Hell has frozen over, Fudzilla Both Microsoft and Intel trying to acquire AMD

[PliotronX]

I think a Samsung buyout is more likely. I miss the K8 days, those were exciting

 

[dahorns]

MS would be sold way below cost with a factor of 250 or more?
MS would do so against all its shareholder value.

It would be financial fraud at best. But again its impossible because such a sale would never be able to materialize.

While technically true that you couldn't get away with purchasing Microsoft for peanuts, there are plenty of ways that Microsoft and AMD could merge with only AMD the survivor.

 

[dark zero]

AMD is already dead and Intel won the war.. Remember that their agreement includes that if AMD tries to sell part of their CPU division, they will lose automatically all the x86 licenses towards Intel FOR FREE!

Also if consoles are still maintaining on x86, they have 2 paths: going to Atom tier or make them as expensive as a Neo Geo. And both involves pay a LOT to Intel.

If they moves to ARM... They won't have the developer support and even they won't have the Gameworks support, so they are likely screwed up, unless they start to promote Tegra... But that's another matter.

AMD is doomed for good and it's time to put the processor prices on their correct spot ... Because people will still buy it not matter what.

 

[pablo87]

there's nothing to gain for anybody to buy AMD as is. X86 is a mess, death by a thousand bulldozers.

GPU / Radeon / ATI is another story. lots of interested parties for whom a few billion is nothing. equity types are smart - tough environment to invest in right now. whereas ATI? it's all upside.

The Bernstein upgrade and Division announcement by Lisa Su is a lot of smoke.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Yep, there is no capital out there to be chase any fancy trading idea.

I've an eye on these charts since 2003 and I can tell you that this drying up (even accounting for the scaling) the 2 hours before the news is also very unusual.

2.7x over the average volume and account to 60M$ in total trade value (Sold and bought). Same as in march for example with the Samsung buyout rumour.

Not exactly a buyout frency. I guess techsite readers are easy to fool financially. I wonder if SA and Fudzilla got financial interest in this.

 

[dark zero]

Actually even ATI division is a mess and less and less people are gonna buy it... Even Apple is on their tiers now.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Actually even ATI division is a mess and less and less people are gonna buy it... Even Apple is on their tiers now.

The ATI division still holds value and useable IP. Plus its transferable. But it would need to be a spinoff to get rid of the corpses.

 

[dark zero]

The ATI division still holds value and useable IP. Plus its transferable.

After the Fury fiasco I can't say like that anymore... It turned into a brutal worthless mess and is losing value each month of their dissaster. Even separating, they will die really fast, even maybe they die faster than the CPU divisiob


But one thing is sure. When AMD separates the GPU and CPU division, it will be the end of PS4, XB1 and Nintendo Nx.

Unless Intel starts to make those consoles with Atom/Celeron chips and Nvidia gives a GT920 dGPU on there.

 

[ShintaiDK]

After the Fury fiasco I can't say like that anymore... It turned into a brutal worthless mess and is losing value each month of their dissaster. Even separating, they will die really fast, even maybe they die faster than the CPU divisiob


But one thing is sure. When AMD separates the GPU and CPU division, it will be the end of PS4, XB1 and Nintendo Nx.

Unless Intel starts to make those consoles with Atom/Celeron chips and Nvidia gives a GT920 dGPU on there.

Discrete GPUs are dying, no matter if its nVidia or ATI.

A spinoff would base its future on licensing designs and IP out to be used in SoCs.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Sometimes, even if something is free it can be expensive.

Its quite clear that nobody is interested in AMD. An ATI spinoff is another matter tho.

AMD's main problem is their debt load. Their low stock price is partly a reflection of that problem. The other problem is that their market valuation is currently below that of their debt load, if I recall correctly.

In order to make the purchase make sense, you'd not only have to fix their marketing and supply-chain issues, but you'd have to increase the company's valuation to some figure above the total purchase price + debt load for it to be "worth it". If someone thinks AMD has the underlying tech to do that then they'll buy it, and if they don't, they won't.

Right now, several major companies are riding on AMD's coat tails for technology. AMD jumpstarted DX12/Vulkan/etc. AMD put their neck out there with HSA/iGPU-based GPGPU (part of the fruit of this is OpenCL 2.0). AMD is running current-gen consoles. AMD's problem is that they haven't figured out how to get paid very much for being an industry leader in all these categories.

