BSN Rumor: Intel to Acquire Nvidia, Jen-Hsun the New CEO of Intel?

[RussianSensation]

- A rumor that Intel and Nvidia are sitting at "a coffee table" discussing the future developments, cross licensing and the like.

- Intel's BoD announced that for the first time in history, the company is considering an external person for the role of CEO, as the investors feel that the company hasn't done enough in the mobile segment.

- "Our sources have said that Intel did not categorically say no to one of requirements, should Nvidia be acquired - and that is that the CEO of Nvidia and the senior management take over the respectable roles in the new entity, regardless of the entity size."

Full story

Thoughts?

I think if Intel+NV happened, with Intel's economies of scale, NV's headstart in Tegra for tablets/smartphones, NV's successful growth in HPC and Intel's fabrication facilities, the resulting firm would be a powerhouse. Intel's weak GPUs performance would benefit dramatically from NV's GPU technology and Intel would be a lot more competitive in the smartphone/tablet space with access to Tegra. If NV gains the resources of Intel and its fabs, and Intel gains access to NV's GPU tech for their integrated GPU, this is likely the end of AMD as we know it. You'll have a company with the world's leading node tech, R&D and capital resources, vast economies of scale and customer bargaining power, leaving AMD with no real competitive advantages in any area. At that point AMD's CPUs, APUs and GPUs would become irrelevant as they'd be using 20-28nm tech while Intel/NV chips would already be on 14nm.

I can't see anything great coming out of this for us consumers as 2 leading companies in their respective division would join forces and only further monopolize the GPU/CPU markets with their combined resources, leaving no room for any viable competitors. (And no please don't bring up how ARM is the the real competitor to Intel because for PC gaming, ARM peddling in their kiddy smartphone/tablet pool and it'll be eons before they can produce a CPU+GPU good enough for us to consider for the desktop).

I just can't see how the regulators would allow for this merger to come through at this time.

 

[Red Storm]

Intel wants mobile devices to be x86, which is under their monopoly, not ARM.

I don't see why Intel would even feel the need to buy Nvidia. Unless they feel their x86 mobile device chips are going to suck and not catch on.

 

[ShintaiDK]

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2289498

Idiotic random rumour as usual.

 

[SirPauly]

I don't know, seems like wild conjecture! Intel seems keen on leveraging x 86 and what would they do with Arm SOC's? Why would they desire Cuda? Unless they desire to squash potential threats for the future.

Interesting though!

 

[Mopetar]

Even if this plan did exist, it wouldn't be approved by regulators.

 

[Crap Daddy]

This was published on 11 Dec:

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1056401-nvidia-as-a-takeover-target?source=yahoo

 

[RussianSensation]

Sorry if this is a repost. I didn't see it. As far as I see the Seeking Alpha only discusses prospective buyers for NV being a takeover target for Apple/Intel/Qualcomm, etc but it's not the same as the rumor posted by BSN though which talks specifically regarding Intel being in "coffee table" talks with NV. That's not quite the same thing. We could have an article published that has 5-6 prospective buyers for AMD but if AMD is in talks to be sold to Apple and some news article reports it, it's not really the same as a blogger on a finance website looking at 5-6 prospective buyers.

 

[Jaydip]

It would interesting for technology but for consumers no idea.Maxwell on 14nm yeah baby

 

[AnandThenMan]

You think Jensen's ego is big now...

Being serious, I highly doubt this would be green lit by federal regulators, but you never know.

 

[Keysplayr]

You think Jensen's ego is big now...

Being serious, I highly doubt this would be green lit by federal regulators, but you never know.

He runs Nvidia extremely well, so I think he actually has a right to feel good about that. Apparently, Intel noticed. As far as it happening? I have no idea.

 

[bradley]

I did a doubletake to see if today was April 1st.

 

[Pottuvoi]

Certainly would be interesting to see nvidia chips coming from Intels factories..

 

[s44]

Dunno if it would kill their license, but Nvidia on Intel's process would be the premiere ARM option.

 

[Keysplayr]

Was this article translated from somewhere else? Because if not, Theo could surely use an editor/proofreader.

 

[hawtdawg]

I would think that Intel would want to buy Nvidia. They could stomp AMD into the ground if they were selling Nvidia parts that were a node ahead of AMD.

 

[zebrax2]

Firstly i doubt this would be allowed if it ever happens by the regulators as some other poster have suggested. Secondly Intel have no use for the ARM side of Nvidia since that part is actually competing with their own products and i doubt Intel wants to give ARM boost in the mobile market

 

[Silverforce11]

This is too rediculous to even waste my time clicking for the "full story".. BSN still full of crap as ever.

