Microsoft Has Acquisition Deal With Nvidia

[FMH]

Why haven't I seen this this news on any other news website? I can't find it any where other than the source link provided by Neowin. And Neowin is treating it as rumor.

[Ci7]

Why? I don't see anything monopolistic about it. It's actually more in the opposite direction. What unfair competition or integration do you think this would cause?

It seems unlikely this would ever happen.

the only thing is that windows driver would be of higher quality and linux one would be neglected :p

[Vice]

I think the reasoning behind this is that Microsoft want to make sure Apple doesn't buy NVIDIA. Apple has the money to do so and it's not out of the question that they would and this allows Microsoft to protect their future ARM investments from being locked up in iPads and whatever else ARM becomes useful for in the future.

I have a feeling that as time goes on NVIDIA are going to become a very large CPU producer with very competitive chips that will rival AMD and Intel but built on top of the ARM architecture and as we have all seen Apple is willing to switch architectures if it makes sense from a performance and power consumption perspective, couple that with the fact Apple already has OS X in consumer hands on ARM (iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch) they are the most likely candidate to purchase NVIDIA.

In-fact just look at the facts:

1. Apple has tons and tons of cash

2. They already bought two ARM chip firms

3. They have already switched chips from 68K to PowerPC to X86 to ARM*

4. They already have OS X capably running on ARM

This '****-block' by Microsoft could only be aimed at stopping any possible buy out by Apple in my opinion. It's quite interesting to me that NVIDIA would enter such a deal, what if Apple offered 6 Billion for 30% instead of 3.5 Billion, what if they offered 9 Billion, 20 Billion. There is no knowing what they may have lost by committing to this deal with Microsoft if Apple was interested.

*In limited product lines currently.

[halcyoncmdr]

This '****-block' by Microsoft could only be aimed at stopping any possible buy out by Apple in my opinion. It's quite interesting to me that NVIDIA would enter such a deal, what if Apple offered 6 Billion for 30% instead of 3.5 Billion, what if they offered 9 Billion, 20 Billion. There is no knowing what they may have lost by committing to this deal with Microsoft if Apple was interested.

The deal doesn't specify a dollar amount. It only specifies the percentage, being 30%. At current vallue, 30% of nVidia is $3.4 Billion.

[Vice]

The deal doesn't specify a dollar amount. It only specifies the percentage, being 30%. At current vallue, 30% of nVidia is $3.4 Billion.

Yeah I understand that, but my point was what if Apple offers an amount that NVIDIA want to accept and Microsoft blocks it. At the moment NVIDIA is only worth $3.4 Billion but who knows a few years from now..

I'm kinda surprised they are only worth that much even. Their graphics chips are paramount to many markets.

[Digitalx]

nvidia isn't even worth investing $3400 in their rubbish company let alone 3.4 billion.

[Udedenkz]

NVidia is de-facto winner when it comes down to being professional and having good customer support and good GPUs.

Microsoft is awesome. Why? Windows 7 that is why.

I can't believe the amount of hate towards them.

[ahhell]

NVidia is de-facto winner when it comes down to being professional and having good customer support and good GPUs.

Microsoft is awesome. Why? Windows 7 that is why.

I can't believe the amount of hate towards them.

Yeah I know. AMD/ATI fanboys are almost as annoying as Apple ones.

I've always been extremely happy with Nvidia products. I decided to go AMD this time around. I'm switching back as soon as I can.

[Unix2]

Never care about Nvidia. Apple already done doing business Nvidia last year so, prefer ATI over the crappy Nvidia products.

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

It's simply an insurance policy for Microsoft. I don't think they plan on buying NVIDIA. They've invested a lot in NVIDIA and they don't want their plans to be affected by an acquisition. Imagine what Apple would do if they bought NVIDIA. I doubt they'd let Microsoft have their way.

[XIII]

Nvidia do make Tegra chips that MS used in their Zune. Don't know what the hate with Nvidia is all about. They do offer solid GPU hardware and did lead the market for a long time before ATI caught up. Without Nvidia, you won't even have the graphic cards as powerful as they are today.

Talking about ignorance .... :rolleyes:

[Growled Member]

Exactly, Microsoft are simply protecting their investment by ensuring that no other companies (Google or Apple in particular) buy nVidia then halt all the work they are doing on Windows 8 ARM processors. Microsoft are not actually buying Nvidia.

Smart move by MS.