HPCwire: AMD Completes ATI Acquisition, Announces CPU-GPU Fusion

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October 27, 2006

AMD Completes ATI Acquisition, Announces CPU-GPU Fusion

AMD has completed its approximately $5.4 billion acquisition of ATI Technologies Inc. With approximately 15,000 employees, the company merges AMD's microprocessor technology with ATI's expertise in graphics, chipsets and consumer electronics products.

"Today marks a historic day for our employees, our partners and our customers as we officially welcome ATI into the AMD family," said AMD Chairman and CEO Hector Ruiz. "On day one, we are delivering a winning set of complementary technologies, igniting a new level of innovation and continuing to champion choice for the industry. Thanks to the strength of our talented employees, the new AMD now has a full range of intellectual property (IP) in microprocessors, graphics, chipsets and consumer electronics to deliver open platforms and integrated solutions. In the near term, customers gain a new level of choice, and in the long term, we believe the possibilities for innovation are truly limitless."

Under the terms of the transaction, AMD acquired all of the outstanding common shares of ATI for a combination of approximately $4.3 billion in cash and 58 million shares of AMD common stock, based on the number of shares of ATI common stock outstanding on October 24, 2006. All outstanding options and restricted stock units (RSUs) of ATI were assumed. The value of the ATI acquisition of approximately $5.4 billion is based upon the closing stock price of AMD common stock on October 24, 2006 of $20.32 per share and excludes the value of assumed equity awards. AMD financed the cash portion of the transaction with a combination of cash and new debt. AMD obtained a $2.5 billion term loan from Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, Inc., which, together with combined existing cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities balances of approximately $1.8 billion, provided full funding for the transaction.

AMD's and ATI's combined platform development and technical support teams will be co-located in Taipei and Shanghai. Combined with the existing Austin and Toronto locations, these sites offer research and development and customer support.

AMD plans to deliver a range of integrated platforms in 2007 to serve key markets, including: commercial clients; mobile computing; and gaming and media computing. PC users will benefit from innovations intended to extend battery life on the next-generation AMD Turion 64 mobile technology-based platform and enhancements to the AMD LIVE! digital media PC platform. AMD believes that these integrated platform innovations will bring customers improved system stability, better time-to-market, increased performance and energy-efficiency and overall, an enhanced user experience.

"By driving innovation and integration in processing, especially in graphics, the new AMD has the potential to empower breakthrough computing experiences for users of Windows Vista," said Jim Allchin, co-president of Microsoft's Platforms & Services Division. "We are excited by the potential benefits that this union can bring to enhance the Windows Vista experience."

AMD also sees an opportunity to deliver processing solutions to the growing consumer electronics market. The company intends to leverage ATI's strength in the consumer market by pursuing new opportunities to invest in the consumer electronics and high-end discrete graphics markets. With leading technology and customer relationships, AMD is positioned to address digital convergence by leveraging critical IP to create new innovations and devices that facilitate end-to-end content delivery and connectivity to improve end-user experiences.

In addition, AMD plans to create a new class of x86 processor that integrates the central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU) at the silicon level with a broad set of design initiatives collectively codenamed "Fusion." AMD intends to design Fusion processors to provide step-function increases in performance-per-watt relative to today's CPU-only architectures, and to provide the best customer experience in a world increasingly reliant upon 3D graphics, digital media and high performance computing. With Fusion processors, AMD will continue to promote an open platform and encourage companies throughout the ecosystem to create new co-processing solutions aimed at further optimizing specific workloads. AMD-powered Fusion platforms will continue to support high-end discrete graphics, physics accelerators, and other PCI Express-based solutions to meet the increasing needs of the most demanding enthusiast end-users.

"With the anticipated launch of Windows Vista, robust 3D graphics, digital media and device convergence are driving the need for greater performance, graphics capabilities, and battery life," said Phil Hester, AMD senior vice president and chief technology officer. "In this increasingly diverse x86 computing environment, simply adding more CPU cores to a baseline architecture will not be enough. As x86 scales from palmtops to petaflops, modular processor designs leveraging both CPU and GPU compute capabilities will be essential in meeting the requirements of computing in 2008 and beyond."

Fusion processors are expected in late 2008/early 2009, and the company expects to use them within all of the company's priority computing categories, including laptops, desktops, workstations and servers, as well as in consumer electronics and solutions tailored for the unique needs of emerging markets.

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