ATI acquires Bitboys
- Thread starter kemosabe
- Start date
This post will probably be nothing but a pure waste of your precious internet time
Well, if it boils down to a choice such as "Are Ati big honchos are smarter than us when it comes to evaluate the price of BB" or "Ati management is losing it" then...
Ati management has definitely went nuts.
This news might come as bold and somehow rude from me, for some, it might come has one of my sarcastic posts to others, others might think that it's bad news for their investments, but to most this news will mean only one thing:
It's time to sell everything and anything to Ati! I'm already in pourparler with them about buying John Reynolds for 3.5 Million Dollars. I could get more out of it, if he still had some hair, but hey, it's easy money.
Well, if it boils down to a choice such as "Are Ati big honchos are smarter than us when it comes to evaluate the price of BB" or "Ati management is losing it" then...
Ati management has definitely went nuts.
This news might come as bold and somehow rude from me, for some, it might come has one of my sarcastic posts to others, others might think that it's bad news for their investments, but to most this news will mean only one thing:
It's time to sell everything and anything to Ati! I'm already in pourparler with them about buying John Reynolds for 3.5 Million Dollars. I could get more out of it, if he still had some hair, but hey, it's easy money.
geo said:
Just by googling around looks like the valuation of BB has been dropping. In August 2000 E3.7M bought 8.3% of the company and Nokia just put in E4.0M for 14% of the company? Hopefully the investors at least broke even. No big surprise that ATI had to at least match the valuation set a couple months back.
Considering Bitboys were effective enough, with innovations like a TFT module-embedded vector graphics processor for cellphones, to have competed against companies who dwarfed them in size by up to two orders of magnitude and yet to have survived, won major contracts and investments, and been profitable, their high valuation is not surprising.
Vysez said:
Probably because it's the cheapest way to add 40+ engineers to a specific department (ie PDA/mobile R&D f.e.)?
How exactly did ATI take out Bitboys as a future competitor? I saw NEC buying TI's OMAP2420 SoC for their high end FOMA phones and just recently licesing SGX directly from IMG. And that while NEC had multiple licenses from Bitboys.
On the other hand assume IMG would actually be for sale, try to compare an IP licensing company with 40+ individuals with one that counts over 300, addresses times more markets and obviously has a times higher street value than Bitboys.
For the size of BB IMHO ATI made an excellent investment and I don't see a single reason why I should underestimate the "boys" because of their past ventures. It's called lack of resources mostly and I wouldn't be surprised if Falanx has a similar fate some time in the future.
I'll flip the coin and go a bit further back: with the acquisition of 3dfx, NVIDIA also gained the Gigapixel engineers and patents; just because :
a) Gigapixel never ever released a single piece of hardware
b) NVIDIA never released a deferred renderer
...it doesn't by far mean that those engineers haven't contributed or are worthless to NVIDIA. I'd rather say the contrary.
One that sits on Nokia's doorstep, who Nokia have invested in.Ailuros said:
http://press.nokia.com/PR/200602/1033871_5.html
http://www.amtddj.inlumen.com/bin/djstory?StoryId=CrfBzqaebqLqWmdy0mZu
Let's keep on playing the devil's advocate
Besides, at $1M a head (I'm talking only about the engineers, here, since I don't see anything that could be important in the BB IPs portfolio, or any huge contract or even brand recognition that could worth so much) I won't exactly call that an excellent investment. It's definitely an investment, but is it excellent? No.
I'm sure it's not a terrible investment, but it's not the most obvious, or sound one, I would had imagined.
Also, Gigapixel IP portfolio was quite interesting, if you consider their TBDR approach fo rendering. Nvidia might not have went the TBDR route, but at least, they have their base covered if they ever decide to launch a TBDR.
Nappe, you're talking jokes way to seriously, really.
40+ Million Dollars is the cheapest way to inject 40+ engineers to the pool of engineers Ati already has?Ailuros said:
We shouldn't underestimate them because all of what they did for years was making claims about revolutionary GPUs that ultimately were nothing but vaporware?Ailuros said:
Besides, at $1M a head (I'm talking only about the engineers, here, since I don't see anything that could be important in the BB IPs portfolio, or any huge contract or even brand recognition that could worth so much) I won't exactly call that an excellent investment. It's definitely an investment, but is it excellent? No.
