Intel Invests $218M in VMWare, Preparing for IPO 88
RulerOf writes "TechNewsWorld is carrying an article detailing that Intel has made an investment in VMWare for $218.5 million in anticipation of VMWare's imminent IPO. With an expected value of $23-25 a share, VMWare's IPO shows a value of $950 million. This investment brings Intel to an approximately 13% ownership of the EMC subsidiary, and helps to strengthen ties between the two companies. According to the article, 'VMware's virtualization platform runs on Intel architecture and most deployments of the tools are on systems using Intel chips.'"
What does this hold for AMD (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What does this hold for AMD (Score:4, Insightful)
VMWare has always been targeting the Linux and Windows server markets. Abandoning AMD would be a shotgun to the foot.
Re:What does this hold for AMD (Score:5, Funny)
If history has taught us one thing it's that you should never underestimate the ability of companies to shoot themselves in the foot.
Re:What does this hold for AMD (Score:4, Funny)
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I think we're past that point. There are more than a few companies out there that seem to have shot themselves in the crotch.
(C.f Enron, Worldcom, Arthur Andersen for recent examples.)
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Re:What does this hold for AMD (Score:5, Interesting)
From http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/ [apple.com]
Run Windows natively
Once you've completed Boot Camp, simply hold down the option key (that's the "alt" key for you longtime Windows users) at startup to choose between Mac OS X and Windows. After starting up, your Mac runs Windows natively just like a PC. Simply restart to come back to Mac.
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Special command set (Score:3, Insightful)
With Intel and VMware close partners, I'll bet VMware will have a say as to the next series of commands to be added to their x86 line.
They would never abandon AMD, but they could say that VMware gets better performance on an Intel chipset with the new XYZ command extension set.
It would be an excellent move, too. They wouldn't abandon any of the market, but it would tip the scales in favor of their new benefactor.
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It would be an excellent move, too. They wouldn't abandon any of the market, but it would tip the scales in favor of their new benefactor.
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You are clueless... http://www.parallels.com/products/coherence/ [parallels.com]
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*looks over shoulder at opteron box running VMWare server*
my friend and i were wondering the same thing.
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When you're running a lot of VM's on your hosts, you can go with Intel because they have more marketing power, or you can go with AMD because they perform much better in cpu/memory intensive SMP applications.
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I work for a company that sells AMD-based servers, both blade and rack-mount. And ESX is darned important product for us.
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Trusted Computing (Score:5, Interesting)
it's difficult to see anyway that around not having this seed trust be in some piece of unalterable hardware. And even though they are not doing trusted computing I would specualte that apple puts in a few hardware doo-dads so the software can validate it's running on apple hardware. (they may not be taking advantage of this yet but I bet it's lurking).
So then since it's likely that intel will be making the trusted computing hardware, will they grant the ability to emulate the hardware to their VM?
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I think your browser's Bayesian Spam Filter [wikipedia.org] is working in negation, keeping you from making any sense to English speakers. Just how [is] many [is] verbs does [is] a geek's sentence [is] need?
And before the obligatory reponse: 42!
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That is the intention of TPM.
-:sigma.SB
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real and secure electronic banking. Electronic voting. All sorts of commerce.
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Considering AMD has an antitrust lawsuit in progress against Intel in the US, Intel would be wise to avoid writing any "suggestions" in the memo line of that check they just cut for a piece of VMWare.
If VMWare starts optimizing for Intel-specific differences, or even does so much as slapping a "for best results, use Intel(tm) processors!" sticker on the box it's going to look very bad from where the judge is sitting.
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To be honest most at VMware are not hugely excited with the virtualization extensions. Most of the features are slower than the old techniques using binary extract
Motives? (Score:1)
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EMC is retaining 90% ownership of VMWare, and is IPOing shares representing 10% of the company. That 10% is expected to bring in $949 million, giving the whole company a market capitalization of around $10 billion.
2.5% of $10 billion is around $250 million of course.
