AMD & ATI: The Acquisition from all Points of View
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 1, 2006 10:26 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Our Thoughts
Obviously each of the four companies we talked about today had their own take on the merger and no one here can really predict where things will go. On the one extreme, this deal could completely change everything; the combination of AMD and ATI could result in a powerhouse finally able to really compete with Intel while at the same time taking serious market share away from NVIDIA. On the other extreme, the combination could be a mess, resulting in a bloated company that is not much better off than before, with Intel and NVIDIA standing to reap the greatest rewards. It's far too early to tell and with the deal not even closed yet, there's no sense in counting any chickens.
That being said, there are some points we feel are worth discussing, and some analysis that can help give perspective to the whole merger. A lot of what we've presented so far is the company line from the four major CPU/Chipset manufacturers, and clearly there is going to be some bias in how each views the situation. It's far too easy to look at only one side of this story, so the following is designed to help examine the pros and cons of a handful of the facets of this merger.
Integrated Graphics is about to get Better
There's one definite outcome from the AMD/ATI deal, and that is an increase in the quality of integrated graphics. Currently, Intel is relatively unchallenged when it comes to integrated graphics solutions; independent GPU manufacturers like ATI and NVIDIA offer better integrated graphics solutions, but at much higher prices to keep their margins high. If AMD acquires ATI, we could in theory see an AMD platform with integrated graphics that would significantly outperform a similarly priced integrated Intel platform - hopefully this will force Intel to improve its integrated graphics.
Taking things one step further: if AMD puts a small ATI graphics core on-die or at least on-chip, the performance expectations for integrated graphics solutions would go up once more. Remember that one strength consoles have is the extremely low latency, high bandwidth interconnect between the CPU and GPU; a highly integrated CPU/GPU combo would be able to deliver that same performance advantage on a relatively low end PC.
Cool Stuff is Coming
On the investor call where AMD officially announced its plans to acquire ATI, a common theme discussed was AMD's Torrenza strategy. As AMD announced at its analyst day back in June, AMD plans on openly licensing its coherent HyperTransport bus allowing for companies like ATI or NVIDIA to develop GPUs and other co-processors that would plug into a Hyper Transport slot on a motherboard. The benefit is a very low latency, cache coherent interface between the CPU and any other device that it needs to feed large amounts of data to. With ATI operating under AMD's wing, AMD effectively guarantees that we'll see GPUs take advantage of Torrenza.
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sykemyke - Wednesday, August 9, 2006 - link
Hey, why don't we just put FPGA block on the cpu?This way, programmer could create really new Assembly command, like 3DES or something..
unclebud - Monday, August 7, 2006 - link
it was good to just read any sort of article from the site owner.was feeling that the reviews section had just fallen into the depths of fanboyism, so it was good just to hear somebody at least sometimes impartial THINKING out loud rather than just showing off.
what's really interesting to me is that the whole article mimics what was written in the latest (i think) issue of cpu from selfsame author.
good issue incidentally. will buy it from wal-mart hopefully tomorrow (they have 10% off magazines)
cheers, and keep representing -- i still have the 440bx benchmarks/reviews filed away in a notebook
jp327 - Sunday, August 6, 2006 - link
I'm not a gamer so I usually dont follow the video segment, but looking at the Torenzaslide on page 2(this article), I can't help but see the similarity between what amd forcasts and the PS3's Cell architectuter:
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2379&p...">http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2379&p... cell
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2768&p...">http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2768&p... K8L
Doesn't AMD have a co-op of some sort w/ IBM?
RSMemphis - Sunday, August 6, 2006 - link
I thought you guys already knew this, but apparently not.Most likely, there will be no Fab 30, it will be re-equipped to be Fab 38, 300 mm with 65 nm features.
Considering all the aging Fabs out there, it makes sense to have the 90 nm parts externally manufactured.
xsilver - Saturday, August 5, 2006 - link
of the 5.4b of ATI's purchase price, is most of that due to intellectual property?i mean as you state, ATI has no fabs.
and then regarding the future of GPU's, with CPU's now becoming more and more multithreaded, couldnt it be fathomable that some of the work be moved back to the cpu in order to fill that workload?
unless of course gpus are also going multithreaded soon? (on die, not just SLI)
eugine MW - Saturday, August 5, 2006 - link
I had to register just to say well written article. It has provided me with much more information regarding the merger than any other website.Greatly written.
MadBoris - Thursday, August 3, 2006 - link
How is the GPU on a CPU even considered a good idea by anyone?GPU bandwidth + CPU Bandwith = how the hell are mobo bus's and chipset going to handle all that competing bandwidth from one socket. Either way their is crazy amount of conflicting bandwidth from one socket, I doubt it can be done without serious thrashing penalties.
When I want to upgrade my video card, I have to buy some $800 CPU/GPU combo. :O
Call me crazy, but that sounds like an April fools joke. But who's kidding who?
It's doom and gloom for PC gaming, and AMD just made it worse.
JarredWalton - Thursday, August 3, 2006 - link
Considering that we have the potential for dual socket motherboards with a GPU in the second socket, of a "mostly GPU CPU" in the second socket, GPU on CPU isn't terrible. Look at Montecito: 1.7 billion transistors on a CPU. A couple more process transitions and that figure will be common for the desktop CPUs.What do you do with another 1.4 billion transistors if you don't put it into a massive L2/L3 cache? Hmmm... A GPU with fast access to the CPU, maybe multiple FSBs so the GPU can still get lots of bandwidth, throw on a physics processor, whatever else you want....
Short term, GPU + CPU in a package will be just a step up from current IGPs, but long term it has a lot of potential.
dev0lution - Thursday, August 3, 2006 - link
1. There was no mention of the channel in this article, which is the vehicle by which most of these products make it to market. Intel and Nvidia have a leg up on any newly formed ATI/AMD entity, in that they make sure their partners make money and are doing more and more to reward them for supporting their platforms. AMD has been somewhat confused lately, trying to keep their promises to their partners while trying to meet sales goals on the other.2. Intel and Nvidia could ramp up their partnership a whole lot quicker than AMD/ATI can (no pesky merger and integrating cultures to worry about), so now you have Nvidia with a long term, very gradual share shift on the AMD side with a quicker ramp up on the Intel side of things to replace ATI's share. Intel and Nvidia in the short term end up doing pretty well, with plenty of time to develop next gen platforms to compete with whatever the long term AMD/ATI roadmap looks like.
3. AMD/ATI got more publicity and PR over this whole deal than they probably could have gotten with their annual marketing budgets combined. Everyone inside and outside the tech world have been talking about this merger which isn't a bad way to get brand recognition for no additional investment.
s1wheel4 - Wednesday, August 2, 2006 - link
This will be the end of AMD and ATI as we know them today....and the end of both in the high end enthusiasts market...when merged; the new company will be nothing more than a mediocre company both of which will lag behind Intel and NVIDIA in performance.