Advanced Micro Devices, the world’s second largest maker of microprocessors, reportedly has reached agreements with ATI Technologies in regards the acquisition of the latter. No details are known, but this is the second time when rumours concerning the acquisition break out in the last several weeks.

“On the July 4, a person close to the negotiations revealed that AMD has reached a purchase agreement with ATI, the news will soon be officially announced,” a news-story at Chinese web-site Sohu.com reads.

Early in June an analyst with RBC Market Capitals said that he would expect AMD to acquire ATI Technologies, as he thought it was consistent with AMD’s plans to expand capacities. Acquisition of ATI would give AMD a strong team of engineers and rich product portfolio not only consisting chipsets and graphics processors, but also chips for consumer electronics, mobile phones and even technology licensing agreements with Microsoft Corp. and Nintendo. But while AMD would gain ability to offer all-in-one platforms, like Intel Corp. does, acquisition of a quite a big company may impact AMD’s ability to spend on boosting its manufacturing capacities or developing new technologies.

There a lot of differences between AMD and ATI as well. If the former has been concentrating on development and manufacturing of microprocessors, gradually withdrawing from any other markets, the latter has been trying to enter broader markets with its various products, which are built by third party manufacturers, such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. (TSMC) or United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC).

At press time ATI’s market capitalization was $3.83 billion, market capitalization of AMD was $11.54 billion. Meanwhile, ATI had $607.03 million in cash, while AMD, who has been enjoying performance lead over Intel Corp. for several recent quarters, had $2.63 billion in cash.

ATI denied to “comment on rumours”.