Imagination Technologies up for sale [2017]

Damn :/

 

If I had to guess:

1 - Samsung
2 - Mediatek
3 - HiSilicon (does Huawei have $400M to pay for it?)


The company being sold to anyone else (Qualcomm, AMD, nVidia, Intel, ARM, etc.) would probably mean scrapping all future plans, firing everyone and using the IP as constant source of revenue.


And I don't really think apple can be on that list. If they wanted to purchase IMG they would've done it years ago, before starting to hire and poach GPU engineers everywhere.

 

Could Intel be interested ?

 

It could still be interesting for Apple as it would cost them a lot less than before ^^
Intel could have been, if it was still trying to sell mobile/tablet hardware, which I think it isn't anymore.

 

How are Surface sales anyway?

;p

 

There was a time when most people thought Intel would bring the PowerVR GPUs from the ULP Atoms into the big Cores and eventually phase out their Gen iGPUs. The exact opposite happened.

 

Bad, there was a recent graph that showed even their best quarter ever revenue has been a lot lower than the ipads worse quarter ever revenue, which maybe aint so bad, but then you realize the ASP per surface is a lot higher than the ipads ASP which shows it hasn't actually been setting the world on fire.
MS IMO need to bring out a lot cheaper version, one where they only make $10 profit or something, just to get some marketshare, they can still charge the high prices for all the higher end products

 

Most of the companies you mention would care more about the engineers than the IP.

 

The problem there is how it would look to regulatory bodies and if they would approve the sale.

It's common knowledge that Apple was IMG's largest customer by a relatively large margin. It's common knowledge that Apple licensed IMG GPUs for use in their products. There were also rumors that Apple were in talks with IMG about a possible acquisition. Apple acknowledged they talked to IMG, but didn't disclose what those talks were about and commented that they wouldn't be making an offer at that time.

If Apple were to express interest, their actions leading up to this point could be seen as attempting to manipulate the market such that they could acquire IMG at lower than market price. Especially when everything they've been saying up to this point is that they are well along with making a GPU that is at least as good as what they were licensing from IMG without using anything which IMG holds rights to. IE - other than acquiring engineers, there is supposedly nothing that Apple needs from IMG as their GPU doesn't use anything related to IMG.

Regards,
SB

 

A funny position for them to take, given almost all of the GPUs made by those companies could heavily benefit from the unique and PowerVR-specific technology embodied in their IP.

 

We'll probably find out soon enough.
I hope the employees who haven't jumped ship already will come out of it relatively unscathed, and that the good technology developed under the IMGTech umbrella will be put to use as opposed to languishing in a largely unused IP-portfolio.

 

I think Apple will still be one of the most likely candidates to buy them out, and I think they'd end up having to pay a rate similar to what they would have had to pay before IMG's stock price was sunk.

 

In the UK there's a fairly strict Code on Takeovers. When Apple announced last year that they were not going to takeover IMG that was actually legally binding, though only for 6 months. So they are now in the clear to do a takeover again.

http://www.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/news/market-news/market-news-detail/other/12748077.html

http://www.thetakeoverpanel.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/code.pdf?v=2May2017

 

Fully tiled rasterizer? RUs (Raytracing Unit) for ray-probing used in collision detection and occlusion culling, heightfield tracing and global illumination traversal, and last but not least resolution independent shadow-"mapping"?
Sounds good. How much?

 

I really don't see any point for apple buying imgtech. Apple might want specific engineers or ip but they already have inhouse solution. Why buy company just to lay off 99% of employees that apple doesn't need/want? Licencing and recruiting is much better solution. I assume apple would want to relocate anyone coming aboard where ever their existing team(s) is/are. Adding a new remote site is never a great idea.

 

Honestly, this will be funny as IMG is in this position right now, because Apple have annunce they will not buy anymore IMG IPs, design in the future.. ( well this is part of the reason, as they have not seek other clients etc )..

Honestly if this is happend, i will start to ask me if Apple have not see the opportunity some times ago and make the move how they have do it for acquire patent and licences this way.

 

Part of me secretly hopes Sony will pony up the dough and buy IMG, as they have some interesting tech and I think Sony could use the majority of it; PS5, updated PS Vita, smartphones, SOCs for there TV's.

Basically I really want real time attracting hardware in a console .