Submitted by AMD may be looking to buy graphics company ATI Technologies, a move that would benefit the overall graphics industry, according to RBC Capital Markets. “The synergies of this seem consistent with the recent announcements by AMD to significantly increase capacity over the next few-years,” wrote analyst Apjit Walia in a note to investors Wednesday. “We believe ATI is a rare-buy in the semiconductor space right now given the near-term tie-up dynamics.”
Think things might get more interesting with the Linux drivers?
I hope they will see the open source light. But I think this is really about MS Vista and putting Aeroglass capable video hardware on the motherboard.
But AMD isn’t even in the MB business, and their cpu’s most popular motherboards are already built by NVidia. ATI also makes MBs for them with integrated graphics.
Of course if AMD owned AMD then couldnt they see that the integrated video options for AMD boards far surpass those of Intel based boards?
Possibly. ATI has so far been the most friendly to the OSS community when it comes to specifications.(unless you want onboard, Intel opens up all their specs)
Correct me if I’m wrong, but if you are looking for OSS drivers the fastest card you can get is a firegl 8800.
Even though the DRI project only gets partial specs, it’s still better than nothing. It’ll be very interesting what happens in the future, because AMD(seemingly) has been more friendly with us than even ati.
I’m unconvinced that AMD would all of a sudden announce that all cards in the ATI lineup are now OSS, come look at the specs….
But with a company that’s more friendly it’d be nice to see them increase the ATI/NDA program to the DRI guys so that it includes R300 series cards.
Until then, I’m not upgrading from my firegl 8800.
Edited 2006-06-01 02:11
“Has so far”? My English teacher would have you kneel on the corner with your arms raised! “Once was” would do a lot better. There is no such friendliness in ATI nowadays: no info for the chips, and horrendous quality proprietary drivers for Linux.
I’m totally convinced that AMD will not show the specs for all ATI chips, but there is the remote possibility that they may show the docs for newer chips than vintage Radeon 8500s … X800 architecture is not that different (it almost works with open drivers already), and would greatly improve the availability of hardware with open support. Let’s hope that there is room for hope.
Think things might get more interesting with the Linux drivers?
That is not impportant. The more important is how AMD convince Apple to use their processor series. That would be the real business.
Edited 2006-06-01 06:25
I don’t know, I just can’t really see this unless ATi was in trouble fiancially.
If they did, it could be a blow to Intel. As for Linux drivers, I’m not sure. Is it Intel or AMD that does more for Linux? I’m thinking AMD, so this could be a good thing for the Linux community.
But I just don’t think this will take off, it is just a rumor.
If they did, it could be a blow to Intel
I doubt it – Intel has been doing the same for a while: they sell CPU + chipset + video + audio + ethernet + wireless + … for a long time. Intel calls it “platform”: A “complete” solution, since a complete working system is going to need all those components. Because everything come from the same company, it’s cheaper and simpler (motherboard makers don’t have to waste time joining all the pieces)
This is the main reason why Intel is untouchable on laptops even if AMD can provide good laptop CPUs. AMD has good CPUs, but a complete system is not just a CPU. It’s more that AMD wants to play (or needs to play) the same game than Intel than other thing.
Is it Intel or AMD that does more for Linux? I’m thinking AMD
~/kernel/2.6 # grep -i intel\.com MAINTAINERS| wc -l
26
~/kernel/2.6 # grep -i amd\.com MAINTAINERS| wc -l
3
(and one from AMD is duplicated, the other is a URL not a email adress; Intel has also duplicates but a lot of them are not)
Intel has at least two or three or more guys working around the ACPI implementation, they collaborate with opensource drivers for their wireless devices, ethernet devices, video chipsets….I buy Intel just because I get great support for most of my devices, even if their CPUs have been sucking for a couple of years
Edited 2006-05-31 23:19
I would call both Intel and AMD pretty open source friendly, but Intel contributes a lot more. IMO mostly because they have so much more money to throw around while AMD has to watch every dollar they spend.
I don’t think it’s about “being able to throw money around”
Intel is a hardware company and gets money from selling hardware. Linux is increasing its share in servers. So, Intel is interested in getting good Linux support just to attract customers. You don’t “throw away” money: It’s a investment.
Example: Intel CPU with a Intel chipset (video + disks) vs an AMD CPU with Nvidia chipset (video + disks). The Intel one gets automatically full opensource support throught redhat and suse because intel contributed opensource drivers, the AMD one needs the shitty nvidia drivers.
