggest that they still foresee demand outstripping supply even when Fab 36 is fully online.

Fab30 is the only AMD fab that is firing on all cylinders right now- and that plant is going to become outdated for processors long before it can still be utilized for chipsets and low to mid tier GPUs.
AMD's announced that Fab 30 is going to be upgraded from a 200mm plant to a 300mm, 65nm plant by 2008, renaming it Fab 38 when that happens. I wouldn't count on them allowing for it to become obsoleted any time soon.

As I stated before, AMD sells every single microprocessor they can produce, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. This has caused some supply problems with their lower end parts, as AMD would obviously prefer to produce more Opterons that can be sold at a higher margin if their supply cannot keep up with the demand for their chips.

There's a reason why Intel is actually starting to show a price edge in the lower end of the market that AMD has traditionally owned - AMD doesn't have the capacity to compete both there and in the more lucrative high end market, so their budget line has suffered.

Given all this, where do you figure AMD has 'spare' capacity to produce chipsets and GPUs? Unless demand absolutely crashes abysmally for AMD in the very near future, they don't really even have the capacity to meet demand on just CPUs. Throwing capacity at chipset production instead of much more lucrative high margin CPUs would be daft on AMD's part.

[BenSkywalker]

AMD's more or less handed Fab 25 over to Spansion, a joint venture between AMD and Fujitsu. The flash memory business is what more or less kept AMD afloat through some of the leaner years, but they've slowly been moving away from it as it's become more of a bleeder than anything these days. Spansion's the result of that.

And that is an enormous waste of Fab space which AMD controls. 110nm is too advanced to be wasting on a market with tiny, if any, margins. Besides that, Fab25 isn't operating at close to capacity. That facility could be utilized for ATi's mid to low range GPUs, media processors and mobile chipsets along with the Wii's GPU not to mention their north and south bridge mobo chipsets. All of those are much higher margin markets. TSMC could still be utilized to handle the high end and upcoming high end parts that require 90nm and 80nm builds respectively.

AMD's announced that Fab 30 is going to be upgraded from a 200mm plant to a 300mm, 65nm plant by 2008, renaming it Fab 38 when that happens.

I'm assuming you mean from 8 inch to 12 inch, 300mm is the size of a single complex chip- yields wouldn't be too great there. Also, 65nm is now, 45nm is where we should be in '08 for high end CPUs. If they were aiming for 65nm in 08 then it would be to increase production of low end processors.

Throwing capacity at chipset production instead of much more lucrative high margin CPUs would be daft on AMD's part.

But throwing capacity at flash memory isn't daft? There are no margins there at all right now, and AMD has been losing money on that sector for a while now(the reason it was spun).