I'm sure it's not a terrible investment, but it's not the most obvious, or sound one, I would had imagined.
Gigapixel came "for free" with the 3Dfx deal, I don't exactly see the correlation here.Ailuros said:
Also, Gigapixel IP portfolio was quite interesting, if you consider their TBDR approach fo rendering. Nvidia might not have went the TBDR route, but at least, they have their base covered if they ever decide to launch a TBDR.
Nappe, you're talking jokes way to seriously, really.
Whoops, day late and a dollar short on my last post!
http://press.nokia.com/PR/200605/1049032_5.html
http://press.nokia.com/PR/200605/1049032_5.html
well maybe i'm strange but i can't get why some people think this is so "strange"
companies like BitBoys, XGI, Transmeta, ULi, Imagination Technologies are(were) good investment ...
experienced progressive R&D teams, lot of good patents and usually more than just that
what is usually worse type of "buy out" is something what done Creative to 3Dlabs (3DL erased from market where was always top notch and 100+ staff fired)
companies like BitBoys, XGI, Transmeta, ULi, Imagination Technologies are(were) good investment ...
experienced progressive R&D teams, lot of good patents and usually more than just that
what is usually worse type of "buy out" is something what done Creative to 3Dlabs (3DL erased from market where was always top notch and 100+ staff fired)
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Vysez said:
Compared to what hypothetically IMG would had cost ATI with 300+ engineers definitely yes.
That doesn't say one single thing about the possible potential of their engineers. Again lack of resources.
Albeit that's a weird way to do the math, see my answer to the first paragraph.
The question being why NVIDIA hasn't utilized any of it so far if you consider what AR1x is capable of or isn't in the end. That was the late Gigapixel's idea for the PDA/mobile market eons ago:
http://users.otenet.gr/~ailuros/GPLP.pdf
If NVIDIA hasn't internally been doing any research on the subject, it would rather mean that the technology has been shelved.
Dave Baumann said:
Yeah, one assumes the BBO/Nokia relationship was part of what was being included in that purchase price valuation, and, I'm guessing, part of the "performance clause" that was referenced.
I mean, the timing of this announcement versus the previous one is hardly coincidental.
Get your heads straight
It is so obvious and nobody can see it. BB was not a backdoor to Nokia, BB is the frontdoor. BB had a right product for nokia and had most likely already won an account that everyone wanted. They got it. Not ATI, not Nvidia not IMG.
If you knew anything, you would have known for long time that IMG is not the winner in this game. It had an opportunity and it screwed it up with lack of execution. Now the big players are coming into the handheld market, and the "cards have been dealt". Smart move from BB to get there and join one of the big ones, not entering into a fistfight with any one of them.
Nvidia tried the backdoor with Hybrid and its software, but with the announcement of Nokia alliance ATI is at this point right where it wanted, with BB's product in the IP side and its own hardware products in the upper end. Surely the strategy can fail, and Nvidia can pull out tricks and win other accounts, but if ATI / BB can deliver, they have the volume market in the handheld graphics. Period.
This thread has more vaporware within it than what BB ever was able to create. Give up guys, you have to admit that BB achieved something you never will. And by the way, so did Hybrid. Great to exit in style!
It is so obvious and nobody can see it. BB was not a backdoor to Nokia, BB is the frontdoor. BB had a right product for nokia and had most likely already won an account that everyone wanted. They got it. Not ATI, not Nvidia not IMG.
If you knew anything, you would have known for long time that IMG is not the winner in this game. It had an opportunity and it screwed it up with lack of execution. Now the big players are coming into the handheld market, and the "cards have been dealt". Smart move from BB to get there and join one of the big ones, not entering into a fistfight with any one of them.
Nvidia tried the backdoor with Hybrid and its software, but with the announcement of Nokia alliance ATI is at this point right where it wanted, with BB's product in the IP side and its own hardware products in the upper end. Surely the strategy can fail, and Nvidia can pull out tricks and win other accounts, but if ATI / BB can deliver, they have the volume market in the handheld graphics. Period.
This thread has more vaporware within it than what BB ever was able to create. Give up guys, you have to admit that BB achieved something you never will. And by the way, so did Hybrid. Great to exit in style!