What would choose? As an open source fan I’m quite sure which one I’d buy. Some linux people like to buy the AMD + nvidia combinations just because it’s faster in benchmarks. Perhaps I’m becoming old, but I think there’re things far more important than benchmarks…
Edited 2006-05-31 23:43
Perhaps I didn’t express myself very well – I agree with what you said about it being an investment. My point is that AMD doesn’t have much money to invest – they need to focus more on short-term gains while Intel can invest in more long-term projects.
hmm, that “platform” thingy makes me wonder about the validity of the article/editorial we had recently about apple vs dell…
it kinda seems that intel is going back to the times of the “single board computer”, or whatever you want to call it.
only diff is that the os is no longer burned onto a chip…
Intel does a lot more for Linux, and OSS in general. Most of Intel’s hardware has open specs, and they’ve funded teams to work on Linux drivers. For example, they funded the DRI driver for their integrated graphics chips.
They’ve also maintain a bunch of OSS projects, for example the reference ACPI implementation, the ORP Java runtime, and the ORC Itanium compiler.
I don’t know, I just can’t really see this unless ATi was in trouble fiancially.
There have been rumours of ATI beeing in financial trouble but their stock has been pretty stable over the past year.
Interesting, this is something I would believe because AMD need to expand in order to compete with Intel. Remember that Intel also produce chipsets for network cards and embedded devices, their market is just huge.
If AMD went into GPUs it’d have its hand in both the gamer’s pies, as well as competing at an advantage over Intel’s integrated graphics chipsets.
This would be an unadulterated disaster. ATI is a terrible company with terrible drivers and terrible customer service. Given the position AMD would like to get themselves into in the industry, this would be a disaster. If AMD were going to buy a graphics company then it would need to be nVidia.
On the flip side, you’ll have nVidia getting more than just a bit peaved, and indeed, nVidia have quite a close relationship with AMD with their founder having worked at AMD previously. nForce boards have been staggeringly popular and very mutually beneficial for both companies, and you certainly wouldn’t want to throw that down the pan. Imagine Intel and nVidia possibly getting together in response to any ATI and AMD deal? That’s not something AMD wants.
ATI are also just not a good fit for AMD. They have different priorities, operate in different ways and AMD could conceivably spend years trying to digest ATI or spit it out rather than getting anything done. The vast majority of mergers and takeovers are spectacularly huge disasters as inevitable politics and personality clashes get in the way, and it’s best to steer clear unless you’ve done your homework.
I always find it suspicious when an analyst comes out with stuff like this. There’s no evidence that AMD is thinking about it anywhere, and apparently, ATI’s stock price has gone up 9% in one day. Might be a nice pay day for someone with some shares.
Hey segedunceum,
How much did nvidia pay you to say that? My personal experience with both vendors is that ATI hardware has always been superior, their 2D image quality has always been better than Nvidia’s on any platform (you can ask Mac owners too) and in the Window’s world their 3D performance is generally better than Nvidia’s. So really what are you talking about?
This would be an unadulterated disaster. ATI is a terrible company with terrible drivers and terrible customer service.
if the above is true. AMD can put a new ATI management and fix those problems like if they never had existed.
How much did nvidia pay you to say that?
How much did ATI pay you?
My personal experience with both vendors is that ATI hardware has always been superior, their 2D image quality has always been better than Nvidia’s on any platform (you can ask Mac owners too) and in the Window’s world their 3D performance is generally better than Nvidia’s.
Then that’s your personal experience, isn’t it? My experience, and that of others, tells me that what you’ve written is utter drivel. In some areas ATI hardware might be superior, and in others nVidia’s may be superior, but the point is that overall ATI’s support and drivers on various platforms are woeful. Go figure.
I suppose you have some nice, widely accepted, benchmarks to back up your claims about better 2D and 3D performance?
So really what are you talking about?
What I’ve written. What are you talking about?
To both of you:
I’m not a graphic designer so 2D image quality is not something I get excited about. As I see it, any decent graphics card is good enough for me there. The glaring difference between nVidia and ATI in the 3D arena is speed vs. quality. I’ll use the game I play the most, World of Warcraft, as a reference. With nVidia you can acheive amazing framerates even with all quality settings maxed out, yet the game just doesn’t look as good as it does on a Radeon card set at just medium quality. However, the Radeon at medium quality is woefully slower than even low quality on the roughly equivalent nVidia card. Granted, with a top-of-the-line (expensive) ATI card you can acheive decent speed at high quality, but in a game like that where network lag is already an issue, you’re not going to have it maxed out unless you can get ~60fps so you don’t get killed in PvP situations. So it all comes down to this: If you want speed and don’t care so much for quality, go nVidia. If you want quality and speed is not an issue, ATI is the one for you. I only used one game for this example of course, but the same generally holds true in other games I currently play.
