Source says Applied Micro Devices could announce deal with #2 Canadian chipmaker as early as Monday
When I read the post at Digg, I was thinking “no way” but sure enough CNN Money is reporting the following.
Advanced Micro Devices, the No. 2 supplier of computer processors, is close to a deal to buy graphics chip maker ATI for $5.5 billion, a source familiar with the situation said on Friday.
Any such deal would shake up the processor industry, which is witnessing a battle over market share between AMD and larger rival Intel
For those who aren’t familiar, ATI is a company very close to my heart. (no disclosure needed because they are not close to my wallet. Too bad.) This Canadian giant of graphics has been a mainstay in almost every gamerz computer at some point in time via their Radeon series graphics cards/processors.
With Dell opening up to using AMD this year, and the ATI-Dell relationship, this is not going to be pretty for Intel. AMD also laid the gauntlet down recently and announced plans to release a true quad-core processor in 2007, which looks to have forced Intel to either open their hand up or play catch up.
The only thing that could be worse is if Lenova was to sign up AMD as their primary processor supplier. (Watch for it!)
It also raises a question that has me perplexed. Who would be Canada’s #1 chip maker?