Weeks, ney, months of speculation have finally come to an end yesterday, when AMD and ATi officially announced plans to join forces in a transaction valued at around $5.4 billion! Though not directly related to the gaming landscape, this merger between computer processor manufacturer Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and graphics chip maker ATI Technologies will likely have a very powerful effect on our beloved dreamworld as well, just as nVidia's acquisition of 3dfx did almost six years ago. Only this time, the deal between AMD and ATi will probably go down in history as the final step towards integrating CPUs and GPUs on a single piece of silicon. And that's no small thing!

No doubt, the deal raises a lot of questions and future prospects. For one thing, what will happen to nVidia? Is AMD carefully positioning its pieces before it works its way over to the king? Or is there somehing else in store for nVidia? Something to do with Intel perhaps? And speaking of which, will ATi's support for Intel chipsets continue in the future? Because, obviously enough, Intel's chipsets can no longer be the platform of choice for ATi's high-end graphics solutions. And that alone may give the AMD-ATi combination the leading edge in PC gaming.

We could speculate on and on, but I'd rather let the pro's do the talking. Rahul Sood, founder of VoodooPC, has a great analysis of the AMD-ATi merger on his blog which you can read here.

"Long term thinkers already know that CPU and GPU computations may eventually end up on one piece of silicon. Back in the days of the separate math co-processors industry "pundits" didn't believe they would ever morph into one - but those in the know realized that this bottleneck needed to be cut out as soon as possible. In the case of CPU + GPU the possibilities are endless - imagine a multi-core piece of silicon where one core handles massive CPU computations while another handles graphics, and perhaps another handles the traffic between the multiple cores."

Indeed, AMD and ATi's press release from yesterday also touches on the CPU+GPU issue:

"In 2008 and beyond, AMD aims to move beyond current technological configurations to transform processing technologies, with silicon-specific platforms that integrate microprocessors and graphics processors to address the growing need for general-purpose, media-centric, data-centric and graphic-centric performance."

Gaming aside, however, the immediate result of this deal will be "a new and more formidable company, determined to drive growth, innovation and choice for its customers, particularly in the commercial and mobile computing segments and in the rapidly-growing consumer electronics market". Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

(N.B. Archive text, links removed)