News Bits: AMD buys ATI, Nvidia SLI Power, Microsoft Confirms Zune Brand

AMD and ATI join forces

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AMD and ATI today announced plans to join forces - the rumors are true. The transaction is valued at ~$5.4 billion. The end result? A new and more formidable company.

In 2008 and beyond, AMD aims to transform processing technologies, with platforms that integrate microprocessors and graphics processors to address the need for a general-purpose, media-centric/data-centric/graphic-centric performance. The new company wants consumers to create their own unique products/solutions 'within an open-innovation ecosystem free from artificial barriers to customer success.'

AMD's Chairmen/CEO Hector Ruiz stated:

ATI shares our passion and complements our strengths: technology leadership and customer centric innovation. Bringing these two great companies together will allow us to transcend what we have accomplished as individual businesses and reinvent our industry as the technology leader and partner of choice. We believe AMD and ATI will drive growth and innovation for the entire industry, enabling our partners to create differentiated solutions and empowering our customers to choose what is best for them."

President/CEO of ATI, Dave Orton, also made a statement:

"This combination means accelerated growth for ATI, and broader horizons for our employees. All of our product lines will benefit. Joining with AMD will enable us to innovate aggressively on the PC platform, and continue to invest significantly in our consumer business to stay in front of our markets."

AMD anticipates it will finance the cash portion of the transaction with a combination of cash and new debt. The transaction was unanimously approved by the board of directors of each company. It is still subject to ATI shareholder approval, Canadian court supervision of a Plan of Arrangement, and other regulatory approvals.

The combined company would have achieved ~$7.3 billion in total consolidated sales during the last four quarters, with a workforce of ~15,000 employees. The company will be headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, and will maintain sales, design, and manufacturing centers worldwide and in major business centers in Silicon Valley, Austin, Texas, and Markham, Ontario. AMD's execeutive team will be complimented by ATI's President/CEO Dave Orton, who will serve as executive vice president of the ATI business division. Two ATI directors will join AMD's board of directors.

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New Nvidia SLI Power - integrated + discrete GPUs together

Nvidia is working on combining an integrated and dedicated GPU that will switch seamlessly between power savings and performance. This version of SLI does not combine two graphics card for better video performance, but rather offers flexibility for notebook users.

Sony's SZ series already uses dual graphics cards - the Nvidia GeForce Go7400 and the Intel GMA950. However, switching to one or the other requires flipping a switch and restarting the notebook.

SLI Power is Nvidia's new tag line for the technology it is developing. Nvidia plans to be able to switch between integrated and dedicated GPUs seamlessly with no reboot. This is still being developed - the software interface is especially difficult, since Windows needs to be convinced to switch video device drivers on the fly. There is no info on when this will be completed, but sometime around Vista's introduction seems likely.

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Microsoft confirms Zune brand

Microsoft has (finally) confirmed "Zune", and also said that there will be multiple players and software products marketed under the name. Microsoft's general manager of marketing, Chris Stephenson, said, ""Today we confirmed a new music and entertainment project called Zune. Under the Zune brand, we will deliver a family of hardware and software products, the first of which will be available this year."

Stephenson also confirmed a number of rumors about the device(s) - hard drive based storage and integrated WiFi will be included. The WiFi can be used to access the Internet in addition to 'community-based' music sharing/streaming.

From Billboard:

Stephenson says that wireless Internet access is necessary for the portable devices to fit into Microsoft's grander plan. That scenario is to provide ubiquitous access to digital media from a wide range of Windows-powered devices in what ultimately aspires to be one part MySpace, one part iTunes and one part Xbox Live.

Microsoft plans to expand the Zune user experience by allowing users to expand their content with Xbox 360, Windows Media Center based PCs and Windows Mobile based phones. Zune is a big part of Microsoft's plan to expand its 'Live' services.

Microsoft is planning for a huge marketing blitz at launch for Zune - it will probably include live performances by popular artists.

How do you compete with Apple and the iPod? Microsoft needs to make sure that the player is fool-proof with attractive pricing. Microsoft already has a teaser site online, and a Microsoft-sponsored Zune blog.

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Quanta and Mitac to ship AMD PCs to Dell according to paper

According to Commercial Times (Chinese), Quanta Computer and Mitac International have landed orders for AMD-based desktop PCs from Dell. Shipments will start around September for the back-to-school season.

