Posted on Thursday, July 21 2016 @ 22:48 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
Theo Valich wrote at VR World that Intel is likely planning to buy a graphics chip designer. The chip giant recently had a big round of restructuring, which involved 12,000 job cuts, and it appears that no division got culled as hard as the mobile processor and integrated graphics (IGP) department. Valich claims Intel's 2018/2019 10nm Ice Lake processors do not have a GPU at the moment
and speculates an acquisition of Imagination Technologies makes a lot of sense.
Acquiring the company could happen for approximately $1.0-1.5 billion range, which is a fairly cheap acquisition, which more importantly would give Intel access to Apple, who uses PowerVR SGX graphics in all of its products. There are also several silicon vendors from Far East who exclusively use PowerVR SGX and let’s not forget Apple’s largest competitor, Samsung – who switches between PowerVR and Mali (owned by ARM) GPUs.
