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."

[brendan Sheehan jnr @ Nov 6th 2006 11:51AM]

Now it's the right time, Apple or Intel need to buy NVidia.

[Mrfreezie @ Nov 6th 2006 11:55AM]

@ brendan

didn't AMD already buy nvidia? or was it the other way around?

This doesn't mean that NVIDIA might go into the mp3 market does it? Nah..

[delerious @ Nov 6th 2006 12:11PM]

AMD bought ATI.

[tekdroid @ Nov 6th 2006 12:37PM]

ooh, now this is interesting. Big fish swallow smaller fish. I hope Nvidia is serious about open formats :)

[Mamps @ Nov 6th 2006 12:57PM]

PLAY's best new growth driver is "Preface", not chips for DAP's.
"Introducing Preface, a new technology from PortalPlayer that works with Windows Vista to enable a secondary LCD screen called Windows SideShow that displays data and pictures and runs other useful mini-applications that cater to your lifestyle. Since Preface is so power-efficient, it can run for hundreds of hours without draining your notebook battery providing Always On access to your data and multimedia content."

high margins and a larger market than DAP's. Good buy for nVidia. $357 million is pretty close to the cash value of the company.

[PEZ @ Nov 6th 2006 2:04PM]

Either one of them (intel/apple) should buy invidia, or apple will find someone else to make their chipsets for the ipod. intel, dosnt give a crap after that. :-D

[Russell @ Nov 6th 2006 6:06PM]

Yeah this was a really smart buy...

I'd like to see a hybrid PMP that had a powerful nvidia chip and a portalplayer so you got lots of battery life for music and lots of power for decoding divx/mp4/wmv/etc...

[futurepastnow @ Nov 6th 2006 5:02PM]

NVidia is a much larger company than ATI, with a much higher asking price. Apple couldn't afford it, and why would Intel want to buy them? The AMD-ATI deal all but guarantees that NV will shift its focus to products for Intel anyway.

Better for Intel to spend its cash on processor R&D.