Nathan Davis05 October 2006, 10:14 AM
I will eat a whole eggplant raw if the Intel+nVIDIA deal really does go through. I'm calling it as pure fluff.
A story has broken on Reuters regarding a possible acquisition of nVIDIA by Intel.
How did this news come about? Well, it was a bit of a knee-jerk reactionary thing.
There has been much debate on this issue since AMD pocketed ATI, and the punters supporting the notion that Intel may purchase nVIDIA are looking for anything that might even partially pass off as a sign of acquisition.
For some reason, rumours went wild today in the investment arena and nVIDIA's shares consequently jumped up in value with 20 million shares exchanging hands.
This invoked much speculation and caused headlines to spin so fast your eyes could melt. With neither Intel nor nVIDIA commenting on speculation with neither a 'yea' nor a 'nay', this is just dry wood to the flames.
So, I call shenanigans. Get off the bandwagon. It is not going to happen. Quit thinking it will.
Intel does not need Big Green's help in its war on DAAMIT (our decided name for AMD and ATI).
Many seem to forget that Intel is already the leading graphics provider. Sure, it doesn't produce what gamers are after, but that's both a niche market and beside the point. The point is that Intel already has the graphics market covered more than anyone else.
It is, essentially, Intel's little bitch.
It would, however, be but a sleight of the hand for Intel to upgrade its graphics division to compete directly with ATI and nVIDIA. Why would it pay a stupidly exorbitant amount for a big green monster it can already create in-house on a slightly more economical scale?
For Intel, nVIDIA is just far too expensive to be worth buying with a current market capitalisation of $10.96 billion. This means nVIDIA, if it were to sell, would go for far more than what AMD is paying for ATI -- that being $4.2 billion in cash and $1.2 billion in stock.
Basically, over ten billion dollars is an obscene amount to spend on acquiring technology in an area in which you're already the market leader.
AMD, on the other hand, didn't have any such graphics department. It felt it needed one. Rather than scrounge one up for itself, it decided to purchase ATI. A landmark decision, yes, but not at all comparable to the mega-corps that are Intel and nVIDIA.
Then there's nVIDIA's dream to make the CPU a redundant processor. It basically wants Intel for breakfast.
That said, Intel has invested a significant amount of money into PowerVR and the licensing of its graphics technology. This would be damn pointless in the face of acquiring nVIDIA.
If Intel were to try and acquire nVIDIA, I should think it knows only too well it would get knocked back, at least at the governmental level. With nVIDIA's graphics department added on, Intel would shoot well beyond half of the total market share.
A monopolist move such as this has major ramifications and would of course be enough to see DAAMIT screaming bloody murder. This wouldn't help Intel's ongoing anti-trust case.
As such, it is just a smelly bucket of hyperbole. If I am wrong, and it turns out that Intel is indeed serious about acquiring nVIDIA, I, too, will perform an incredibly stupid and unhealthy act for everyone involved:
I will eat an entire eggplant fruit and the ghastly thing will be the largest I can lay my hands on.
To the credulous kids: quit beating this dead horse. The Intel and nVIDIA thing -- it isn't going to happen.