From TFA (Score:1)
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Re:From TFA (Score:4, Informative)
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You believe wrong. Pretty much all of AMD's current lineup, from my $59 Athlon 64 X2 3600+ to the high-end Opterons, supports AMD-V, which is roughly analagous to Intel's VT. I have even heard from some sources that AMD-V is superior to VT.
Intel AMD (Score:3, Insightful)
My only hope is that Intel doesn't skew it's architecture so much that it becomes incompatible and that AMD is left behind. Would be nice if AMD could partner up as well, or create a consortium for "next gen architecture and virtualization enhancements" kinda like how MMX, SSE etc came about for graphics.
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I have a hunch that the market likes compatible choices, any wide variation from "the path" will whither and die.
IOW, AMD copies the good stuff, Intel copies the good stuff, and the goofy stuff doesn't make it or is niche. (my 0.0147 euros)
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Re:Intel AMD (Score:5, Informative)
My only hope is that Intel doesn't skew it's architecture so much that it becomes incompatible and that AMD is left behind. Would be nice if AMD could partner up as well, or create a consortium for "next gen architecture and virtualization enhancements" kinda like how MMX, SSE etc came about for graphics.
Too late - it's already happened. Intel and AMD have incompatible virtualisation technologies. Intel's is called VT [intel.com] with various sub-designations such as VT-d for virtualising DMA. AMD's is called AMD-V [amd.com] and is completely different. AMD have sub-divisions too, such as support for Nested Page Tables which Intel are still developing.
Xen supports both. Not certain about VMWare, but I'd be surprised if they didn't support both too. One interesting fact is that hardware virtualisation isn't faster than software approaches like VMWare's emulation or Xen paravirtualisation. Although this will probably change in future (and also Xen paravirt is no good for you if you want to run Windoze or other binary-only OSes).
Rich.
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Found a link to an article on AMD's Nested Page Tables [theinquirer.net].
Rich.
Not 13% (Score:5, Informative)
[Disclaimer: I work for EMC, but have no connection to VMWare; I have no inside knowledge of the IPO or related transactions.]
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Of course, my impression is that what Intel really gets out of this is a seat on the board. Of course, getting to invest in a highly-anticipated IPO at the low end of the expected IPO price is a sweet deal. I don't see what's in it for EMC (though it does add to the hype for the IPO, which isn't bad).
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It may be $950m to them (Score:2, Funny)
Pfft. I'm not impressed. (Score:2, Interesting)
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I don't think you've ever dealt with the "support" these companies offer. The bottom line is that if the basics don't work out of the box on Centos, it's not going to work on RHEL. You are guaranteed to be required t
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Their main products simply don't work on modern versions of Linux. One has to either modify their product with a 3rd party patch or down
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Obviously This Means FreeBSD Support, Right? (Score:1)
FWIW, Otellini uses Parallels... (Score:2)
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The real purpose of an IPO, from the SEC's point of view, is to get the stock out at a stable market price with a lot of the volatility removed. The investment bankers take the risk of the IPO and essentially take the volatility out so that it's
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Intel's investing in other virtualization company (Score:4, Informative)
Date ? (Score:1)
Intel Invests $218M in VMWare? (Score:4, Funny)
Where is google??? (Score:1)
This coupled with their server technology and gmail accounts, could easily have set up virtual desktop environments for all their clients to be able to install lets say office or any other
software, and then log unto another machine, and loggin into thier accounts, then be able to
run it without reinstall....how many would have given up their hotmail then???
Anyways, too late now, but would have been nice!
VmWare + Intel + Google + Apple (Score:1)
What's wrong with the above equation? Well, Microsoft is missing from it, yet it is a viable equation. What we are seeing with VmWare is a classic Innovator Dilemma of Christensen lore. I would have added Ubuntu (on VmWare???) but it's still too early to tell as there is nothing really compelling enough in Ubuntu at this stage to bring about a new standard: just because a production ingredient - software services - is done cheaply does not necessarily make a good business or product. In any case, while Micr
Why ? (Score:1)
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