That was all in the Windows world, but in Linux things are more complicated. If you care at all about open-source, as many Linux users do, your choice between the two seems clear: ATI is, as previously stated, more open-source-friendly. Strangely though, I have found it difficult to impossible to install ATI drivers on most smaller distros. I’m not the only person either; while searching for help on the net I came across multitudes of posts by people having the same installation issues as me. Granted, installing on most mainstream distros is handled by the package manager or even the installer itself, but it is disconcerting that installation on other distros should be so difficult considering ATI’s cooperation with the open-source community. If your open-source needs necessitate and ATI card, however, you will surely find a way to get it to work on your system.
If a hardware company’s open-source attitude is of no concern to you, and you don’t mind tainting your kernel, by all means go for nVidia. Pre-build binaries are available for the mainstream distros via their package managers (with the exception of SuSE 10.1), just as with ATI. The difference comes when installing on, say, Slackware. You simply download the binary driver package from nVidia’s driver website, “sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-version-pkg1.run” and if it doesn’t find a pre-compiled binary, it builds one for you. Then edit your xorg.conf and change “nv” to “nvidia” (for which clear instructions are provided) and you now have hardware 3D under Linux. If you are using a lesser-known distro, just make sure you have the kernel source and a sane build environment and it “just works”.
Where am I going with all of this? Well, personally I use ATI in one box and nVidia in another (my gaming rig obviously). I am very happy with both companies and I have a hard time recommending one over the other. It really all boils down to what you, the user, require and desire. Go with the one that works for you, but saying one is better than the other based on your own personal experience is short-sighted at best, and in my eyes, a bit petty as well.
If you care at all about open-source, as many Linux users do, your choice between the two seems clear: ATI is, as previously stated, more open-source-friendly.
ATI can only be considered open source friendly if you forget about every card made after the 9200 series, which is a lot of cards. They make proprietary drivers for later cards just like Nvidia but the quality is subpar. Open source drivers for ATI and Nvidia are also pretty worthless if you want high performance and 3D. Intel, on the other hand, has open source drivers. The fact alone that I can get drivers for almost any Intel device is making me look away from the standard AMD/ATI/NVIDIA motherboards and towards Intel’s new offerings. I only hope that AMD will buy ATI (although I would prefer Nvidia) and see the open source light, because I have been a huge fan of AMD. If they go the opposite route and I cannot find a well supported and high quality AMD motherboard with open source drivers then I’ll have to dump AMD and go for Intel.
[having fun]
Hey nirvanix,
How much did ATI pay you to say that? My personal experience with both vendors is that NVIDIA hardware has always been superior, their 2D image quality has always been better than ATI’s on any platform (you can ask Linux users too) and in the Window’s world their 3D performance is generally better than ATI’s. So really what are you talking about?
[/having fun]
Now, behave everybody.
Edited: Moved the pseudo-tags
Edited 2006-06-01 09:35
“ATI is a terrible company with terrible drivers and terrible customer service.” – Troll.
Being a former Ati user and now a nVidia user I can say – without a doubt – that Ati drivers are on par – and even surpasses nVidia in many cases.
Because you have had some “issues” with Ati on linux doesn’t make all their drivers terrible.
Being a former Ati user and now a nVidia user I can say – without a doubt – that Ati drivers are on par – and even surpasses nVidia in many cases.
Then your experience is different then. My experience, and many others, with ATI is that they produce inadequate drivers for their hardware when compared with nVidia, on Windows and especially Linux, and the software that they bundle is badly thought out, of poor quality and can create stability problems. While other hardware vendors don’t have spectacular customer support (and none are whiter than white), ATI’s attitude is really one of ‘well, you bought the product so we don’t really care at all’ and it pervades all that they do. The bundled software as an afterthought without commitment to quality is an example.
It’s not trolling, and it’s not my fault if peoples’ experience and perception of ATI is like that. I suppose it’s up to them to change it.
Because you have had some “issues” with Ati on linux doesn’t make all their drivers terrible.
I’ve had too many issues with ATI on Linux *and* Windows. Just because you didn’t have issues, doesn’t mean many other people didn’t either. And a lot have if you bother to search around.
Edited 2006-06-01 12:01
“And a lot have if you bother to search around.”
Oh I have, but from using Ati and nVidia cards for ~1½ each, I can only say that while both have worked for day to day usage, nVidia has consitently produced more “issues” for me, especially when installing non-whql drivers (all Ati drivers are whql’ed).
