AMD Contemplating AGEIA Purchase

by Marco Chiappetta — Tuesday, November 27, 2007, 05:20 PM EDT

According to an article posted on the CustomPC website which quotes AMD’s head of developer relations, Richard Huddy, AMD has contemplated the purchase of AGEIA, multiple times. There is no discussion regarding what AMD's plans for AGEIA's technology would be, i.e. would it be incorporated into an ATI GPU or a CPU, but the potential for a purchase is real - especially since Intel bought rival Havok.

"AMD has admitted that it’s considering buying Ageia, if the price is right. AMD’s head of developer relations, Richard Huddy, told Custom PC that ‘we’ve had that discussion, yes. It’s a discussion that goes round every three months – someone turns to me and says ‘why don’t we buy Ageia?’ and I go through the arguments about why we should and why we shouldn’t.'"

Although AMD has recently received some large investments that put some much needed cash back in the company's bank accounts, dropping $100 million dollars (potentially) on AGEIA would definitely be a stretch at this time. Plus, with the proliferation of quad-core processors, the usefulness of a dedicated physics processor is still in question.

Tags: AMD, ATI, Ageia, purchase, Chase, ting, AG, PLA, AM

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com