A sad case of dealing with Apple. You use your IP to help them make their phones the most efficient and best for gaming, and they stab you in the pack as soon as they can.
Imagination Technologies seems like the type of company that AMD, Intel, or NVIDIA would gobble up just for the patents, then dump everything else a year later.
Will be interesting to see if Intel makes a play for them or not. They've used PowerVR IP before, in their mobile SoCs/chipsets (although relatively ancient versions, with really crappy x86 drivers). PVR graphics are some of the very best in mobile, but not sure how (or even if) that would scale up to laptop/desktop as a replacement for Intel HD graphics.
Samsung is reportedly in the process of developing their own in-house GPU for use in their Exynos SoCs, instead of ARM Mali. Maybe they'd be interesting in getting some top-of-the-line GPU IP to short-circuit their development time.
Don't really see Qualcomm, AMD, or Nvidia being interested, other than as a patent grab. They'd have no real use for the actual graphics tech.
If I remember correctly, PowerVR started out as a desktop graphics chipset way back in 2002. Anand seemed to like it. I remember an announcement in ~2003 that they were going to focus on mobile instead. It had a way of doing something called z culling that would prevent it from having to process graphics for things that were behind other moving objects. Not sure if it makes much sense to gaming a decade later.
No, its a sad case of relying on a single customer. When apple decided to go with their custom designed chips, samsung didn't go crying that apple was trying to put them out of business.
Samsung also didn't panic when apple went to the competition for their LCD displays.
Apple tried to buy them out last year, but they refused.
I remembered reading Apple wanted to make Imagination Technologies a whole owned subsidiary as well. It made sense, since Imagination effectively had no other customers and was already heavily embedded with Apple for years. We can only imagine (no pun intended) why this acquisition never happened.
Yeah it actually goes back to what the OP was saying. It is in their best interests to actually wait until they're struggling financially and then scoop them up. I really hope someone other than Apple buys them.
I didn't realize Apple had already offered. Wonder if this is all negotiation then....
Doesn't Apple already own like 10% of them?
The problem is, Qualcom of course owns their own GPUs, and it doesn't matter if their chips are any good or not, they have such a monopoly. Aside from Apple, they just have small design wins here and there it seems like. Samsung's used them outside of the U.S....maybe a ton, I'm not sure, and there's some other design wins, but...
Damn Apple pouring billions of dollars into a company so all their competitors could get the benefits developed, into a chance to revive their bad businesses...
Somehow it would feel logical to me, that whatever cash they invent improving a very important field of tech would benefit them mostly.
Still no news or analysis whether or not the A10X GPU is based on Imagination tech or if it is the first in-house released?
There is zero reason to believe that the A10X GPU is anything other than what you would expect, namely a core-increased version of the A10 GPU. That has been the Apple pattern since the A5X, and there are no strange performance anomalies or whatever that indicate anything different this time round.
Most significantly, the master "feature" PDF that describes what Metal features are available on every specific GPU that Apple supports does not distinguish between A10 and A10X; it only refers to iOS_GPUFamily3 https://developer.apple.com/metal/Metal-Feature-Se...
These are huge companies, not pals working in a garage on a toy. Not sure why people try to anthropomorphize business all the time like its a soap opera.
Apple was paying hundreds of millions for their tech, and eventually decided they could do it in-house instead. That's business.
Somewhat true but basing your business on 1 or even just a handful clients is plain and simple stupid and will ruin you sooner or later. A business that relies on 1 customer has actually never been healthy.
IMG's GPU licenses were expensive, and honestly their drivers support aren't industry leading either. And hence why most decide to go with the ARM Mali route, dispirit being an inferior solution in terms of hardware, their software / drivers are much better. And anyone who follow GPU knows Hardware isn't even half the story, it is the drivers that matters.
Since Apple write its own drivers anyway, it didn't really matter. So Apple decided to ask IMG to lower its IP price because Apple wasn't using much of its "Services" anyway. IMG refuse, and Apple asked IMG if they could sell their GPU business instead when the Company was valuing close to 1.3B. They also said no.
I mean if you are old enough to follow IMG's days since the Voodoo era you should know what kind of company they are.
Where would they have been without years of getting hundreds of millions off the iPhone?
They're in a better market position than they would have been without them. A partner can dump you at any time. That they had most of their eggs in one basket is unfortunate.
It seems that Imagination would be a good fit for Samsung or Google. I'm sure they would like the patent firepower to use against Apple should their upcoming GPU architecture steal Imagination IP. It would also give each company a further way to differentiate themselves on upcoming SOC designs.
I have to admit, I didn't see that one coming at all. It makes sense though to just flee the ship if it looks like it'll sink and, as SquarePeg rightfully points out, owning Imagination's IP portfolio would give another company a pretty large litigation stick to shake at Apple if Apple is indeed using technologies similar to Imagination's in their new products. A buyer would have to weigh the cost of purchase against the value gained from litigation (risky business to say the least) and any potential profits reaped from selling newer/better products using Imagination's assets.
Apple has some of the best IP lawyers in the world. They wouldn't break ties with Imagination if it would bite them in the future; licensing will likely carry over without legal retribution with Imaginations new owner.
And that has significant weight in their valuation. It effectively makes their patent portfolio useless against Apple.