(case in point, latest forceware drivers – weighing in at 40MB! – gives me render issues in RTCW:ET (opengl, even!).
And dont even get me started on:
A) TV-out, nothing but problems on *My* nVidia (6600GT)
B) CCC is pretty good end-user wise (but sucks for using .Net IMO). nVidia Forceware control panel however just reaks of crappy designed UI.
however reading your replies – it just seems like we’ve experienced different setups, and gwe’ll prob. never agree
It’s interesting that you have had such problems with your 6600GT, which is the same card I have. I’ve only played W:ET a few times, but so far have had no rendering issues at all. Doom 3 is rock-solid, and World of Warcraft is likewise stable and error-free. Perhaps there’s an issue elsewhere in your hardware; your chipset/AGP drivers, for example. For reference, I’m using an ASUS A7N8X-E with the nForce2 chipset.
I’ve not yet used the TV-out functions on my current card, but my past experience has been that ATI handles this more efficiently than nVidia, though nVidia has worked well for me too. Again though, this could be related to your other hardware.
AMD is (right now) capacity constrained : all the processors it can make now are allocated for the next 3/6 months.
ATI is a fabless GPU company
Besides, AMD recently sold spansion to focus on cpu business and it tries to cooperate and not compete (sis, via, nvidia) with it’s chipset maker partners…
AMD is going to invest 2.5 billions dollars in a new fab
and is quite short on cash (well it used to be)
For these reasons, I believe that there is no sense for AMD to BUY ATI. A merger would only be a little more likely and that isn’t much….
But hey…I’m no expert analyst
If you stop thinking in terms of technology for one minute and start thinking about money, you’ll realize this is just a thinly veiled attempt by an analyst to give ATI stock a nice bump before his firm dumps the stock, making losers out of anyone who believed him.
Look at the ticker, ATI stock is up 9% today on wild speculation. It worked:
http://www.google.com/finance?q=ATYT
Nothing to see here, especially because AMD wouldn’t piss off nVidia, the company that makes the majority of their core-logic chipsets.
Sort of like Apple buying Adobe, Adobe goes up to $40 or so, now its down to around $29. You have to wonder with these analysts.
take their CPU expertise and transfer it to the GPU? Meaning, would there be a dual core and/or 64bit GPU in the future?
Quite hard. A dual-core GPU would have an insane amount of transistors (above 500M+)… Yeild would be crap with the current techniques and memory bandwidth would be even more of an issue. I would forget about it in the near fiture.
As for 64-bit GPU… The original GeForce got a 256-bit core, going 64-bit would be a regression.
or maybe have ATI create a GPU that uses the hypertransport bus?
ie, instead of buying a whole seperate card you just plug the GPU into a socket next to the CPU and presto. i wonder how it would manage memory use tho (hopefully not with that dreaded shared memory stuff that you normaly see for on-MB graphics).
now if AMD allso grab that physics chip creator and do the same there, you could realy have interesting times for the gamers
Its about the ‘whole system’ mass produce cpus and gpus, integrate them on a motherboard with partnerships with ASUS, and sell complete boards to Dell, who’ll then simply dump them into sub $1000 computers for the masses.
Who they’ll be competing against won’t be Nvidia, but with Intel, their graphics processors, and whether AMD can pull the prices down for their high end GPU’s, mass produce them, and get hardware vendors interested in purchasing the whole kit off AMD directly.
ps. Don’t be suprised to see maybe in the future, Broadcom being boughtout/merged with AMD as AMD starts looking for the wireless technology to make a complete competitor to Intel Centrino.
Edited 2006-06-01 01:32
I wonder why you got negative score on your post…
I like the idea having an all AMD pc: AMD CPU, AMD/ATI graphics card. next an AMD mainbooad only if AMD would buy a struggling motherboard company
Edited 2006-06-01 03:11
I’ve been thinking about the implications for Linux if this happens since I first read the article on slashdot a few hours ago. At first I was worried because ATI doesn’t play very nice with Linux. Their drivers are not only closed but they suck. I’ve been an AMD fan for a while now but that could go away in a heart beat if I’m stuck with ATI. Intel graphics are better supported under Linux and Nvidia makes the least problematic binary driver that I have yet encountered.
If this deal goes through ATI will be owned by AMD. AMD will make the decisions concerning Linux drivers and considering there are a lot of Opteron/Linux servers out there I can’t see how it would be finacially viable to NOT opensource their chipset drivers. Vendors won’t be able to ship Linux with the drivers installed. This isn’t a very good for vendors or for AMD.
