It's Official - AMD Buys ATI

FrankNFurter writes "It's been a rumour for several weeks, but now it's confirmed: AMD buys ATI. What implications is this merger going to have for the hardware market?" In addition to AMD's release, there's plenty of coverage out there.

Don't really know..

..if this is a good thing or not. It might be good for the development and cooperation. Better integration == better graphics/faster machines?

But on the other hand, this could split the market and get things like todays uncompatible browsers. (Which is VERY annoying somethimes)

And we have a psychic [slashdot.org]

Re:Don't really know..

Well, that could be a very good thing. Those specifications will also help driver-makers a lot. It might also help to get the linux drivers which are pretty poor for ATi at the moment.

The AMD-fans/nerds are more linux-minded then Intel (IMHO), and AMD probably knows this. They can really make a business-blow by releasing this, in the mind of open-source.

could be good..

this could be real good if AMD's acquisition of ATI allows them to produce full chipsets in the same fashion Intel has with its Centrino line. let the competition begin!

also, not official yet, as government regulatory bodies need to approve it.

It WILL Be Good!

this could be real good if AMD's acquisition of ATI allows them to produce full chipsets in the same fashion Intel has with its Centrino line. let the competition begin!

Yeah, the part that really sweetens the deal for us end consumers is that ATI will now get to benefit from the research that AMD inherits from IBM [nytimes.com] for chipsets. Hopefully ATI can make some better video cards with all the research that the other two have benefited off of. I hope that the same chipmaking technologies AMD has been using can now be used to improve ATI's GPUs and chipsets.

Since (in my opinion) NVidia has taken the lead in GPUs, I hope that ATI will be boosted back into a competitive state and price wars ensue.

Again, to me this is nothing but great news for the end-consumer.

Probably Not Going To Happen...

... But hopefully they'll kick the ATI driver team up the arse and get a decent set of drivers out (for Windows and Linux).

I'd say I told you so....

But I did.
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=32 197 [theinquirer.net]

        -Charlie

AMD & ATI

AMD combines with ATI and has announced a new name for their company:

DAAMIT!

This is a very good thing.

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=33 219 [theinquirer.net]
*head asploded*

I'm getting the 'gist' of why this transaction needs to happen. AMD needs GPU functionality on the CPU. I think everyone kinda expected that to happen at some point. The Inq. then takes a left turn in the plot and mentions 'mini-cores' which are multi-cores with massive amount of threads. Sort of but not really like Intels' hyperthreading times 32x. Shitloads of threads.


Bottom line?

ATI will work on AMD's new cores. I don't know if they'll work on something that'll plug into a PCIe slot still like nVidia.

nVidia will still be around making graphic cards for AMD. Just won't necessarily be anything remotely similar to what's out on the stores today. AMD doesn't like closed technology like Intel does. So it'll be an open platform still which is a 'good thing' (tm).

Forget about GPU's and chipsets. The main innovation has to come from these new GCPU's.

ATI was going to lose its Intel chipset business anyway with or without this takeover. So no big loss here.

Intel has about a year lead on this tech and probably be first out to market with it.

CPU cores change radically every 5 years or so. With GCPU's, think more in terms of GPU's and radical changes every year to 18 months. Crazy shit.

Plenty of space at FAB 36 to build the new cores and the recently announced plant they are building in New York. So no more costly production runs in Taiwan.

If AMD didn't do this, they'd be out of business in 5 years. Period.

See Hackers Dictionary: "Wheel of reincarnation"

AMD needs GPU functionality on the CPU.

See the entry in the Hacker's Dictionary / Jargon File for "Wheel of reincarnation [catb.org]":

wheel of reincarnation: [1968] Term used to refer to a well-known effect whereby function in a computing system family is migrated out to special-purpose peripheral hardware for speed, then the peripheral evolves toward more computing power as it does its job, then somebody notices that it is inefficient to support two asymmetrical processors in the architecture and folds the function back into the main CPU, at which point the cycle begins again.

