AMD to buy ATI
From Ars Technica:
At the beginning of the summer, an industry analyst made headlines by saying that an AMD acquisition of ATI was imminent. As is usually the case with such rumors that do not immediately come to pass, the story simmered down after a couple of weeks. It looks as though the deal may be on after all. Yesterday, the boards of AMD and ATI approved the deal whereby AMD would acquire the Canadian graphics card maker for $5.4 billion…
Is anyone still surprised at more market concentration? I am not, for sure. But if this deal comes to pass – many complications stand in the way – the implication for Apple, having joined its destiny to Intel only a year ago, is quite interesting.
You may remember the big tiff between Apple and ATI a few years back, when ATI leaked informnation about new Mac to the press and thus made Mr Jobs very, very upset. Upset enough to avoid ANY mention of the company at that MacWorld Expo and cancel ATI’s stage presentation.
Remember as well that ATI was the main video card provider at teh time as well.
Relationship between the companies improved over time, for sure. But Apple has since learned not to put all its video eggs in the same basket, so a question comes to mind: Could that means that Apple could potentiually start thinking about a THIRD provider fro video on new Mac?
Just in case, you see…