AMD Buying ATI for $5.4 Billion

PC Magazine (and virtually every other news source) is carrying the story of the latest shake up in the computer industry. ATI (arguably Canada's largest graphics card company -- sorry Matrox) is being purchased by AMD. This reminds me of when Wendy's bought our beloved Tim Horton's. Yet another Canadian company (dare I say institution) is being taken over by an American company. I don't know exactly how this will change the Canadian IT landscape, but I doubt it will be for the better.

Click on the ATI symbol to go to the ATI website where you will find their public view of this purchase in a posting entitled: "AMD & ATI: A Processing Powerhouse"

Here are a few excerpts from the PC Magazine article:

On Monday, AMD agreed to acquire graphics powerhouse ATI Technologies in a surprise $5.4 billion deal that will radically alter the landscape of the PC component industry.

ATI will become "the ATI business division," within AMD, and its chief executive and president, Dave Orton, will become an executive vice president reporting to both AMD president and chief operating officer Dirk Meyer and AMD's chief executive, Hector Ruiz. The deal, if agreed to by shareholders, will total $4.2 billion in cash and 57 million shares of AMD common stock, which the company is valuing at $18.26 per share.

[snip]

The deal will combine ATI's established core logic and graphics expertise with AMD's microprocessors. Both ATI and AMD trail Intel in their respective segments, although the graphics market can be assessed in different ways; while Intel still holds a significant lead over ATI and rival Nvidia in total graphics chips shipped, Intel's edge disappears if integrated graphics/core logic chips are factored out of the equation. What the future will hold, however, is still somewhat vague.