Apple merges with nVidia

Some of you may say "whoa," but this really is an ideal pairing. Think about it. Apple makes some of the best consumer electronics out there. nVidia is making the best internals. Together, they can be the Sony of the 21st century if they can live up to their joint promise.

More important, it solves a severe problem facing Apple; the heir to Jobs's throne. Jobs is, after all, mortal, even though he may not believe that. However, there really isn't a clear heir in the company, and the company's stock is being hammered over those concerns. Apple is so firmly tied to Jobs that it's hard to imagine it without him. We've already seen that scenario once and it wasn't pretty.

If there is anyone in the Silicon Valley who can match Jobs for sheer force of will, strength of personality, tenacity and repeated and consistent success, it is Jen-Hsun Huang. He continues to wipe the floor with AMD and is expanding into heterogeneous computing in a way that should make Intel and IBM nervous. Really, who else could run Apple in a post-Jobs world?

Only one problem. We're assuming Jobs is seriously ill because of his gaunt appearance at the WWDC. Let's give the spokespeople the benefit of the doubt, that he's just been under the weather. We could see a serious breach of the space-time continuum trying to put those two monumental egos under the same roof for any length of time.

And on the subject of supercomputers...

Dell buys SGI

Someone should grab SGI and soon. It has revamped and refocused on HPC and is doing so in an astounding way. Yes it had 22 computers on the Top 500 list compared to IBM's 240. IBM is how big, compared to SGI?

Dell needs SGI to give it what it lacks, true high end computing. High performance computing (HPC) is expected to grow at double the rate of servers, and it's a darn pricey (read: high margin) business. SGI has the products and the rep, but it doesn't have the muscle or the profile. Dell brings that.

There really is no one else. IBM sure doesn't need SGI. HP has more than enough product lines with the Superdome and NonStop systems. Sun probably couldn't afford SGI although it could be an intriguing match if Sun's board decides that Jonathan's attempt to turn the company into a software firm is a bust.

Dell is the one player left that can do it, and given the hole in its product offering, should do it. It bought the boutique PC vendor AlienWare and was smart about it. Dell kept its hands off and let them do what they do best, although you can see some AlienWare influence on Dell XPS designs. It should do the same with SGI.

And for our final pairing, if I haven't stirred up enough controversy yet...

Microsoft merges with Salesforce.com, spins off consumer products

Microsoft has a serious problem. It's grown into a monstrosity and has pretty much ceased to be a dynamic, entrepreneurial type of company (Google, take note). That's according to a buddy who works there. (His #1 tip for optimizing Vista? "Use XP.")

While it continues to make money thanks to tent pole products, Microsoft has hit the skids in other areas. Vista is still a debacle and will be the source of repeated humiliation for Jonathan Hodgeman for some time to come (and by Justin Long, whose acting makes Keanu Reeves look like Laurence Olivier. Just watch "Dragon Wars."). Xbox has cost the company billions and the Yahoo merger attempt was considered a boondoggle.

Quite a few people are calling for CEO Steve Ballmer's shiny head, and it seems a lot of the calls are coming from inside Microsoft, if anonymous blogs are to be trusted. But the only counter argument I'm hearing is who could replace him? Well, Microsoft could kill two birds with one stone.

First, take all of the consumer products, including Vista, plus low-end Office, Xbox, Money, games, Zune, Live, OneCare, keyboards and mice, Internet Explorer, etc, and spin them off as a separate, stand-alone company with its own balance sheet and PL statement that sinks or swims on its own, headed by Robbie Bach and J Allard.

Windows development should be driven by the server team. Are you hearing Vista-like complaints about Server 2008? Of course not. The Server team should do the kernel and most important components, and make it modular enough so the client team can yank off what it does not need.

The main Microsoft corporation sheds its entire consumer focus becomes a business software company selling to the enterprise primarily and down to the mid-market. Marc Benioff takes the helm and continues the on-demand efforts Microsoft is grudgingly initiating while preserving the on-premises products until they die on the vine. With Server 2008, .Net, Visual Studio, SQL Server, Apex and Force.com all under one roof, he will have the ultimate platform to deliver business applications and services.  

Then Steve can go do some philanthropic work with Bill, or something, anything else but cripple his company on an ill-matched merger.

Thanks for joining us, tune in again for another round of The Dating Game, Silicon Valley Edition.