1486173
story
Comments: 508 +- News: It's Official - AMD Buys ATI on Monday July 24 2006, @06:51AM
Posted
by
Hemos
on Monday July 24 2006, @06:51AM
from the i've-become-more-powerful-then-you-can-possibly-imagine dept.
from the i've-become-more-powerful-then-you-can-possibly-imagine dept.
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicamd.gif); width:53px; height:53px;
amd
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicmoney.gif); width:84px; height:74px;
money
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topichardware.gif); width:64px; height:55px;
hardware
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.
Related Stories
Nvidia Working on a CPU+GPU Combo 178 comments
VIA and NVIDIA Working Together For PC Design 93 comments
The only difference between a car salesman and a computer salesman is
that the car salesman knows he's lying.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.
Tomorrow (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Tomorrow (Score:3, Insightful)
*shudder*
Re:Tomorrow (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Tomorrow (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Tomorrow (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
Parent
Think about what you just said (Score:5, Insightful)
Because, if they DO PROTECT THEIR IP, The OTHER GUY has to waste TONS OF MONEY on reverse-engineering teams and highly-qualified people to reverse-engineer the processor via electron microscopes.
It's not the EQUIPMENT that is expensive, it is the PEOPLE. And, as you Linux zealots know FULL WELL, reverse-engineering is EXPENSIVE in terms of PEOPLE and TIME.
If you publish the specifications of your latest graphics chip for all to see, suddenly your competitors don't have to divert staff from working on next-generation architectures just to reverse-engineer your system. Instead, they can analyze your documentation in a fraction of the time.
It's a two-way street, so stop deluding yourself that there's only one side to the story. Publishing full specs for your graphics chips is like writing your competition a blank check. Intel is the only one who doesn't have an issues doing this because their graphics technology is always following.
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.
Yes. There are still many well-supported video cards sold in AGP. In fact, you can still get well-supported video cards in PCI, a fifteen-year-old technology. They're not top-performers, but beggars can't be choosers.
The video card market is transitioning to PCIe with surprising speed precisely because they do not want another VLB fiasco. The PCI -> AGP transition was slow because PCI still had a future for other types of cards, but the AGP -> PCIe transition was rushed to avoid market confusion. You can still buy plenty of AGP cards, but the big players have made it clear: there won't be any more improvements for AGP.
Parent
Re:Think about what you just said (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullshit, sorry. We don't want their beloved silicon blueprints of their latest GPUs, just information on how to make them work. Want to draw a polygon? Send this command to the card. Do a hardware T&L? This other one. You can learn only so much from a driver sourcecode or techincal specifications on how to program a GPU. Don't beleive me? Check the information released by both nVidia and ATI for their older GPUs, and see how much you can infer from them.
Parent
Re:Tomorrow (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Tomorrow (Score:5, Interesting)
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 ?
Parent
Re:Tomorrow (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
x86-64 is not part of the IP sharing (Score:5, Informative)
Once AMD got Microsoft's cooperation building support for x86-64 into Windows, they hardped on about the open standard. This protected AMD from Intel, who were already secretly working on their own implementation of x86-64. Normally, once Intel realized how potentially powerful x86-64 was, they were sure to create their own incompatible version (ala SSE and 3DNOW!) to try and derail AMD.
But the open standard stopped Intel from doing this. Microsoft pointed to the open standard, and told Intel flat-out that they were not going to support two versions of 64-bit x86.
x86-64 is an open standard. AMD's copyrighted implementation of x86-64 is called AMD64. Inte;'s copyrighted implementation of x86-64 is EMT64.
Parent
Don't really know.. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Don't really know.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Don't really know.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
could be good.. (Score:5, Interesting)
also, not official yet, as government regulatory bodies need to approve it.
It WILL Be Good! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Probably Not Going To Happen... (Score:5, Funny)
Nah, weren't you reading yesterday? ... (Score:4, Interesting)
On the other hand, releasing either open source drivers, or a combination of binary drivers, along with documentation (so those who want to write their own CAN), would certainly be the best of both worlds.
