AMD Acquires ATI
Posted on Tuesday, July 25th, 2006 in Industry, PC | Comments
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Shocking everyone in the computer industry, AMD has announced that it has bought ATI, one of the two major players in the GPU market. Now a part of the processor-maker, ATI has been acquired for $5.4 billion in cash and stock to expand AMD’s market share against Intel, currently the most popular processor-producer.

Under terms of the deal, AMD will acquire all of the outstanding common shares of ATI for $4.2 billion in cash and 57 million shares of AMD common stock, based on the number of shares of ATI common stock outstanding on July 21.

AMD said it would pay $20.47 for each ATI share. That marks a 24 percent premium over ATI’s closing stock price of $16.56 on Nasdaq on Friday. The stock added another 7 percent to $17.68 in after-hours trading amid media reports of the expected deal.

What do Intel and Nvidia think about this? TechReport asked the very same question and the reactions are as expected: Nvidia is now boasting that it is the only true GPU maker in the industry and that its market share will increase; Intel, on the other hand, is very reserved with their judgment.

Now that the buyout has been done with, the rumors have started, and what better way to start one that to suggest a CPU-GPU integration? That’s being covered on Ars Technica which takes a technical look at the prospects of having a graphics card built into a processor.