WOW does this title need to be edited. I didn't bother reading it via my RSS feed, figuring, "uh, ok, Intel is buying nVidia". That's because the RSS feed doesn't include the "cringely.com".
Intel and NVIDIA generally operate under different philsophies. Intel, of course, adamantly backs the CPU. NVIDIA has for a while been touting the superiority of the GPU and the idea of general purpose GPUs, with projects like CUDA.
Not to mention, NVIDIA is still reeling from the costs of repairing faulty GPUs from last year, coupled with the impact of the recession on demand. They were also facing pricing pressures from AMD, especially at the consumer/enthusiast level. All of this led to fixed costs and cut into margins, which resulted in lower profits in the last several quarters. However, NVIDIA's management has remained resolute with a long-term focus. IMHO, NVIDIA is, at the moment, grossly undervalued. So that $110B vs $8B market cap is a bit misleading.
Looking at the respective balance sheets of both companies, it's certainly possible. I was thinking it might not be.. but was surprised to see Intel has a 110bn market cap versus nVidia's 8..
I remember precisely - Cringely called it Carly Fiorina's attempt to "reset the shot clock" on her tenure at HP and that it would hurt HP. It went down exactly that way.
While i share your sentiment, NVIDIA's binary blobs are pretty good.
I wont be buying any ATI product until their drivers improve substantially and Intels GPU's don't really cut it for anything beyond basic desktop effects.
from the article: The problem is that Intel hired a 3rd party vendor called Tungsten Graphics [now a whole owned subsidiary of VMware Inc.] to create the drivers for the parts. Problem with those drivers is the fact that "GMA500 suffers from utterly crappy drivers. Intel didn't buy any drivers from Imagination Technologies for the SGX, but hired Tungsten Graphics to write the drivers for it. Despite the repeated protest from the side of Imagination Technologies to Intel, Tungsten drivers DO NOT use the onboard firmware of the chip, forcing the chip to resort to software vertex processing."
Just one comment about the x86 instruction set: Right is wrong. I'm just amazed at the engineers at Intel who are getting out with this horrible instruction set (horrible, and the same time - the only assembly instruction set that I can read & write) :)
If I'm not behind the times, wouldn't there be antitrust problems from the huge percentage of the chipset market that would be held by the combined company?
However, with AMD holding a clear lead in the GPU market at the moment, and the GPU market probably being of more concern to regulators than the chipset market, now is probably the easiest time for Intel to buy NVidia.
Intel will not buy Nvidia. More like Intel can't. The deal would never go through all the checks. Intel doesnt need Nvidia and Nvidia cannot make a CPU part. At-least not an x86 CPU part (licensing).
Intel needs nVidia because it (arguably) cannot make a GPU part (the ones it has are slow, Larrabee is a bust). nVidia is (arguably) less dependent on Intel since it has standalone GPUs as well as low power integrated ARM+GPUs. This makes nVidia well positioned in the low power mobile world, a place where Intel just started to aspire to.
In "An Inconvenient Truth: Intel Larrabee story revealed"
http://www.brightsideofnews.com/print/2009/10/12/an-inconven... (discussed on HN yesterday http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=980927), skip down to the section "GPU is dead" and the war with nVidia. In it, the author asserts Intel started a war with nVidia before it had real ammunition (Larrabee) and is in a world of hurt as a result. His speculation is "...on Intel giving an x86 license to nVidia in exchange for cross-license patent, but only time will tell how the situation will develop."
If true, that would give nVidia a x86 CPU in addition to their ARM CPU and graphics GPU. Pretty interesting thought.
Yes, there is irony in the world today. Intel acquired StrongARM (renamed XScale) with an ARM CPU license from DEC. IIRC, they had a development license which meant that they (now Marvell) could modify the instruction set.
So Intel had an unusually permissive license to a very popular, very low power CPU architecture and they sold it (June 2006). A few years later, they are struggling to recreate that low power capability in their x86 architecture.
hm, intel tries hard to make a decent GPU for years now and fails miserably every time. AMD bought ATI, why intel shouldn't pass checks to buy nvidia then? Nvidia seems a bit lost in their direction and they are using TSMC's fabs, where they could use intels if there were an acquisition. Both companies have superb engineering talent. Also, there was always this feud between AMD/ATi vs intel/NVIDIA rigs amongst geeks, might be a consolidation on that turf also.
He predicted the HP/Compaq merger (and, further, predicated that it wouldn't help). He also predicted Sun's march to irrelevance. And that the iPhone would crush Windows Mobile.