Parent
Driver code not the issue (Score:4, Interesting)
The drawback would be a lockout for experimental 3D APIs. But it would be no worse than the binary driver situation we have now.
Parent
I'd say I told you so.... (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=3
-Charlie
AMD & ATI (Score:5, Funny)
DAAMIT!
This is a very good thing. (Score:5, Interesting)
*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.
Re:This is a very good thing. (Score:4, Interesting)
-Charlie (the author of the Inq article)
Parent
See Hackers Dictionary: "Wheel of reincarnation" (Score:5, Informative)
See the entry in the Hacker's Dictionary / Jargon File for "Wheel of reincarnation [catb.org]":
-Mark
Parent
Re:Graphics in software (Score:4, Interesting)
Once you can fab a processor large enough to contain 40 functional cores - how big a GPU do you think you could fab on the same process? The simple fact is that a GPU is completely crippled compared to a CPU. There are huge tradeoffs in the design to get that kind of performance. Stream processing is very limited compared to a von Neumann architecture if you care about latency in the slightest. But for graphics - it's perfect. Throwing completely independent parallel chunks of data through an array of vector processors is a much simpler challenge than attempting to extract parallelism from sequential code. The sequential code has pesky things like control-flow that is missing in the gfx shaders, and I don't mean the rubbish that ATi/Nvidia are selling as control-flow in their current designs. That is sheer marketing given the size of the shader batches and the depth of the pipelines.
So I don't think the big 'ol wheel of reincarnation is going to move rendering back into software anytime soon. But what people forget is that AMD is not really a processor company. They are a fab company that just happens to design some kick-ass processors. Their main business is silicon, and buying ATi is the biggest chunk of vertical integration you can imagine...
Parent
Don't believe it myself (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Re:Don't believe it myself (Score:4, Informative)
Hello? My 7800GS card has a memory bandwidth of 40GB/second from on-board RAM. It would be utterly crippled by a measly 10GB/second shared with the CPU.
Parent
One correction. (Score:4, Informative)
Actually Intel has been a big supporter of OSS. They helped port Linux the Itanium and have provided all the documentation to their video chips.
I think you are confusing Intel with Microsoft. Intel has been one of the most open hardware companies.
AMD has also been very good. ATI like nVidia.... Well let's say not so good.
I really don't get this.
AMD could use some good chip-sets but they have made their own for the Opteron so I don't see what they gain from ATI.
AMD could use a good low end integrated video solution for low end desktops and servers. Yes it is true but servers almost never use nVidia or ATI graphics cards. When I set up a server I only plug the monitor in when I do the install and if something really bad happens.
I have to think this comes down to laptops. AMD has not done well in that market and a one stop shop for a laptop solution like Intel offers might be a good solution.
I wouldn't hold my breath on the good open source ATI drivers for Linux. Of course if it happens I might dump my nVidia based motherboard and Video card. I have been buying nVidia just because of their better Linux support for years.
Parent
Re:This is a very good thing. (Score:3, Interesting)
I could see this perhaps in the mobile/embedded market, but not in the server/workstation space. At least not for a LONG time. It's just not a good idea.
Makes me uneasy (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:AMD designs (Score:4, Insightful)
What I can buy from Intel:
Server chassis + power supply
Motherboard
CPU(s)
NIC
RAID
What I can buy from AMD:
CPU(s)
Small-medium OEMs are going to like Intel because it gives them one point of support for most of their major components. It also gives them a single "partner" with which to negotiate pricing; the larger volume of product means they can get overall better pricing.
Taking on ATI might be AMDs move to start fixing that shortfall in their business model. If they put a solid OEM-friendly motherboard on the market, it will be a huge step in the right direction. With Conroe presently beating the pants off AMD's offerings, this is well-timed.