So, all it takes is someone figuring out how to get paid for all this stuff, and all of a sudden, AMD becomes worth a lot more than they were on their own.

If Apple can design their own CPUs, Microsoft should be able to do that as well, assuming they get something to start from by buying AMD.

In addition Microsoft could get a monopoly on next gen consoles based on AMD x86 APU tech. They would not have to sell APUs to Sony for their PS5.

Interesting idea, though see above. Can MS make enough money dealing with all of AMD's baggage? They might have to, if they want to keep using AMD's CPUs in their consoles, since the licensing deal isn't enough to keep the company afloat.

The company would have to be named AMD.

And what you propose is both illegal and would be completely impossible. And its utter nonsense to even consider it some kind of possibility.

It isn't necessarily illegal. It's a tax inversion. That's how Burger King sold itself to Tim Horton's (for example). Regulators don't necessarily like those things, though. And the cross-licensing agreement is worded so that even an inversion could still invalidate the license . . . maybe. But that's been discussed to death already.

 

[dark zero]

Discrete GPUs are dying, no matter if its nVidia or ATI.

A spinoff would base its future on licensing designs and IP out to be used in SoCs.

Nope. There are a lot of competition. Even NVIDIA and Intel are failing hard to enter to that sector... And even despite the heroic effort of nVIDIA on entering to ARM sector, they didn't managed to get a spot on there.

Intel is getting a spot thanks to MS and Windows and killing the whole tablet sector as well with convertibles who won't last enough before people returns to laptops since both are the same after all.

However they can't do anything similar in the Phone market who are dominated by Exynos, Apple and Mediatek.

In few words... AMD CPU AND GPU are screwed up now. They can try to revive the desktop market, but that is beyond hard to revive it.

 

[AnandThenMan]

AMD is already dead and Intel won the war.. Remember that their agreement includes that if AMD tries to sell part of their CPU division, they will lose automatically all the x86 licenses towards Intel FOR FREE!

If Intel decides to negotiate in bad faith AMD can pull the AMD64 license.

AMD is doomed for good...

I'm going to quote this just because I have a strong feeling you and the people who thing this will be very very wrong.

 

[Ken g6]

"Intel tries to buy out AMD. You won't believe what happens next..."

"Intel Node-Shrinks Bulldozer to 10nm, And It's Awesome!"

Yeah, right.

I think a Samsung buyout is more likely. I miss the K8 days, those were exciting

OK, let's try that headline again.

"Samsung Node-Shrinks GCN to 10nm, And It's Awesome!"

Now that I'd believe. :awe:

 

[dark zero]

If Intel decides to negotiate in bad faith AMD can pull the AMD64 license.

I'm going to quote this just because I have a strong feeling you and the people who thing this will be very very wrong.

Sadly, AMD has everything to lose. Intel won... However I can't say the same for the customers...

 

[mrmt]

AMD's main problem is their debt load. Their low stock price is partly a reflection of that problem. The other problem is that their market valuation is currently below that of their debt load, if I recall correctly.

AMD problem isn't the debt load. The debt load would be a problem if servicing this debt were draining the resources if operational results were fine but the financial expenses were hindering the application of the positive cash flows on the operation, but that's not what we find with AMD. The debt service is fairly cheap, especially for the pre-bankruptcy state of the company and there isn't any amortization until 2019.

AMD problem is simply that it's operational results are not those of a viable business, so even if AMD got rid of its debt pile tomorrow the net result would be that... they would have to build another pile in order to offset the losses they would incur with their money losing business.

In a valuation you have basically three main components, future cash flows discounted at the proper WACC rate, added the assets on or off the balance sheet adjusted according to the quality/liquidity of the asset, subtracted from the liabilities on and off the balance sheet, also adjusted. So it doesn't matter much whether AMD debt is bigger than the market cap of the company.

 

[MongGrel]

"Intel Node-Shrinks Bulldozer to 10nm, And It's Awesome!"

Yeah, right.



OK, let's try that headline again.

"Samsung Node-Shrinks GCN to 10nm, And It's Awesome!"

Now that I'd believe. :awe:

:thumbsup::thumbsup:

 

[ultimatebob]

If anyone was going to buy AMD, I would think that it would be NVidia.

Think about it... not only would they kill off their remaining competitor for discrete graphics cards, but it would give them a major presence in the console market as well.

