RSSWhat would NVidia want with a CPU company?
by Scott M. Fulton, III
There may be an actual window of opportunity for graphics chip producer NVidia to acquire some x86 CPU design expertise and production prowess. But as In-Stat's Jim McGregor told us, there are reasons why NVidia + Via wouldn't work.
There are more than two CPU producers in the known universe, although it's Intel and AMD that tend to dominate any discussion of it. But what could be the world's #3 CPU producer -- a very distant third -- is once again the topic of discussion, as rumors of Via Technologies' possible acquisition by graphics chip producer NVidia were turned up from "simmer" to "high" this morning, by a report from the respected Taiwanese industry daily DigiTimes.
As the editor of In-Stat's Microprocessor Report, Jim McGregor, told BetaNews this morning, there may be some logic to considering such an offer...but there may not be much logic to consummating a deal.
"Obviously, after some of the things that have gone on in our industry, anything is possible," McGregor told BetaNews. "But I don't know that this actually makes that much sense for NVidia."
The most valuable Via resources from NVidia's assessment could be its chipset designers. Though NVidia is based in Santa Clara, California, and Via has assets in Austin, Texas, both operate chipset design centers in Taiwan, where Via's management is based. Via's chipsets have been its principal consumer products over the last half-decade, commanding as much as a fifth of the world's market share in a crowded field, with Intel and NVidia actually falling behind.
But ever since a corporate restructuring in late 2006, all has not looked well for Via. Last September, Via lost one of its leading designers, Chewei Lin, to a new division of rival AsusTek called ASMedia. Lin said at the time he'd take as much as 40 of his team with him, but at least so far, Via says fewer actually followed Lin out the door, and not much has been seen yet from ASMedia.
Nonetheless, McGregor noted, Via is considered in the industry as essentially having abandoned the AMD and Intel chipset business -- at one time, its greatest source of revenue.
Via's CPU design center is in Austin, having been established there by one-time CPU producer IDT as Centaur Technology, and acquired by Via on the same week in 1999 it took over its closest rival in the CPU space, Cyrix. At the Centaur facility, Via continues to produce single-core x86 CPUs, mostly for the embedded systems market and low-power devices. Despite those design wins, McGregor says, "The processor group, to my knowledge, has not had a positive return on investment."
Elsewhere, the company makes so-called ITX motherboards with a very small form factor. Those motherboards would appear to be good candidates for UMPCs and other ultra-portable consumer systems, but these days, Via's success has been in selling these designs to big industrial customers like factory automation systems builders. That's not exactly NVidia's territory.
"The only thing that's going on right now with Via for x86 is, they've got a group of chipset designers in Taiwan that's supporting their x86 processors, which have limited shipment in limited volumes," McGregor explained. "With very limited resources, they've managed to design some very innovative chips. And quite honestly, you look at what's gone on with the handheld/UMPC market, [Via] probably has as many design wins as Intel, or more, because they've gone after specific little niche applications. But they're still looking at very limited volumes."
Via may want to consider a sale of its processor group, McGregor suggests -- if not to NVidia, then certainly to someone -- before it's gone and no longer available to be sold. There's still design expertise in that group, he believes, but if their checks get cut off, they may follow the same trail Chewei Lin blazed.
"I wouldn't be surprised, especially if all of a sudden, checks for doing designs and research and everything else, get cut off," McGregor told BetaNews. "I would expect something to happen to that group."
"Now, what happens to all of Via, I don't know," he continued. "That's a bit more of a challenge, because you have to understand, the rest of Via is a Taiwanese-based company. Yes, you could say NVidia and others have design resources over there, but taking the upper management and everything else along with it could be more of a cultural challenge."
In other words, Via's management could be its own best "poison pill" against a takeover bid from an American firm.
Would it actually help NVidia to acquire an x86 technology? McGregor isn't so certain, especially since its APX 2500 smartphone chipset platform -- NVidia's first entry in that market space, and upon which a lot of its design efforts are presently focused -- is based on an ARM processor, not an Intel or an x86.
"Acquiring that design expertise is the thing that would make the most sense to me. Everything else would seem kind of far-reaching. I would look at other companies that may benefit from Via's low-power focus or expertise, and the natural one that would come to mind for the processor...would be AMD," McGregor remarked, with a bit of a chuckle. "But I don't think AMD's going to be doing any acquisitions."
Of course, if those paychecks start bouncing at the design department, AMD could make a kind of virtual acquisition anyway; and it could actually use some low-power solutions right now.
"I've speculated for some time, once Via got out of the x86 chip business, things are going to have to change at that company," he stated. "How they change is up in the air at this point."
Will there even be a Via Technologies brand in 12 months? If the processor group gets sold off, and what remains of the chipset group gets sold off -- another likely possibility, McGregor said, even if NVidia's not directly involved -- there may not be much left to stake a brand on. "Does Via still exist as a company beyond that? That's hard to tell."
15 Comments
I still think NVIDIA and AMD were the perfect match.
AMD + ATI = WTF!
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only problem is if NVDA and AMD, NVDA will be running the show, not AMD. I doubt that AMD want this to happen. ATYT lost many almost every quarter, so they are either get acquired or die.
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I never said it would happen. When AMD was looking to buy a "GPU Company" I think everyone thought "NVIDIA", but when you think about it, NVIDIA was much larger then AMD @ the time and still is today.
Maybe NVIDIA buying AMD is what AMD needs.
ATI is a GPU full of Driver and Hardware Glitches.
