AMD talked with Nvidia about possible merger before later acquiring ATi

An enlightening report has emerged today courtesy of Forbes. It suggests that AMD had been in talks with Nvidia about a possible merger before AMD later decided to go on to takeover ATi. The reason for AMD looking to conduct a takeover was quite simple. Well before 2006, AMD’s engineers were thinking about the concept of the APU where they could integrate a powerful GPU onto a CPU. However, AMD lacked the ability to produce such graphics processing units which meant it relied on Nvidia to make chipsets for AMD boards. Intel had already been quite successful at doing its own integrated graphics for a long time before AMD.

Forbes says that AMD first approached Nvidia about the deal. AMD and Nvidia had relatively good relations back then (compared to now anyway) as Nvidia had a very large proportion of the market share on AMD board chipsets. Apparently, Nvidia boss Jen-Hsun Huang insisted on becoming the CEO of the proposed AMD-Nvidia merger, an idea that didn’t go down well with AMD’s Hector Ruiz. AMD then went on to acquire Nvidia’s cash-strapped rival ATI Technology, which then became AMD’s Graphics Products division before being annexed into the rest of the AMD brand.

Source: Forbes