AMD Buys Rival Chip Maker Xilinx For $35 Billion

Advanced Micro Devices, better known as AMD, has announced the acquisition of Xilinx, a rival chip maker in a huge, all-stock deal worth $35 billion. This follows a previous report that such a purchase could be in the works, and it comes just a day before AMD is set to announce its new range of Big Navi GPUs, and weeks before the launch of the new AMD-equipped next-gen consoles.

In a press release, AMD and Xilinx say this move establishes "the industry's leading high-performance computing company," though the deal is still pending regulatory approval. The Wall Street Journal notes this comes amid a series of major transactions in the semiconductor business. Just recently, Nvidia purchased Arm Holdings for $40 billion.

"Our acquisition of Xilinx marks the next leg in our journey to establish AMD as the industry's high performance computing leader and partner of choice for the largest and most important technology companies in the world," AMD president and CEO Dr. Lisa Su said in a press release.

AMD will report its earnings today for its third quarter, but it has been a strong period for the company during the pandemic--particularly as compared with Intel, which has seen a drop in its stock price since the beginning of the year. AMD, by contrast, has continued to surge, achieving its all-time peak in recent months. Intel has reportedly struggled with manufacturing issues involving its chips, whereas AMD outsources that production to other companies.

Although Intel still represents the majority of chips used by gaming PCs (a recent Steam hardware survey pegged it at roughly a 75/25 split in favor of Intel), AMD has been on the rise. And, as noted above, both the PS5 and Xbox Series X/Series S are equipped with AMD chips, which should be a boon for the company.

AMD will host an event on Wednesday to unveil its new RDNA 2 graphics cards, dubbed Big Navi. This will come after the impressive debut of Nvidia's RTX 30 line, which came in cheaper than expected but has been marred to some degree by the sheer difficulty of buying one.