Several iterations of this cycle have been observed in graphics-processor design, and at least one or two in communications and floating-point processors. [...]

-Mark

Don't believe it myself

Seems highly unlikely to me that they'd stick a GPU into the CPU. Modern GPUs are a similar size to CPUs (if not larger) and need much higher memory bandwidth... so you'd be doubling the size of your CPU and you'd need a 256-bit 1GHz+ memory interface. And then the 'high end' users would just go and buy a PCI-Express card when the next generation came out, making the whole thing a total waste.

I could see perhaps that they'd stick a cheap and crappy GPU into a cheap and crappy CPU for the low end of the market, but with Vista coming out with all its eye-candy that may not even be viable for rendering the Vista desktop, let alone games.

Makes me uneasy

I can't see this being good for customers. As we all know, ATI's products tend to be miserably supported, though this hasn't been the case for AMD thus far. How will this affect the nForce line of chipsets? Given ATI's past I'd much rather have an nForce than whatever ATI kicks out.

On the other hand, perhaps AMD will drag ATI out of it's rut, but I think it's just as probable that ATI will drag AMD down, and that's good for nobody.

AMD designs

Interesting possibility:

• Today: AMD has integrated memory controllers to get good memory performance.
• Tomorrow: AMD has integrated video controllers to get good 3D performance.

OK, so not very close to reality considering what would be involved. AMD bought into ATI because it wants to focus on CPUs, not chipsets.

However, it does make for an interesting point of interest: the three primary components of PC architecture today are the CPU, GPU and chipset that bind the two together. AMD had two parts of the equation, and ATI has two parts as well, though one of these parts overlap. Now AMD is one company that has end-to-end solutions? There's got to be something interesting coming out of that marriage.

Goodbye ATI?

"It's been a rumour for several weeks, but now it's confirmed: AMD buys ATI. What implications is this merger going to have for the hardware market?"

I wonder if this means no more ATI cards in Macintosh computers, seeing as how Apple uses Intel now? Or, even more interesting, could it mean Apple switching over to AMD?

The interesting thing to watch will be...

NVIDIAs response. Will NVIDIA no longer support AMD processors to the same level? The shocking thing to me about this announcement is that nForce chipsets are the best chipsets for AMD64. Also, NVIDIA driver quality across the board is better than ATI.

So, we'll see how this shakes out. If, as others have said, AMD forces ATI to produce better drivers, and good Linux drivers, that may be a good outcome...

The other interesting aspect is (as it often is) Apple. Now AMD gets an instant slice of the Apple pie (sorry) since ATI makes most current Apple graphics chips. Interesting development there... Intel can't be happy.

I suspect the tension level just notched up at NVIDIAs headquarters as well.

Ugggh

I think the marketplace has been very well-served by the two dualities that existed before this move: ATI and NVidia beat each other's brains out, as did Intel and AMD. This new dynamic with 3 players does not seem, to me, to promise anywhere near as many benefits for us, the customers. Will ATI become more AMD-centric? Undoubtably. Will NVidia (which has been a great AMD booster) become less supportive of AMD processors? Probably. As this plays out, it seems to me that NVidia will basically be an Intel graphics house (including Macs), and ATI will melt into AMD, becoming mostly an internal chipset house. In the end we lose a very healthy competition between NVidia and ATI. We gain, perhaps, a stronger AMD to keep Intel honest.

Execs overly optimistic

AMD is covering the remaining $2.5b of the deal with a commitment letter from Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, with the debt secured by "a pledge of the capital stock of certain material units of the company, accounts receivable and proceeds from any sale by Advanced Micro of its equity interest in Spansion Inc." The CFO is overly optimistic that the company can get rid of that debt "quickly," without layoffs, and with savings of $75m and $125m over the next two years. DJ Newswires says ATYT will no longer work with Intel, and the execs say that they can make up the lost sales with the severing of Intel-ATI ties. Pretty lofty goals, I'd say.