Now lets do spelling:
"NVIDIA" (Not NVDA)
"ATI" (Not ATYT)
Maybe you are using their Stock Symbol???
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I think Nvidia is about 4 times larger than AMD.. most people think its the other way around =)
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Specialty!
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Nvidia has to buy a x86 chip company or it will be dead.
Intel has announced it will be making a CPU/GPU in 2009.
AMD is going to be making a CPU/GPU as well thats why they bought ATI.
So Nvidia has to buy a x86 chip company or it could be the death of Nvidia.
This is the end of separate CPU and GPU. Does anyone remember back in the old 80386/80486 days were the floating point unit was a separate chip? Now every new processor has a FPU integrated in to their chip. Chip manufactures are moving more and more to a computer on a chip. Intel is integrating the memory controller on to their CPU's just as AMD has been doing for years now.
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I disagree...integrating GPU's with the CPU is nice for the non-gamer market...but technology in games (and graphics design) moves so fast that being able to upgrade a graphics cars is a must. The CPU is rarely a bottleneck these days, it's usually the GPU..if you buy a PC with an integrated CPU/GPU, to upgrade the GPU you would need to upgrade the whole thing...no gamers/graphics designer wants that.
That's the reason onboard video was never a good option for anybody looking for graphics performance.
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I think Niro hit the nail on the head. An integrated GPU would attract the same market as integrated video. Businesses and grandparents would benefit from the cheaper parts, but for gamers and power users it would be as desirable as built-in video cards.
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That is a good rebuttal but if you were around when the 80486 was around(not sure how old you are) the same thing was said about integrating the CPU and FPU. With the GPU and CPU integrated that would mean the GPU would be running at CPU speed. So as Intel and AMD come out with new CPU's they would upgrade their GPU's as well. Most GPU's now only operate at 600MHz so any performance hit that might happen with integration would be off set by the speed.
This maybe end up being wrong but we will find out in 2009/2010. Intel is not that great of a GPU maker but AMD with ATI would be a much better choice, and with time even the integrated ones will become better and will probably even have dual or even quad core GPU's in one processor package.
So right now its a 50/50 that may change like I said in 2010 when integrated CPU's come out.
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Nvidia purchasing AMD would make more sense..
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Agreed. ATI is dead.
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They better take a lesson from AMD and stick with what they do best. Buying ATI was the biggest blunder that company ever made.
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I always thought a number 2 company buying a number 2 wasn't a good idea. If Intel bought ATI I think it would have made more sense, and if Nvidia bought AMD it would have made more sense. A number 1 company buying a number 2 has more money for R&D and may be able to do more with the technology. AMD was starting to have problems before they bought ATI which isn't a good time to buy a company. They probably thought that with graphics technology it could help them, and maybe it can, but in the later future.
So I think if Nvidia bought Via it might be a good thing. It depends on what they wanted to do with the technology. If they want to some how mix GPU and CPU technology (like AMD wants to do) for instance. Should they buy Via, maybe not. I think if AMD doesn't pick up steam soon then they may have their chance to buy them and have ATI on top of it. And I don't think the government would think that a monopoly because Nvidia and ATI both have other graphics companies make cards based on their reference boards. Nvidia doesn't even make their own cards, just the GPU's. We'll see.
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"Will there even be a Via Technologies brand in 12 months?"
OH NO!!!!!!!!!!!!
I LIKE Via. Some people just don't need a quad-core 3.0GHz CPU, some (me) just want a CPU that uses 1Watt! yes ONE watt! ONLY ONE (1)!!! I LIKED them!!!
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1. I would not be routing for AMD/ATI and Nvidia to merge if i were you guys. at the moment 2 GPU companies is what is keeping the price down. only one company making gpu's will only drive the prices higher.
2. I disagree with NIRO. CPU+GPU on one die is the future. sure the first edition and maybe a few afterwards that follow may not be super fast and only meant for entry level gaming. but give it time, they will develop that technology and you will most probly soon see CPUGPU's running at faster speeds than any external card. With CPUGPU you do not have the limitations of the pci express port or motherboard circuitry. And AMd has already stated that its first CPUGPU would be based on a hd3400 technology, which is not that weak really, imagine where they will be in a few years ?
Sure AMd takes its time, we have seen them over and over again with delays and bugs bringing out products that should have been in the market ages ago, and i expect the same will happen with their fussion technology. but this is no reason not to fear them. AMD has a way of suddenly poping out of no where with a hit on their hands. do not forget, they were first to 1Ghz barrier, first to bring out 64bit architecture which took intel almost 2 years to catch up to, first to bring out dual core cpu's and dual core gpu's, first to dx10.1 etc ... i wouldnt underestimate them, and i think intel has learned that lesson. the technology market is very unpredictable. few years ago intel was in a HEAP of trouble, today its AMD's turn, tommorrow could be nvidia's ...
Nvidia needs a CPU company or it may be in a tight spot in a few years.
3. c4p0ne, as for the ATI is dead comment. i would go do a bit of research on the net if i were you. at the moment about the only thing keeping amd's nose above the water is ATI. a few weeks ago ATI had the fastest graphics card on the market, not to mention that ATI's cards are far cheaper and more apealing price wise, it took Nvidia almost 2 months to catch up, 2 valueble months that cost them. there was no doubt that they would ofcourse, but to have someone on the same level as you and having to constantly watch your back is not allways a good thing. ATI is far from dead. and the fact that they have a CPU company that is exploring fussion technology is another reason Nvidia should be Sh!tting in their pants ...
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