Nvidia - VIA Alliance, Denied by Company's CEO

Nvidia's CEO Jen-Hsun Huang vehemently slashed the rumors about a possible Nvidia – VIA merger and said that his company had no interest in either investing in or buying the low-voltage CPU manufacturer. The buyout rumors first emerged in early March and they gained credibility as both companies entered talks about a collaboration on the chipset market.

"They don't need our money. I don't need theirs", Huang said, referring to Via. "They're doing fine. People want to create drama", he added.

Huang's affirmation is meant to put an end to the previous speculations that included even VIA's acquisition by Nvidia. While Nvidia's CEO statement regarding VIA's financial state should be taken with a grain of salt (VIA posted revenue of about $87.5 million in the first quarter of 2008, but it is buried in debts), one thing is clear: Nvidia will stay away from the company at all costs.

Prior to yesterday's announcement, Nvidia trumpeted that it was joining VIA in order to deliver a stable, high-performance and energy efficient mobile PC platform to compete with Intel's upcoming Atom architecture.

According to a joint statement from both manufacturers, VIA and Nvidia were working on "the world's most affordable Vista Premium PC", a design that combines VIA's low-energy CPU with Nvidia's high-performance integrated chipsets.

However, Huang claimed that Nvidia does not want to enter the CPU race for now, so it does not need VIA's help to take on Intel. "Our shtick is that we just focus on one thing. We said we're a visual computing technology company and we're completely focused on this", Huang said.

Nvidia will continue its collaboration with VIA but only in the graphics-related fields of activity.

"Wherever their processor capabilities intersect with our visual computing focus, we will support them. We support ARM, we support Power PC in the game console world, we support Hitachi SH in the automobile industry, we support Via in low-end PCs", he concluded.


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