News Intel's former CEO reportedly wanted to buy Nvidia for $20 billion in 2005 — Nvidia is worth over $3 trillion today

[Admin]

A New York Times report says that in 2005, Intel CEO Paul Otellini wanted to buy Nvidia for $20 billion, which could have changed the course of tech history.

Intel's former CEO reportedly wanted to buy Nvidia for $20 billion in 2005 — Nvidia is worth over $3 trillion today : Read more

 

[-Fran-]

Rest in Hell, Otellini.

Regards.

 

[Root Canal]

Intel would have cancelled CUDA

 

[TheToi34]

The fact is that if Intel had bought Nvidia, then Nvidia would never have reached 3 trillion dollars. It should be noted that Intel did not believe in AI at all.

 

[jg.millirem]

I love hearing about all of Intel’s bonehead mistakes.

 

[Vanderlindemedia]

Intel would have cancelled CUDA

Likely, since intel's benefit was CPU's and not GPU's to run compute based tasks.

They have a long way to go still.

 

[acadia11]

Likely, since intel's benefit was CPU's and not GPU's to run compute based tasks.

They have a long way to go still.

CPUs run compute based task, the difference is that CPUs are general purpose compute processors and GPUs excel at a specific use case one that is common to video games and machine learning , ie matrix multiplication and vectorization. While a CPU and GPU can both perform this task a GPU can perform vast amounts of these functions in parallel. basically a GPU is construct of a compute core repeated thousands of times to do this same function … this is simplifying but the essential difference … it’s why GPUs excelled in crypto mining etc … however in a much more random task ie say running an OS a CPU would be much better to solve that use case. The point CPUs and GPUs are solving different use cases not competing.

 

[acadia11]

The fact is that if Intel had bought Nvidia, then Nvidia would never have reached 3 trillion dollars. It should be noted that Intel did not believe in AI at all.

I wouldnt say intel didn’t believe in AI but they didn’t believe the revolution would be this rapid hence passing up on OpenAi investment as well. I think nail hit head you … though intel owning nvidia doesn’t mean nvidia would become nvidia. To be honest in industry how often do you see these type of acquisitions work out … and the trajectory of the products of the purchased company accelerate.

 

[Kondamin]

At the time that was a smart decision 20 billion back then was a heck of a lot more money than it is now and that kind of stupid spending is what brought amd to its knees

 

[AndrewJacksonZA]

Two massive mistakes in a row from Intel's board. Whoa. Very much a lack of vision, IMHO. (but hindsight is always 20/20, isn't it?)

Let's hope that Arc continues getting support and Battlemage ups the performance in a big way.

 

[flowingbass]

If that happened, Intel would eventually shelf a lot of nvidias products and projects. Eventually to be overtaken by AMD (radeon)