 

[BenSkywalker]

FTC would never allow it for a laundry list of reasons.

Secondly Intel have no use for the ARM side of Nvidia since that part is actually competing with their own products and i doubt Intel wants to give ARM boost in the mobile market

Tegra with half/full node advantage over everyone else would have Intel dominating the market in rather short order. I think they can deal with having to resort to ARM if it allows them to wipe out the rest of competition.

 

[Siberian]

Dunno if it would kill their license, but Nvidia on Intel's process would be the premiere ARM option.

Anyone can license ARM. In fact Intel had their own ARM chip called Xscale.

 

[tviceman]

I don't see Intel acquiring Nvidia, nor do I see Intel acquiring any part of AMD (should AMD collapse). It's easy to say <insert any company>'s tech on Intel's fabrication process would be "amazing." Shoot, even AMD's piledriver might be "amazing" on Intel's 22nm process. But super fluffy hopes and dreams do not translate into reality.

The fact is Intel has fully committed themselves to the x86 architecture in mobile, desktop, server, and now HPC. They built an x86 add-in card to compete with GPU's. They built an ultra low power x86 cpu to compete with ARM. Haswell is reportedly going to rival (or come very close to) Trinity's graphical performance. They have their own solutions in place and are obviously very committed to what they have created. They spent years developing Xeon Phi after failing hard with Larrabee, and they are now refocusing the rest of the company's entire efforts on portable / mobile computing. If they wanted to acquire Nvidia, they probably would have done so during Larrabee's troubled development or perhaps during Tegra 2's time on the market (when google adopted that chip as their platform for honeycomb).

The only real talking point that even brings this notion up as a scant possibility is the fact that Intel has the cash on hand and Nvidia is a very attractive merger/takeover target (lots of patents, very solid technology, a diverse product strategy, and no debt at all) but Intel would not have committed entirely to their own graphics solution, HPC solution, and mobile solution to turn around and acquire competing solutions at this point. Just like I said a few weeks ago that Intel won't go after AMD should AMD fold (Apple will though which would suck), Intel will also not go after Nvidia. Intel does not want it's costumers using GPU's in the HPC space, nor do they want customers using ARM in the mobile space.

EDIT: Qualcomm would be a more likely candidate to make a hostile bid for Nvidia, as that would give Qualcomm more product diversification and amazing graphics to go with their legion of processor engineers. But I just don't see anyone buying or taking over Nvidia.

 

[tviceman]

I can't see anything great coming out of this for us consumers as 2 leading companies in their respective division would join forces and only further monopolize the GPU/CPU markets with their combined resources, leaving no room for any viable competitors. (And no please don't bring up how ARM is the the real competitor to Intel because for PC gaming, ARM peddling in their kiddy smartphone/tablet pool and it'll be eons before they can produce a CPU+GPU good enough for us to consider for the desktop).

Certainly ARM processors are no where capable enough for PC gaming. However, I don't think they're really that far away from obtaining that capability. The performance per watt on today's best ARM-based CPU's is second to none, and as AMD has shown in the past with their GPU's, it is easier to scale performance up than it is to retrofit power hungry architectures into low power solutions. Perhaps we'll see 5-10w ARM-based CPU's come out of something like Nvidia's project Denver that can drive PC gaming on a promisingly acceptable.

 

[tipoo]

My gut says hell no. Jen-Hsun is a smart guy but Intel will pick their next leader from within their own ranks, no doubt about it. Him becoming CEO is extremely unlikely. As for the buyout, that's a possibility I guess, but Nvidia is a costly buyout for even Intel and Intel seems to be on the right track with their GPU stuff already. Sure Nvidia would give them a boost, but nothing their own internal R&D couldn't do if Intel threw enough money at the problem, which would still cost less than buying a whole company.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Intel could buy Nvidia very easily.

 

[tipoo]

Intel could buy Nvidia very easily.

Just because a company is able to throw around billions easily, doesn't mean they would easily make the decision to do so.

 

[zebrax2]

Tegra with half/full node advantage over everyone else would have Intel dominating the market in rather short order. I think they can deal with having to resort to ARM if it allows them to wipe out the rest of competition.

They want to dominate the mobile space with x86 because then they have the ability to choose whom they give the license to. It would also mean that they would always be first to implement new instruction sets giving them a slight advantage to whomever they license x86 to.

Selling the tegra line of processors would not only help the popularity of ARM processors it might also bite them in the ass in several markets. Even if they do not expand to any other market their products would serve as a preview to companies around the world of what ARM processors are capable of essentially giving a chance for competitors in the ARM market who are more willing to expand in areas where there is great interest for it eg. servers.