Parent
Goodbye ATI? (Score:5, Interesting)
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... (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
Execs overly optimistic (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
ATI no longer competes directly with NVidia (Score:4, Interesting)
AMD, ATI, NVidia and Intel *all* make motherboard chipsets.
ATI, Nvidia and Intel all make video processors.
So do SIS, S3, and VIA.
Yet they all work (relatively) well with each other.
This isn't about marketshare, it's about technology. ATI does something that AMD wants, so AMD is acquiring the company for the tech. The market won't feel a thing, I promise you. Competition will continue, just like it did when Micron acquired Rendition (wipes a tear for his Verite v2200) and when NVidia bought out 3dfx (wipes another for his Banshee).
Since everyone's got their prognosticator's caps on today, I'm going to come out and say that, within 5 years, we'll be seeing GPU processors integrated into the motherboard, accessable to both ATI and NVidia (and Matrox, and S3, and
I think we're seeing a move back to specialization. We've already got separate Audio chips, separate networking chips, even chips to handle I/O for RAID and such. With the new market for Physics co-processors, I'm sure we'll only see more for tasks such as AI, and when the next big UI design is unleashed (either some kind of brain-reading technology, or a true 3d input system -- the WII is just the tip of the iceberg!) another co-processor will be made to handle that. With AMD's focus on integrating external processors with technologies such as HyperTransport, undoubtedly they'll be able to compete for a long time.
And the best part is, we get to choose from strong market competitors. As long as there is innovation, we win.
Hmmmm, Consoles (Score:4, Insightful)
A.) Xbox, Nintendo
Analysis.....Good move.
One reason why AMD may have bought ATI (Score:5, Interesting)
Next year, AMD will be shipping quad core Athlons and Opterons. But, if they wanted to they could replace one CPU with a GPU and have video on die. And if they wanted to they could replace a second CPU with sound, USB, SATA, Gigabit, wireless etc etc etc, and have an entire computer on a chip.
VIA has been trying to do this for years. AMD has the fab capacity to pull it off.
AMD could be the first company to enable the $150.00 PC to exist (by saybe 2009). Smaller than a mac-mini, dual core, and all you need to get it to run is slap some flash memory on board for a hard drive substitute, some DDR2, a cheap DVD drive and Voila! Instant computer.
Imagine a Dual Core Athy with a gig of ram, 20GB flash disk all in the form factor of about twice the size of an IPOD.
Oh you could put a screen on it too, DGMS.
This could be a great thing. My only advice for AMD / ATI is: Dedicate some resources to drivers, or better yet, open source the GPU API.
Raydude
Re:Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Linux Support ? (Score:4, Informative)
I'm running OpenSuSE 10.1 on my Thinkpad R51 with a pretty standard ATI Mobility Radeon and can I get the ATI drivers working? Can I hell. Always "no device for screen" or some such error. So I'm stuck with the OSS drivers which although are great for 2D, don't perform well enough for anything other than TuxCart.
On the other hand, the NVidia FX5900 in my desktop machine (also running OpenSuSE 10.1) was a breeze. Drop to run level 3, run installer, reboot, job done.
Bob
Parent
Re:Linux Support ? (Score:4, Interesting)
NVidia seems to make better blobs than ATI, but it is still a blob [openbsd.org]:
Parent
Re:Maybe (Score:5, Funny)
A die holding an AMD core and an ATI GPU may be 'neat', 'fab', 'brill' or even 'ace' - but 'cool' - I think not!
Parent
Re:Maybe (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
Parent
Re:Maybe (Score:5, Interesting)
I could swear that's they way that it is, but I can't find any definitive reference to the settlement.
Parent
Re:Maybe (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re:Should we welcome our new overlords? :D (Score:3)
Dear AMD:
We, your faithful processor purchasers (yes, we have many), have long been forced to buy nVidia hardware because of ATI's poor quality drivers under Linux. Please work the same magic you did with the AMD64 and give us something we can be proud of.
The undersigned.
Re:Intel has killed gaming...but AMD has restored (Score:4, Informative)
Parent