There are only two ways I can see this going sour. If AMD decides to only use their newly acquired ATI chipsets in desktop machines only and leaves servers to independent chipset manufacturers, then the acquisition will probably only hurt Linux. Of course it is also possible that AMD will only offer 2D accelrated drivers. After all, who needs 3D on a server. This is better than nothing but not very useful for a modern desktop.
I assume that AMD will go after Intel by offering entire boards with AMD sockets and ATI chipsets and hopefully this will force AMD to offer better Linux support to satisfy their ever expanding Linux customers.
Not only ATI is a FABless company (so why would AMD bother to buy it?) that has zero experience in -building- CPU cores (AMD is already highly proficient in designing CPU cores), by doing so, AMD will -immediately- lose its allegiance with nVidia AND VIA.
Give the fact that AMD produces little, if any chipsets, losing both nVidia and VIA will put an end to their race to beat Intel.
Now, what exactly does AMD has to gain by buying ATI?
Let me guess, wild speculation to raise ATI’s stock price? OSNews should know better then to post this crap. Sorry.
Fud.. I agree.. Just a ploy to raise stock price.
Why is everybody wondering if this potential or made-up stuff is good for OSS or not ?
Its more about money ,strategies & allegiances than about OSS – cuddling OSS doesn’t generate money.
There needs to be more than OSS friendliness – like SGI .
…this really came out of left field. I never would’ve expected something like this, so I’m still kind of sceptical. AMD doesn’t have a lot to gain except even more enemies, and that is something they should avoid, IMHO of course.
AMD with ATI? Why not! This could be a great alliance between 2 great companies that commit for hard-core gaming!
Long live gaming!
Sweet Jesus, when will Canadian companies stop giving into the almighty buck … Well, I guess that leaves us with Canadian Tire, until Home Depot buys them
make that it does not happen…
I am very happy with my AMD+nvidia combo under Linux and I don’t want to loose that because AMD would push for ATI.
I was ATI fan but under Linux, there is no comparison… nVidia is few years ahead on commitment for drivers. Just a year ago, ATI was claiming no need to do 64bits drivers as Windows64 was not yet released…. I was running Linux 64bits for 3 months already.
Under Windows is a different story… but I like to be the one choosing the OS I want.
because AMD dont make chipset nor motherboard… as someone else said upper, AMD need other vendor to supply chipset for its CPU, so cutting its tie with NVidia and VIA would be sucidal move. AMD would simply loose it’s attraction for chipset and motherboard maker. Also I wouldn’t be a fan for this, as my preferated combo (AMD+Nvidia) would become like ice and fire…
The smartest move for AMD now would surely to consider a merger with VIA. They have graphic chipset, provide low performance motherboard chipset (compare to NVidia and ATI), and their grip on the embded market would help boost AMD which is lagging behing with it’s Geode. It could result in a nice competitor against the X-Scale platform from Intel.
Also I dont think NVidia or ATI would find themselve threatned by VIA if AMD decide to stay in value and serveur market, leaving the gamer market to them. One who could be hurt still is SIS who would undoubtely fall (AMD could simply refuse them the right to produce for their processor).
As said upper, buying a network card producer could be an avenue against Intel too.
if amd buys ati it can use it’s fabs to make gpus with out retooling. also it think amd can get ati chips running at 2 gigs in no time. this can be very good for amd and ati in a big way.
nVidia has bought Uli chipset manufacturers that were almost the only ones who delivered decent chipset for AMD processor, beside nVidia, no to speak about ATI’s chipsets. AMD had only the choice between good but expensive nVidia’s chipset, or the cheap’n crappy ATI’s chipsets. Now AMD is offering itself a chance to get really good chipsets side of the nVidia catalog. I think the whole stuff is beyon the GPU problem !
Kochise
Interesting, an AMD-ATI combination could give Centrino a run for Intels money – a thought I really enjoy.
“…according to RBC Capital Markets”
Just a reminder to the community … RBC bad.
In the thick of SCO’s (now infamous) litigation free-for-all, the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) followed suit with their buddies at BayStar and invested millions of dollars in SCO, which no doubt bostered the legal resources available for their cause.
Only later did they bail out of the investment.
RBC bad.
see:
Royal Bank of Canada invests in SCO | CNET News.com
http://news.com.com/2110-7344-5093997.html
The Mystery of BayStar, Microsoft and SCO
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/33529.html
and
Royal Bank of Canada Bails on SCO Investment
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1588123,00.asp