A new report out this afternoon originating from the South Korean media claims Samsung Electronics is potentially trying to purchase AMD, a global semiconductor company who makes processors for a wide variety of computer manufacturers and other devices. Samsung themselves produce their own in-house processors used in many of their handsets and other devices, and an acquisition of AMD, if proven true, would be a great benefit to Samsung in allowing them to bolster their own semiconductor offerings. AMD has a longstanding relationship with many of the top PC brands and is well known throughout the industry in addition to being a major competitor to Intel for the PC-based CPU and GPU markets.

If Samsung were to acquire AMD, this would put them right on par with Intel and Qualcomm with semi-conductor technology and could give them a substantial boost in offerings, clientele, and allow them emerge as one of the top brands offering processors going forward. An acquisition of AMD wouldn't necessarily be all about the technology to integrate into their own processor sets though, as eteknix points out that Samsung could end up having a useful tool in the court battle against Nvidia over unlicensed use of their graphics technologies. Since AMD processors typically use graphics processing technology from ATI who is a major Nvidia competitor in the PC space, as well as having been around for quite some time before Nvidia emerged as an industry leader in graphics processing, any patents obtained through an AMD acquisition could help keep the Nvidia lawyers at bay.


If this acquisition pans out, Samsung could end up with a promising new tech lineup for the year which could help them to better compete against other top brands, while possibly coming out ahead, but the acquisition could serve AMD positively as well. Samsung likely has vastly larger amounts of money to put towards research and development that could help AMD push their technology even further, which in turn Samsung could use too. Samsung could let AMD continue to operate independently under their ownership and feed AMD the funding for improving their already great technology, and then be able to use it in their own offerings, or they could completely absorb AMD and simply use the technology and assets while doing their own research and development. As of right now there is no evidence to support these claims and no official statements have been made by AMD or Samsung on the matter.