Arstechnica has an interesting article on AMD and ATi...

AMD has the money in the bank to buy ATI, and they have the fab capacity coming online to expand their integrated circuit business beyond CPUs. An ATI purchase would give AMD a solid core logic chipset, and the unprecedented capability to go head-to-head with Intel at the level of the whole platform. Indeed, by leveraging cHT, Socket AM2, and the multipurpose DSP capabilities of an ATI GPU, AMD would have the ability to put together unique system architectures that would be tailor-made for the gaming/enthusiast and high performance computing (HPC) markets.