ATI buys Bitboys

[lyon_wonder]

And what will the purchase of a company that has produced nothing but
vaporware do to ATI's release schedules?

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/mobile/display/20060502054632.html

ATI Acquires Mobile Graphics Processors Developer.
Bitboys Becomes Part of ATI Technologies
by Anton Shilov

[ 05/02/2006 | 05:47 AM ]

Bitboys, a company known for its promises to develop an ultimate
graphics processor for desktops and later switching to mobile graphics
chips, has been acquired by a leading supplier of graphics processors
– ATI Technologies.

ATI acquired privately held Bitboys Oy, a 15-year veteran of the
graphics industry for up to $44 million. The final value is subject to
certain performance-related conditions. According to ATI, Bitboys
brings valuable engineering experience, technology and customer
relationships that enhance ATI’s existing mobile phone multimedia
offerings. Based in Finland, the Bitboys team will be fully integrated
in to ATI’s handheld business unit, and form the nucleus for a key
design centre for ATI in Europe.

ATI is well-known in the mobile phone industry for providing graphics
and multimedia solutions; this acquisition enhances ATI's product
portfolio with a number of technologies, including OpenGL ES 2.0 3D
graphics and OpenVG 1.0 2D vector graphics technologies optimized for
high-volume mainstream mobile phones. These graphics cores will be
supported by ATI’s common software stack which covers its complete
range of multimedia co-processors. This unified software environment
allows developers to easily create content for a range of devices and
offers mobile phone manufacturers faster time to market.

Bitboys is research and development lab, who has been licensing its
technologies to third parties since 2002.

 

[Andrew]

And what will the purchase of a company that has produced nothing but
vaporware do to ATI's release schedules?

Probably nothing, why should it?

 

[Mark_M]

And what will the purchase of a company that has produced nothing but
vaporware do to ATI's release schedules?

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/mobile/display/20060502054632.html

Do you know the difference between R&D and "vaporware"?

Your article mentions only a few of Bitboys' many accomplishments.

 

[First of One]

Bitboys seems to have produced a lot more than just vaporware in the
handheld graphics market.

Besides, $44 million is chomp change nowadays. Didn't Google spend $1
billion for just 5% of AOL a while back?