NVidia buys Taiwanese chipset vendor

Graphics chip giant nVidia has confirmed its intention to buy Taiwanese PC chipset vendor ULi Electronics for $52m. 

NVidia said in a statement that the move would strengthen its chipset team and improve links with customers in Asia. 

It might also throw a spanner in the works for rival graphics chip maker ATI Technologies, which has relied on ULi for part of its own chipset product line.

Originally established by Taiwan's giant Acer group as Acer Labs, ULi has always been a relatively small player in the chipset market and has been struggling to compete since nVidia and ATI began making their own chipsets.

Further pressure on ULi may also have come from Intel's recent decision to waive royalties for some chipsets made by Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS), one of ULi's larger local rivals, which has given SiS an opportunity to cut prices. 

Goldman Sachs warned last month of a risk of oversupply in the chipset market next year. 

Chipsets act as a gateway between the CPU and the rest of the computer. Because of this central role, chipset makers can influence a wide range of standards used in PCs for graphics, memory, disk drives and other components.

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