AMD and ATI Merger: Our Questions Answered
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HotHardware: How will this merger affect the discreet graphics card market in the short term? And in the long term? Will the Enthusiast segment remain a major focus?
AMD / ATI: AMD and ATI remain committed to the market for discrete graphics and believe it's a strong and viable market moving forward. The enthusiast segment will continue to be a core focus of the combined company. With exciting technologies like 4X4 and CrossFire we expect to increase the pace of innovation for gamers and PC enthusiasts in the future.
HotHardware: What might some of the ramifications of the merger be for your product roadmap efforts in the Desktop PC market segment in the long term? Mobile? Servers? Media Centers?
AMD / ATI: At this time we can't offer too many specifics or technical details on our long term roadmaps. In the near term, 2007, we should be able to deliver new customer-centric, open platforms for key market segments faster than either company could have done alone. Today we both have "go-to-market" strategies. By putting them together, because we have such complementary strengths, we believe we will create an "accelerate-to-market" strategy to allow us to deliver in 2007 products that will bring very specific value to customers in key segments like commercial and mobile markets. We will aim to transform processing technology with general-purpose, media-centric, data-centric and graphic-centric open platforms, to re-engineer the future, in 2008 and beyond.
HotHardware: Processor cores have historically undergone significant architectural changes roughly every 5 years or so. But a new generation of GPUs typically emerges roughly every 18 months. If AMD and ATI function as a single entity will processors and GPUs continue to advance at their current pace?
AMD / ATI: Processors and GPUs present unique approaches when it comes to introducing new architectures. We believe the combination of AMD and ATI will allow us to leverage each others respective strengths in these areas. AMD can benefit from ATI's expertise in aggressive architecture transitions while ATI can benefit from AMD's industry-leading manufacturing systems and business processes.
HotHardware: Will the merging of AMD and ATI ultimately lead to a closed platform of sorts, where AMD's processors are coupled to AMD/ATI's core logic chipsets and GPUs, and no one else's?
AMD / ATI: AMD has and will continue to be committed to an approach of customer-centric innovation. One of the key pillars of customer-centric innovation is delivering open platforms that provide customers with a maximum amount of choice and flexibility with our products.
There you have it -- some answers directly from the parties involved. This merger, if approved, will have a far reaching impact on many segments of the PC and Consumer Electronics markets. We wish both companies the best of luck, and look forward to some potentially exciting new technologies in the years ahead. This is big news. Make no mistake about it.
