NVIDIA snapping up PortalPlayer for $357 mil.
All the big-time chip kiddies are all about diversity, and now that NVIDIA seems bent on doing things for serious in the GPU, chipset and (most recently) CPU spaces, its next step was pretty natural: go small. That's why it's forking over a cool $357 million for PortalPlayer, the system-on-chip wunderkind behind most some of the biggest music players in the biz -- most recently including the 5G iPod with video and SanDisk Sansa e200 series. However, NVIDIA has its sights set on much more than DAPs, and plans to combine the miniature know-how and processing power of PortalPlayer with NVIDIA's own graphics expertise in a bid to "drive the next digital revolution, where the mobile device becomes our most personal computer." Sounds like a good time for all, especially PortalPlayer stockholders, to which the purchase price represents a 19 percent bump on their stock value as it compares to the 20-day average as of Friday. The boards of both companies have approved the acquisition, and now the only hurdle is regulatory before these two chip fiends start busting out their "digital revolution."
