The Register raapt een paar vage geruchten van de straat volgens welke AMD en VIA mogelijk gaan fuseren. De bekendmaking van VIA dat het de processor divisie in een apart bedrijf onder wil brengen zou een voorteken zijn voor mogelijke fusieplannen. Zoals gezegd een wazig berichtje, dus niet meteen al te serieus nemen:
The news is already prompting widespread speculation that AMD and Via could tie up their businesses, in a bid to give chip major Intel an even tougher run than it has had in the course of the last four months.That spin has been scotched today by Via. Marketing director Richard Brown, based in Taipei, said: "There's no truth in these rumours. It's true that we will spin off the chip company but it will be 100 per cent owned by Via. We have no plans to merge with AMD or anyone else."
[...] As far as a spun off CPU company is concerned, earlier this year, at CeBIT 2000, we reported that Via was not in any condition to start distributing its CPUs on a worldwide basis for at least a year, given that it has no merchant infrastructure, nor distributor channel to sell the CPUs. AMD has such a structure and could help it out. There's no doubt there's quite a close relationship between the two.
Added to the current alliances Via has with AMD, the Taiwanese firm has also made considerable investments in graphics firm S3.
There have been persistent rumours on Silicon Investor and other financial bulletin boards, that CEO Chen has been making large investments in AMD stock. These, apparently, are just rumours.
Thanks insane voor de tip.