Jen Hsun Huang new CEO of AMD?

Rumours are flying thick and fast out of California today about something that the industry has considered impossible for two decades.

A merger of two companies that have been sworn blood enemies. Could it be true?  KitGuru genuflects and prepares to utter sacrilegious words.

Lordie, lordie.

• nVidia invented the modern 3D card as we know it.
• ATI brought us DX9.
• nVidia brought us AMD chipset mainboards.
• AMD delivered 64-bit computing to the masses.
• nVidia innovated with SLi and dual-GPU graphics.
• AMD allowed CrossFire to work with a mainboard's integrated graphics processor.
• nVidia came down from the mountain with DX10.
• AMD delivered on DirectX 11.

At the same time as these companies have been innovating hard and fast in every sector they touch, one thing is certain.

Intel is pulling in ever increasing revenue.

In fact, given how closely all of these companies are to each other, Intel manages to avoid competing with either AMD or nVidia in many areas of the market. Even if you add in ARM (through its relationship with nVidia), you still don't really get a significant cross-over.

Does it seem natural for all the companies that ‘are not Intel' to form into a single organisation?

If they did, how would that work?

Well, financially, AMD has a lot more turnover than nVidia – so it would be natural for them to take the lead.

But, after combining AMD with nVidia, how would you sort out the CEO's position?

Well, let's imagine for a second that nVidia has one of the smartest CEOs on the planet. Now let's also imagine that AMD has no CEO at all.

Might not be that hard to integrate. If that were the case.

If this came off, then it would represent a landmark moment in the development of the industry. While AMD's leaders have been competent, no one we've spoken to would suggest that they are in the same league as Jen Hsun.

Likewise, as the world moves toward the integration of CPU and GPU, AMD has some world-beating technologies within Fusion that don't really exist in the nVidia line up. It's a fascinating game of speculation, but will the deal actually go down?  If it does, will it happen in the quieter summer months?

How can you know for sure?   Well, there's a very simple early warning indicator which you can monitor yourselves. The nVidia chart over on Yahoo's finance pages will suddenly surge upwards as ‘people who have no special access to any information they should not have whatsoever' suddenly get the urge to buy nVidia stock like its going out of fashion.

KitGuru says: Will we see the nVidia or AMD logos being moth-balled around the middle of 2013?  Which teams would stay and which would be ferociously culled because ‘both companies were wise enough to insist on SAP – so now their individual functions can be integrated/devolved'. Like the man said, may you live in interesting times.

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