NVidia could probably also use their low power graphics prowess to give AMD's APU products a boost, and they could use AMD's flash memory in other NVidia products.

I'm not sure what they would do with the discrete desktop and server processors, though. If they were smart, they would sell that tech to a Chinese company like Lenovo who could better compete with Intel on price at the lower end.

 

[jpiniero]

I don't think nVidia has the money. Considering that Nadella isn't a big fan of the XBone and nearly killed it when he became CEO, I don't see them being interested in AMD for the purposes of the current/possible future consoles.

Intel, though, would make sense if they had any doubts as to whether the 'get bought, you lose the x86 license' deal would stick. Could spin off Radeon to make some of the money back plus reap the console chips revenue.

It'd be better to do something now rather than wait until Zen is a flop given how much money they are going to lose in the upcoming quarters. How many more people can you cut before you don't have any staff left to do anything?

 

[dark zero]

If anyone was going to buy AMD, I would think that it would be NVidia.

Think about it... not only would they kill off their remaining competitor for discrete graphics cards, but it would give them a major presence in the console market as well.

NVidia could probably also use their low power graphics prowess to give AMD's APU products a boost, and they could use AMD's flash memory in other NVidia products.

I'm not sure what they would do with the discrete desktop and server processors, though. If they were smart, they would sell that tech to a Chinese company like Lenovo who could better compete with Intel on price at the lower end.

nVIDIA dares to do that, and Intel permanently annul nVIDIA on CPU market in ANY ways.

 

[StrangerGuy]

there's nothing to gain for anybody to buy AMD as is. X86 is a mess, death by a thousand bulldozers.

GPU / Radeon / ATI is another story. lots of interested parties for whom a few billion is nothing. equity types are smart - tough environment to invest in right now. whereas ATI? it's all upside.

The Bernstein upgrade and Division announcement by Lisa Su is a lot of smoke.

I dunno man, I think AMD's GPU business is already too niche in the grand scheme of things. High-powered GPUs are a shrinking segment in a shrinking market. Their APU concept was a one-off lightning in the bottle with the current gen console wins which won't be replicated again by the time the next gen consoles comes around when ARM CPUs/GPUs has so much momentum now.

 

[Fjodor2001]

I think you forget what powers the consoles.

So you're saying gaming console such as XBONE/PS4 needs less CPU performance than a MBA?

 

[ShintaiDK]

So you're saying gaming console such as XBONE/PS4 needs less CPU performance than a MBA?

They got less performance, no matter how you twist it. MBA is at least twice as fast in regular workloads.

You can use the Atom one as a somewhat compare. Fastest against slowest.

 

[ShintaiDK]

I dunno man, I think AMD's GPU business is already too niche in the grand scheme of things. High-powered GPUs are a shrinking segment in a shrinking market. Their APU concept was a one-off lightning in the bottle with the current gen console wins which won't be replicated again by the time the next gen consoles comes around when ARM CPUs/GPUs has so much momentum now.

Well a new ATI would have to change targets completely. But its quite possible to make a good business out of it. But the first thing people have to do is to forget all about discrete GPUs.

A new ATI would compete against PowerVR, Imagination etc.

Even vanilla ARM console SoCs is possible for a new ATI.

 

[Good_fella]

Discrete GPUs are dying, no matter if its nVidia or ATI.

A spinoff would base its future on licensing designs and IP out to be used in SoCs.

Nein. At least not for gamers.

http://jonpeddie.com/publications/pc_gaming_hardware_market_report
----------------------------------

Microsoft overpaid for Nokia, for Mojang too. So how much they would pay for AMD?

 

[Arachnotronic]

Well a new ATI would have to change targets completely. But its quite possible to make a good business out of it. But the first thing people have to do is to forget all about discrete GPUs.

A new ATI would compete against PowerVR, Imagination etc.

Even vanilla ARM console SoCs is possible for a new ATI.

I don't agree that a standalone ATI should stop focusing on dGPUs (high end gaming GPUs are doing very well), but such an ATI would need to be a "visual computing" company ala NVIDIA first and foremost.

This would have a chance of being a good business, if it is well run. Too bad many of the really good AMD/ATI guys like Eric Demers, Rick Bergman, Carrell Killebrew, etc. -- the ones who actually gave a hoot about running a good graphics business -- are long gone.

AMD ruined ATI, plain and simple. A true shame.