
The Case for IBM Buying Nvidia, Mellanox, and Xilinx - Katydid
https://www.nextplatform.com/2017/02/07/case-ibm-buying-nvidia-xilinx-mellanox/
======
krona
Please, no. I work with both IBM and Nvidia and I can say such an acquisition
would be a cultural mismatch that would make Daimler/Chrysler look like a
boardroom tea party.

IBM is hollowed out and tries to cover that up with headline-making
acquisitions and effective marketing. It's aimless and sclerotic, trying to
pursue growth markets but is largely incapable of making good products;
constantly over-promising and under-delivering.

NVidia has it's best days ahead of it. I think the direction it's going with
ARM has more legs than what they're doing with POWER. They make innovative
products that _work_ , and have fantastic partnerships across the industry.

Perhaps more importantly, the target markets of these two companies are
diverging, not converging. IBM is desperately trying to move up the value
chain, away from hardware, to remain competitive. You could hardly say the
same about Nvidia in how it's pursuing the automotive industry.

~~~
guitarbill
While IBM has made some good acquisition * , the executives are either
clueless or too busy with infighting. Their wild flailing around has caused
several good acquisitions to be squandered and if the "blue-washing" (aka.
onboarding) doesn't alienate the staff, then neglecting the product and asking
them to work on/with horrible IBM technologies will.

NVidia would be doomed instantly, but it might take a few years until the
effects were felt.

* I believe when this happens, distinguished engineers or architects were consulted _and_ their advice was followed.

~~~
basch
what is the verdict on compose.io? will it be blue-washed?

~~~
guitarbill
well, like e.g. Ustream and unlike the infamous storage mergers (Softlayer,
Cleversafe, Cloudant, XIV, Storwize, TMS, etc) it seems to have remained a
separate company. maybe because it doesn't fit an existing IBM division? so it
might be safe, as long as it isn't incorporated into the shitshow that is
bluemix.

~~~
johnward
It's typical to be a separate company until bluewashing occurs.

------
cjensen
A horrifying proposal based on the assumption that servers and network are the
end-all and be-all of everything.

"Commodification" is a thing, and Xilinx fits _everywhere_ , not just in
places destined to have no profit. In fact, their best markets are the _new_
ones with no pre-existing specialized chips available to replace FPGAs.

~~~
ktta
Can you please explain what you were referring to by 'new ones with no pre-
existing specialized chips available to replace FPGAs.'? I've never really
head of any thing new that can replace FPGAs.

~~~
leoedin
Once a market for a particular chip is big enough, it's much more cost
effective to replace an FPGA with an ASIC (a custom silicon chip). The non-
recurring cost to have an ASIC developed is often millions of dollars, so it
only makes sense in high volume applications.

FPGAs excel in low volume, and in products that are still being developed.

------
tomc1985
Ew, no. IBM would likely kill Geforce, which is the whole reason all y'all are
talking about everything _but_ that right now...

Long before Titan or Pascal or any of this built-for-ML stuff, a high-end PCIe
gaming card (or quadro/firegl, which were built for sci/eng visualization) was
the only way to dabble in OpenCL et al.

------
bitmapbrother
You only need to see what IBM did to SoftLayer to foresee what would happen to
Nvidia.

~~~
throwawayggg001
They are doing the same to the Weather Company.

------
lend000
On top of the other problems mentioned by commenters: Intel and Altera are an
arguably better fit (Intel had already worked with Altera closely as their
foundry) and despite the clear strategic alignment of FPGA's and high
performance servers, it seems they are struggling to bear fruit.

------
beambot
IBM market cap:$170B

Nvidia market cap: $65B

That's a tall order...

~~~
taspeotis
People try the weirdest things... take a look at "Something lighter."

[https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-01-30/immigrati...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-01-30/immigration-
orders-and-odd-tenders)

~~~
owenversteeg
Oh man, I knew that'd Matt Levine. The only email newsletter I subscribe to -
and I hate email newsletters. That entire page is worth reading, for anyone
with a few extra minutes.

------
Zigurd
Please stop thinking of IBM as a vertically integrated technology company.
They are a service company, with a veneer of technology and intellectual
property. These kinds of hypotheticals should be formulated the other way
around, specifically: "What if IBM sold off the Power architecture and IPO'ed
it big enough to go acquire a sustainable hardware technology stack?" Power
will eventually wither within IBM due to the impedance mismatch in R&D
investment.

------
Spooky23
It might be good, as the ensuing obliteration of value might wake people up to
the dark side of the era of cheap debt and crazy financial engineering that
runs today's world.

------
jjm
If IBM tried to do this I can see other players stepping up to outbid them.

Didn't IBM divest much of these business lines and focus on services?

~~~
broodbucket
They divested their x86 systems business (thinkpads & servers) but still have
a power servers division.

~~~
phonon
But they don't actually manufacture the chips any more...

~~~
wmf
Nobody besides Intel and Samsung manufactures their own chips any more; it's
not relevant.

------
orionblastar
Yeah, but IBM doesn't have a good track record of buying out companies and
making them profitable.

Anyone remember when IBM bought out Lotus? Anyone remember when IBM was making
OS/2 with Microsoft?

IBM got out of the PC desktop, laptop, and printer markets. They got out of
the Intel server markets as well.

IBM should just provide service for Linux and make their own FOSS apps for
Linux that they can sell support for. Maybe invest or submit code to ReactOS,
HaukOS, AROS, or OSFree?

The least that IBM can do is document every OS/2 API call so someone can write
an FOSS alternative to it, or a WINE like environment for Linux.

------
seesomesense
IBM acqui-kills firms and products. It is the great Sargasso sea of IT.

------
timClicks
I am sure that a move like this would make perfect sense for IBM, but it would
hollow out great parts of the HPC vendor ecosystem. That ecosystem is already
quite fragile with the ascendency of Intel x86 chips everywhere

~~~
itomato
It _may_ create a little cavity in the 10G and FC HBA market, but a unified
product vision spanning the three is dizzying by comparison, and hardly a
reason not to.

It's easy for me to imagine how SoCs with the best of each could be a catapult
for HPC.

------
frik
IBM should instead buy Intel and Microsoft, that would at least be funny.

------
crb002
Xilinx makes sense. Let Xilinx operate on it's own as long as they deliver a
FPGA+Mainframe system for BlueMix, and a FPGA supercomputer for Dept of
Energy.

------
faragon
It would be easier for Intel to buy Nvidia...

~~~
scottlegrand2
I'd rather see Intel buy rights to AMD's upcoming Vega GPUs and kill off the
entire Xeon Phi line as the pointless misadventure it has been so far.

~~~
mbilker
I thought the Xeon Phi line is better now that it is all one processor instead
of a separate coprocessor. I saw a few weeks ago here on HN on an actual use
case for its MCDRAM and spreading the load over its separate clusters of
cores.

~~~
Athas
The problem isn't the fact that it's a coprocessor, I think. NVIDIA GPUs are
all coprocessors, and they are wildly successful.

------
jps359
seeing as IBM just sold their chip fab to globalfoundries, this seems
unlikely.

------
douche
We have one good GPU manufacturer and you want to destroy it by having it
swallowed up by the shambling corpse of Big Blue?

No, just no.