Re:Linux

I was thinking the exact same thing. But I think that, if done correctly, this could really solidify both AMD and ATI as market leaders. If AMD pressures their new acquisition to create a half-decent set of Linux drivers, then this will all be worth the hassle. Or even if they convince ATI to open up the specs, that would be ok too.

Re:Linux

right.. because as we all know.. Linux support == market leader.

They may become a market leader for Linux desktops (GPU's aren't needed in servers where Linux is popular).. but Linux desktops are only 1-2 percent of the desktop market...

so even if they gain all of it.. they still won't be a market leader in GPUs.

Re:Tomorrow

IIRC there's a mutual deal between ADM and Intel (part of the setlement of a lawsuit) that allows one company to use the other's technologies. that's what allowed AMD to integrate SSE 1/2/3 in athlons and Intel to integrate AMD64 in pentium4/xeon.

if they both buys graphic chipsets companies, does this means nvidia's technology on ATI GPUs and the other way around ?

or will they shield the newly aquired techs from the setlment ?

Re:Tomorrow

http://contracts.corporate.findlaw.com/agreements/ amd/intel.license.2001.01.01.html [findlaw.com]

As far as I can tell this deal only covers patents made before 2001 (section 2). I could be wrong though, not very good at legalspeak, and didn't read the entire contract. AFAIK they have another cross-licensing agreement as well, but it only covers all x86 extensions and improvements. This is the deal that you're probably talking about as SSE and AMD64 are x86 extensions. So to answer your question: no they would not need to share tech acquired from ATI.

Re:Tomorrow

Actually, their competitors are unaffected because:

1. They have large enough staff to decompile and perform clean reverse engineering of NVidia's drivers, e.g., one team analyzes the decompiled code and takes notes (without copying code of course), another team designs improvements and implements based on that analysis

2. Their competitors own electron microscopes, making analysis of the chip internals relatively simple.

Now tell me: why are the likes of NVidia and ATI keeping their products undocumented and their drivers closed?

And to counter your argument: what happens in two years when ATI and NVidia decide your card is too old to support, and yet it still performs very well but you NEED the features in the latest kernel and latest x.org? Go ahead, buy a new video card -- oops, nope, sorry, they changed slot specs again, and PCI Express cards are no longer available because PCI-X finally gained market share in the consumer market and PCI-E ended up as short-lived as VLB did in the VLB vs. PCI war.

(do I expect PCI-E to die? No, it was a hypothetical example showing the potential problem with proprietary drivers)

Re:Maybe

"System on a chip or at least integrated GPU and CPU cool."

A die holding an AMD core and an ATI GPU may be 'neat', 'fab', 'brill' or even 'ace' - but 'cool' - I think not!

Re:Maybe

Why are posters so fond of the anti-open source hardware vendor NVidia?

Probably because most Slashdotters are not driver hackers nor OSS purists, they are developers, gamers, and power users -- and Nvidia's hardware (and driver support for the hardware) is phenomenal.

Your gripe is not baseless, though: would it kill Nvidia to open up a bit? Perhaps the renewed competition will encourage them to do so, although it's equally likely that they will take the opposite tack and circle their wagons ever more tightly. As long as they provide excellent binary drivers for Linux, I doubt that they will feel much incentive to go Open Source...

Re:Maybe

nVidia CAN'T open up their drivers IIRC. nVidia was founded by a bunch of SGI engineers, and once they started producing products the folks over at SGI found some of their technology in the nVidia products. As part of the settlement, nVidia can't release the code since I think they had to license it from SGI in the end.

I could swear that's they way that it is, but I can't find any definitive reference to the settlement.

Re:Maybe

Why are posters so fond of the anti-open source hardware vendor NVidia?

Because they've supported Linux with binary drivers for a long time, and their drivers work.

ATI is months behind, and half of the time the drivers are too buggy to actually use.

Philosophy of openness aside, that's an important difference.