back to article AMD offloads TV chip unit on Broadcom for $193m

As AMD struggles to gain altitude against Intel, the distant second rival chip maker is tossing excess weight where it can. Today, AMD said it intends to sell its digital television business to Broadcom for $192.8m cash. AMD's chief Dirk Meyer said the sale will help the company focus on its primary market of PC processors. " …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Brandon

    Goodbye AIW

    I was really hoping to see another AIW card.

  2. Charles Manning

    Endless cycles

    REM Typical chip company business plan

    10 Focus on core competence.

    20 Diversify into new chip areas.

    30 GOTO 10

    AMD, Intel and others keep going through these cycles of buying up businesses to expand into new areas then selling them off.

    It seems to be driven by Wall St fashion police rather than by any long term vision.

  3. mario
    Linux

    @Brandon

    my thoughts exactly. i still have my AIW rage128 pro card. if only i can get a mobo which supports AGP 2x/4x.

    a moment of pure unbridled joy was when i got the gatos drivers to make it work on linux. never needed to boot into windoze again.

    penguin coz it brings back memories of the good ol' linux days

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @ Endless cycles

    Heres a variation on the theme:

    REM Oregon business plan

    10 Focus on core competence

    20 Extend core competence into New_Business_Area

    30 Fire successful CEO and replace with sharp-suited loser

    40 IF New_Business_Area Profitablity=High AND Growth=High goto 50

    50 Shut down New_Business_Area REM Do not attempt to sell

    60 Lurch into unprofitability and declining stock price

    Sorry about the syntax - hardware engineer!

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    DTV chips

    It was a noble effort but frankly when put up against other manufacturers of SoC chipsets for televisions they just didn't cut the mustard, doesn't matter how good your processors are, if you don't have the algorithms then your product will not perform.

    Paris... because she knows how to use what she's got.

  6. Doug Lynn

    AIW it was time to go

    Hi, there are many good manufacturers of DTV boards and they are separate cards for media centers, etc. AIW was basically out of the running.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    @mario

    "@Brandon

    By mario Posted Tuesday 26th August 2008 06:29 GMT

    my thoughts exactly. i still have my AIW rage128 pro card. if only i can get a mobo which supports AGP 2x/4x.

    a moment of pure unbridled joy was when i got the gatos drivers to make it work on linux. never needed to boot into windoze again.

    penguin coz it brings back memories of the good ol' linux days

    "

    you can ASRock 775Dual-VSTA dual/quad intel chip motherboard gives you both AGP and PCE but only at x4

    you can use both AGP and PCe at the same time, you can use DDR or DDR2 but not both at the same time, it was built as a transition motherboard and its available everywere even today cheap.

    http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2814

    they say "there was very little difference between DDR-400 and DDR2-533 on this platform" but thats not what i found when i finally got around to pulingthe DDR400 sticks, there was a large increase in several games FPS for instance,

    so it seems perfect for what you want,but why you would want to use the old AIW rage128 pro card its only analogue input is it in ?, i dont know.

    what good are these Xilleon processor's if they cant run AVC/H.264 Encoders/Transcoders and decoder Codecs in hardwre today, thats H.264 is were the world industry are today, so it seems like a good choice to end of life the thing surely.

  8. Rob Dobs

    AIW, are you sure that what they mean?

    Can anyone confirm for sure that this is indeed talkng about the AIW?

    My understanding is this is a CPU sub section of AMD (not part of the ATI aquistion) and related to embedded processors for a select video/settop market. ATI/AMD can and most likely will continue to release AIW brand cards - even if they are just a Radeon with a Broadcom (or other manufacture) TV tuner chip glued on. (well soldered anyways)

    BTW AMD already got their value out of developing and creating these chips, so to sell of the line to Broadcomm makes good business sense, and gives them some cash for operations comfort.

  9. Henry Wertz Gold badge

    Re:AIW, are you sure that what they mean?

    Yeah. I've never heard of the Xileon, but the Theater is ATI's capture chip, and the NXT is a tuner. The older AIWs used a BT829 capture chip (BT for Brooktree, bought by Conexant a few years back.) I thought it was Rage128 and older with the BT829, but Google says it's odder. Apparently the *16MB* Rage128 AIW used the BT829 (and older RageII AIWs, Mach64 AIW, etc. did too)., while the *32MB* Rage128 AIW and the Rage128 Pro AIW used the Theater 100 (along with a bunch of Radeon models). And, they've been through a few revisions this last decade or so so they're up to the Theater 300.

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like