(April Fool's) NVIDIA Acquisition of AMD Re-Ignites CPU Market Excitement*

Quad-core CPUs with underwhelming performance, cache bugs and belated fixes? Lingering yield issues that force the sale of costly die with one faulty core disabled? An expensive graphics technology acquisition whose return on investment won’t occur until far in the future, if ever? Too much bad news for AMD’s board to bear; it fired the company’s executive team late last night and accepted NVIDIA’s long-rumoured acquisition overtures.

The subsequent significant broadening of Santa Clara,CA-based NVIDIA’s business marks an enormous risk for the company, but a necessary one. The demand for high-end GPUs has been steadily evaporating in recent years, and Intel’s under-development Larrabee GPU (and follow-ons) will likely be a significant threat to NVIDIA’s until-today core business.

How’s that saying go: "the best defense is a good offense?"

*Yep, I got you again. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if this forecast does play out, sooner or later…