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[Angst]

Nvidia intends to buy Taiwanese chipset vendor ULi Electronics.

It might also throw a spanner in the works for rival graphics chip maker ATI Technologies, which has relied on ULi for part of its own chipset product line.

Could this have any implications for X360/PS3?

vnunet article

 

[Ghost]

Im gonna go with no.

 

[Jerkface]

Microsoft are fabbing the Xenos themselves, so no!

 

[elostyle]

I'm sure either one has contracts secured for as long as they need.

 

[mrklaw]

Microsoft are fabbing the Xenos themselves, so no!

are they? Surely they are still subcontracting out the production (although maybe not to this company). Or have they actually invested in MS owned production?

 

[Jerkface]

are they? Surely they are still subcontracting out the production (although maybe not to this company). Or have they actually invested in MS owned production?

Well of course they are subcontracting it out, but it has nothing to do with ATI.

 

[jipe]

are they? Surely they are still subcontracting out the production (although maybe not to this company). Or have they actually invested in MS owned production?

Microsoft doesn't own any fabs, and probably aren't interested in doing so, so they have to outsource the actual production. The CPU is made by IBM and Chartered, and the GPU by TMSC.

ULi, however, is/was simply a tiny fabless design house, which has absolutely nothing to do with the Xbox360. If they actually owned the facilities necessary to produce chips they would have cost far, far more than $52 million.

 

[inpHilltr8r]

It's going to hurt ATIs bottom line, because now they have to sort their South Bridge out, but no, no real impact on anyone else.

 

[AltogetherAndrews]

nvidia=EA

 

[DonasaurusRex]

im pretty sure the xbox360 uses a SiS chipset and southbride so nope, ULi makes very dependable value chipsets, and currently their southbridge is an alternative to ATI's chip that has reportedly had some problems. So for ati this may be a problem in their chipset division but they seem rather confident in their next generation of chips.

 

[HokieJoe]

are they? Surely they are still subcontracting out the production (although maybe not to this company). Or have they actually invested in MS owned production?

Haha, paraphrasing Jerry Sanders (formerly of AMD) "it takes real men to fab".