Nvidia reportedly interested in buying shares in VIA
Small is smaller than big
Monday, 30 March 2009, 15:27
WITH CHIP OUTFIT VIA poised to flog off 300 million new shares in itself at something like 25p a share, the word on the Taiwanese streets is that Nvidia wants to buy them up - or at least a few of them.
NV is keeping schtumm, while VIA said it might say something on the subject after a June 19 shareholder meeting.
VIA and Nvidia held a bit of a love-in last year at Computex and have been trying to work together on small things since then.
We'll keep and eye on this one. µ
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:)
The only problem is that, if they do something like x86 + GPU chip, they will have to brand it as VIA and not nVidia, for the licensing issue.
...that I can see Nvidia getting an x86 license - buying Via.
And Via's latest CPU designs are pretty impressive in their own right. Very valuable IP.
The downside is how much overlap there is in the rest of the business...Via traditionally being seen as a chipset vendor, and Nvidia also being big in chipsets. Via also brings discrete audio capabilities though, as well as other markets Nvidia is not in, like ITX boards and such.
Would be good...would like to see it. Even if the Via name has to be retained to sell the CPUs under.
IF Nvidia were to buy Via (vs just buying a bit os stock) they would come into possession of a SMALL staff of very good engineers. I would hope that they would be retained, I'm sure they could teach Nvidia a thing or too (and vice versa).
Nvidia can't buy VIA outright because VIA would then lose the x86 license. Buying a minority stake is the best way.
If Nvidia has enough foresight they'll do a joint project on a Fusion-like package. Even Intel and AMD are only doing hybrids on the low-end and mobile, so two Nano cores and a GF 9400M level chip on one package would be competitive if released mid-2010 or so.
VIA needs cash. Nvidia needs x86. They'll work something out.
Where are Nvidia gonna get the cash from exactly?
Instead of doing what they ought to be doing, they've given up. Nvidia are like some kind of starving lion, eating up all the carcasses that they scared the vultures away from.
This company is going tits up faster than a great tit without a nest, on the titanic.
Is to come up with an agreement where the CPU comes from Via and the Chipset comes from NVidia no matter who actually sells the parts. Most Via designs have been sold as a chipset & CPU combo since no one else makes chipsets for the C7 or Nano and Via no longer piggy backs off of Intel's bus.
If NVidia wants a CPU of it's "own" it can throw all the resources it wants to at Via and just rebrand the resultant CPU. They could even become the exclusive distributor for the CPU. This arrangement would be perfectly legal (unless Intel forsaw something like this, didn't like it for some strange reason, and outlawed it) since they'd really be VIA CPUs made in Intel approved fabs. From a marketing standpoint, it would be jast like what IBM did when it made Cyrix's CPUs.
So we had DAAMIT - so how about nVIdiA or nVIAdia?
More like VIAndia or VInAdia... but I digress, why do NVIDIA even have to go the X86 route?
Can't they go to an advanced RISC architecture, or maybe do it the old fashioned way (make one up)
I mean, RISC does have some performance wins and they've worked in many console designs. (the PSP is surprisingly powerful with only 333Mhz)
My other suggestions
VAINVIDIA.
DIVIN NDA (Divine NDA).
VIAINDIA - Tata will probably buy it in 3 years ;-)