Originally Posted by
xVeinx
Computers and CPU's are increasingly becoming a commodity, meaning that they cannot command the same prices as they used to. The Dell's of today are shipping out cheap computers to the consumer market at high volume-volume being necessary to gain any significant profit. The scientific and web-enabling markets are the only ones that are requiring processors that can command a significant profit because of the higher binning and resultant lower supply, etc. IBM used to manufacture x86 cpus, as well as produce the hardware in their PCs and laptops. They sold all of these units off due to the low margins (and made a killing, sucks to be the buyers :p:) and have focused on CPUs for said high-profit markets, etc. Otherwise, they remain a service based company for things like websphere, etc.
Integrated GPUs are now commodity items. Again though, the money is made off of the discrete cards, much like the CPUs for the server market. Nvidia has little to worry about in terms of integrated GPU-CPU hybrids, as they will be little more than the standard integrated GPUs at first. Larabee is more of a threat, but the answer to this is increased innovation.
Neither IBM nor Nvidia will buy AMD. As I've said before, it does not make sense for IBM to go back into a market they bailed out of for no gain whatsoever. They don't need AMD for any tech, server market share, anything. It would be a waste.
Nvidia does not need AMD for anything either. Their focus has been on Intel chipsets, which, while not perfect, are still selling well at high margins. In terms of Graphics, they remain the leader (in terms of volume at least-the rest can be debated in some other thread). CPUs are expensive to make and although they have recently released one, it's essentially a stepping stone into getting into the handheld/cell market. High-volume and low cost is another avenue they have at their fingertips. AMD offers Nvidia nothing except debt, as well as some CPU expertise that would be of little use to them. Unless they managed to get hold of ATI technologies (which would likely not happen before the spinoff took place), they have absolutely nothing to gain. They are making good money off of technology that remains high-margin, and expansion into other avenues like the handheld markets holds far more promise then anything else at the moment.