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Major Taiwan notebook OEMs to report mixed reports in July

According to Economic Daily News (Chinese), Industry sources estimate that Quanta Computer's shipments fell by 10% in July, and Inventec saw a 5% sequential decrease, while Compal Electronics, Wistron, and Asustek saw a 5-10% shipment growth during the same period.

Quanta's shipments most likely declined because of Dell transferring orders to Compal from Quanta. Wistron increased its shipments to HP signifigantly - HP continues to increase orders for 14" widescreen notebooks. Industry sources expect Wistron to see a 43.1% on year increase in sales.

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AMD and ATI are starting to loose Intel and Nvidia in the market so hopefully this move will put them back into the competition .

However they will still need to come out with new and better products to match the ruling duo cores and powerful geforces , not only by price but with value / power .

 

I'm not sure if this AMD <-> ATI is a good thing or a bad thing. Financially it's horrible for AMD, they'll be without profit for something like 2-years now. Technically speaking they could introduce some interesting and powerful + energy efficient integrated graphics solutions come 2008.

I just wonder how this will play with graphics cards standards as well. ATI's Axiom is a dud and my hopes were for graphics cards from different companies to become interoperable and upgradeable. You think Intel, Nvidia, ATI+AMD are going to all be friends and create interoperable products after this? I dunno.

 

I tend to agree with abaxter. The cynic in me says it may be hard to find AMD laptops with Nvidia graphics and Intel laptops with ATI graphics. (The industry was already heading that direction anyway, though).

 

I agree, Andrew. I think that to some degree the consumer is going to end take it in the shorts due to their choice of graphics solutions being limited even further. Just think how messy this will get if Intel decides they don't want to be "one-upped" by AMD and buys out Nvidia. Shudder.

 

there is better image of ruiz and orton in the inquirer

 

So what will happen then to the pre-merger products(are they now supported by AMD?)..Man whats really going to suck is the loss of the ATi logo. That logo is really nice and now its going to go away.

 

Well, its sad to see another Canadian company be bought out by an American company, founded in 1985 by China-born immigrants, K. Y. Ho, Benny Lau, Lee Lau, and Dutch-born Adrian Hartog, whom were refused loans by Canadian banks early on.

Though, it'll be interesting for the future of computers

 

The thing is ATI is absolutely necessary for the survival of AMD down the road. Intel has chipsets which they design and produce inhouse while AMD has to depend on Nvidia, ATI, VIA or SIS to have an operating platform.

AMD has been lucky so for because the Nforce chipset proved quite relaible and competitive. Chipsets from ATI are also maturing and things can get only better.

Common sense would dictate that AMD choose Nvidia since their chipset allowed AMD to be in the primetime. However Nvidia is not cheap. On the other hand ATI has just as many talented engineers in their shop as Nvidia and they are cheap too ($5.4 billion only ).

Bottomline AMD must build a chipset inhouse that is consistent and reliable if they want to become a credible player in the market. They need to stop relying on partners to come up with the goods and I believe ATI will help them achieve that.

 

Wait a minute, does that mean we'd only see ATI GPUs on AMD laptops from now on? Or would the merger not affect the current business model of both companies whatsoever? Hmm I hope it's the latter.

 

Crap what is going to happen with Nvidia. This is Very bad news... :'(
Tim

 

I think Nvidia will be fine. Intel is already starting to cozy up to them. Just heard one of Nvidia's engineers confirming on one of my podcasts the fact that they will definitely be producing an SLI chipset for Conroe, and their embedded chip business (cellphones and other portable devices) is growing. It's AMD/ATI that will be having issues. This acquisition is probably going to deplete AMD to the point that they'll barely turn any kind of profit for the next 5 years. An of course, Intel has withdrawn from it's chipset deals with ATI, which accounted for a huge chunk of it's profits. I'd be more worried about them than I would Nvidia.

 

Yeah but the thing is AMD+ATI= Semi-good performance. And Intel+Nvidia= Semi-good performance as well. Oh well...I will survive.
Tim

 

Well, given the state of things as they stand right now, I would expect the closer cooperation between AMD/ATI and Intel/Nvidia to produce some pretty competitive stuff down the road. I just hope Nvidia doesn't get lazy now that they will pretty much be the only major standalone producer of high performance discrete graphics. But they have already hinted that Conroe will now be the only platform to see Quad SLI. Things are starting to heat up already......