Merged AMD-ATI monster embarks on monopoly-busting
 

http://theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=33230

Intel in the crosshairs, as execs explain themselves

By Paul Hales: Monday 24 July 2006, 14:31
BEST MATES AMD and ATI held a conference call today in which the
companies' biggest cheeses sought justify their new cohabitation.

The 'excited' executives were led by AMD CEO Hector Ruiz who lauded the
deal as re-shaping the future of the industry. "We're excited about
what we can do together in a market dominated for years by one
company," in the first of many digs at arch-competitor Intel.

AMD confirmed that much of ATI's operation will be brought in-house,
but AMD will remain, "committed to ATI's customers, employers and
Canada," said Ruiz.

He added that he didn't expect lay-offs "in any significant numbers".

Ruiz confessed that AMD had been mulling its best options for a
partnership over the past two to three years and it is ATI's expertise
in the mobility space as well as its chipset business that makes the
firm such a good fit with AMD.

The ATI team will play and key role in the joint future of the company
he said, adding he was confident that the companies and their
respective cultures would integrate well together, their products
having occupied "adjacent real-estate on motherboards" for so long.

The executives, Ruiz and ATI CEO Dave Orton, along with Dirk Meyer and
chief AMD bean counter Bob Rivet were agreed the deal would provide
better value to customers and shareholders in both companies. Bob said
the merged company would be better positioned to achieve AMD's stated
objective to "break the monopoly".

AMD's customers had been insisting AMD play a bigger role in the
"eco-system" of its mobility and consumer electronics marketplaces,
said Meyer.

He said he expected the PC to continue to play a central role in both
the business environment and the home, suggesting that "non-general
purpose" processing units such as GPUs would be integrated into
computing platforms much like the floating point co-processor had
disappeared over the past ten to fifteen years.

Dave Orton confessed to being as excited as anyone. Be said the
combined company would be able to look beyond the CPU, GPU and chipset
landscapes and increase its penetration into enterprise, mobile
computing and consumer electronics sectors.

"AMD has great CPUs, we have great GPUs," he said. He reckoned the next
stage for the merged company would be to integrate its offerings,
combining two or more products to create devices that improve on the
sum of their two parts.

The new company will achieve "cost synergies" worth $75 million by the
end of 2007, increasing to $125 million by the end of 2008. By then the
company will be well into its "integration plan", more details on which
it promised to deliver soon.

The company expects to lose ATI revenues from it work on Intel
platforms which bean-counting Bob said was worth about $100 million per
quarter, a loss Ruiz is confident the company will make up for.

Dave Orton said ATI would continue to deliver Intel chipsets for as
long as its customer wanted it to.

Merged AMD-ATI monster embarks on monopoly-busting
 

AirRaid wrote:

http://theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=33230



I just want to know, does this mean I will have to go with intel to keep
using nvidia?

--
Godwin is a net-nazi
Learn about spam: http://www.seige-perilous.org/spam/spam.html

Merged AMD-ATI monster embarks on monopoly-busting
 

"AirRaid" wrote in message
oups.com...


http://theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=33230

Intel in the crosshairs, as execs explain themselves


yay, AMD and ATI, all the crap in one package now!

Merged AMD-ATI monster embarks on monopoly-busting
 

"Quaestor" wrote in message ...
AirRaid wrote:

http://theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=33230

I just want to know, does this mean I will have to go with intel to keep
using nvidia?

With Conroe being the platform of choice for the foreseeable
future, a better question is, why would you want to go with
AMD in the first place?

If ATI's shareholders approve this, they have rocks for brains.

Merged AMD-ATI monster embarks on monopoly-busting
 

Garth wrote:
"AirRaid" wrote in message
oups.com...

http://theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=33230

Intel in the crosshairs, as execs explain themselves


yay, AMD and ATI, all the crap in one package now!



Aah... I see this was x-posted to the NVidia NG.

Merged AMD-ATI monster embarks on monopoly-busting
 

AirRaid wrote:
http://theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=33230

Intel in the crosshairs, as execs explain themselves

By Paul Hales: Monday 24 July 2006, 14:31
BEST MATES AMD and ATI held a conference call today in which the
companies' biggest cheeses sought justify their new cohabitation.

But will they get rid of the stupid and outdated .Net requirement to
d/l ATI drivers? I know they can be downloaded from other websites, but
I didn't find out about that until after hours of frustration trying to
download drivers from the ATI website and no response from ATI tech
support, and I'm sure many others aren't aware of it. I've swtiched to
nVidia because of it and it'll take a lot to get me to switch back.

SG
--
This isn't an office, it's hell with flourescent lighting.

Merged AMD-ATI monster embarks on monopoly-busting
 

* shegeek72:

But will they get rid of the stupid and outdated .Net requirement to
d/l ATI drivers?

What problems do you have with .NET?

I know they can be downloaded from other websites, but
I didn't find out about that until after hours of frustration trying to
download drivers from the ATI website and no response from ATI tech
support, and I'm sure many others aren't aware of it. I've swtiched to
nVidia because of it and it'll take a lot to get me to switch back.

Switching gfx cards just to avoid .NET is just plain silly...

Benjamin

Merged AMD-ATI monster embarks on monopoly-busting
 

EDM wrote:

If ATI's shareholders approve this, they have rocks for brains.

Yeah, and pass up that $US162 000 000 termination fee? Rocks for brains!
--
Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available.

- Benford's Law of Controversy

Merged AMD-ATI monster embarks on monopoly-busting
 

"EDM" wrote in message
ink.net...
"Quaestor" wrote in message
...
AirRaid wrote:

http://theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=33230

I just want to know, does this mean I will have to go with intel to keep
using nvidia?

With Conroe being the platform of choice for the foreseeable
future, a better question is, why would you want to go with
AMD in the first place?

If ATI's shareholders approve this, they have rocks for brains.




Why is Intel the platform of choice? While I agree it seems they have the
performance crown for now, AMD is still a good bargain, and will probably be
cheaper than an equivalent Intel counterpart so AMD will win the
price/performance war. I just picked up an AM2 4600+ for $249 shipped to my
door.

The thing that boggles my mind is that AMD opted to ditch the 1MB L2 Cache
versions in favor of the 512KB. While I know this will just simplify the
product line, and the 1MB cache gave marginal increases in speed, if nothing
else, for marketing reasons, 1MB still looks better than 512KB when compared
with Conroe's 2MB and 4MB cache. I know AMD did it for cost reasons, but not
sure if it was a very wise choice.

Anyhow, guess I'll have to live with the "underdog" for a couple years now
that I've got it. ;)

Merged AMD-ATI monster embarks on monopoly-busting
 

Benjamin Gawert wrote:
* shegeek72:

But will they get rid of the stupid and outdated .Net requirement to
d/l ATI drivers?

What problems do you have with .NET?

I know they can be downloaded from other websites, but
I didn't find out about that until after hours of frustration trying to
download drivers from the ATI website and no response from ATI tech
support, and I'm sure many others aren't aware of it. I've swtiched to
nVidia because of it and it'll take a lot to get me to switch back.

Switching gfx cards just to avoid .NET is just plain silly...

No, no it isn't. People switch their entire OS to avoid .NET - some of
us would happily switch our entire house.

CC