Maybe if AMD needs their patents for anything, but of course they've already got great tech for what they do, and wouldn't be able to do much better/different in the ultra-mobile space where Apple does it's own thing, and everyone else is stuck using whatever garbage Qualcom forces on them.
Well, apparently Vega has some sort of tile-based immediate rendering (not to be confused with tile-based deferred rendering, but you know that ImgTec's solution will be more advanced.
It's a shame that ImgTec never sought to return to the PC space; a card with TBDR and similar raw specs to a GTX 1070 would be monstrous. If anything, it'd show how effective TBIM actually is.
The current stock price of 144 isn't much lower than the historical average over the past 3 years, which looks like it is a little over 200. On January 15, 2016 it closed at 110. Now its largest potential buyer is known to not be buying it. The jump in the price from this announcement doesn't seem to make sense. It's speculation that I think probably won't pan out.
"What is the difference between the company having been taken over say a month ago versus after formally being put up for sale?" -------------------------------------------- That was then and this is now!
I'm kidding of course, time is just a man made concept and was never a real thing
But seriously, the difference is that the sale is REAL and a takeover last month is just your "Imagination"
Its gonna be a buyer's market, definitely no bidding war. Patents aren't worth as much as they used to be, and the individual folks are much cheaper to hire individually.
Seriously, Apple bled Imagination dry. It's not like some fanboys here claim that IM has focused only on one customer. Apple has poached it and reverse engineered it into the ground. I wish Qualcomm luck so as not to buckle like Nokia and Ericsson.
Really? And how are you so aware of Apple's relationship with Imagination? Since you know all the details, please give us some details into exactly what happened when Apple tried to buy IMG a few months ago and why IMG refused to sell.
You appear to be remarkable knowledgeable about Apple's HR practices. So how many engineers has Apple "poached"? Now, the last time I checked human beings [even engineers] were not slaves and had the right to work for whoever offered them a better deal... So would you also consider it "poaching" when Chris Lattner left Apple for Tesla? Likewise Bozoma St John leaving for Uber?
Likewise you seem remarkably knowledgeable about Apple's forthcoming GPU ("reverse engineered it into the ground"). I'm sure you wouldn't be insulted if I ask that you provide just a few tech details about this Apple GPU (surely you know them, since you know it was reverse-engineered for IMG IP) --- we're all very curious about this next product.
IMG is 100% public share issued. If apple (or anyone else) wanted to buy it, all it had to do was set a price that the major financial institutions (which hold most of IMGs shares) would find attractive to buy. IMG could not impede the sale. But perhaps a buyer would prefer a friendly rather than hostile takeover.
It's more complicated than that. Hostile takeovers are more difficult and costlier than negotiated buyouts. Firstly there are often what they call poison pills that make it harder and costlier for someone to enact a hostile takeover. Secondly, often times a large amount of stock is being held by a small number of people who are against the takeover. Those people will not sell out, so the buyers need to buy almost all of the rest of the shares. That will increase the cost of the buyout.
It seems like being a GPU vendor for ultra-mobile devices that are always combo-CPU/GPUs would be tough... I mean Nvidia is that, but they do have their own CPU, and it's not their primary business.
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Speedfriend - Thursday, June 22, 2017 - link
A sad case of dealing with Apple. You use your IP to help them make their phones the most efficient and best for gaming, and they stab you in the pack as soon as they can.nathanddrews - Thursday, June 22, 2017 - link
Darn packstabbing Apple!Imagination Technologies seems like the type of company that AMD, Intel, or NVIDIA would gobble up just for the patents, then dump everything else a year later.
phoenix_rizzen - Friday, June 23, 2017 - link
Will be interesting to see if Intel makes a play for them or not. They've used PowerVR IP before, in their mobile SoCs/chipsets (although relatively ancient versions, with really crappy x86 drivers). PVR graphics are some of the very best in mobile, but not sure how (or even if) that would scale up to laptop/desktop as a replacement for Intel HD graphics.Samsung is reportedly in the process of developing their own in-house GPU for use in their Exynos SoCs, instead of ARM Mali. Maybe they'd be interesting in getting some top-of-the-line GPU IP to short-circuit their development time.
Don't really see Qualcomm, AMD, or Nvidia being interested, other than as a patent grab. They'd have no real use for the actual graphics tech.
KidneyBean - Thursday, June 29, 2017 - link
If I remember correctly, PowerVR started out as a desktop graphics chipset way back in 2002. Anand seemed to like it. I remember an announcement in ~2003 that they were going to focus on mobile instead. It had a way of doing something called z culling that would prevent it from having to process graphics for things that were behind other moving objects. Not sure if it makes much sense to gaming a decade later.osxandwindows - Thursday, June 22, 2017 - link
No, its a sad case of relying on a single customer.When apple decided to go with their custom designed chips, samsung didn't go crying that apple was trying to put them out of business.
Samsung also didn't panic when apple went to the competition for their LCD displays.
Apple tried to buy them out last year, but they refused.
Samus - Thursday, June 22, 2017 - link
I remembered reading Apple wanted to make Imagination Technologies a whole owned subsidiary as well. It made sense, since Imagination effectively had no other customers and was already heavily embedded with Apple for years. We can only imagine (no pun intended) why this acquisition never happened.MrPoletski - Thursday, June 22, 2017 - link
because a couple of years later this would happen, and they'd get it a lot cheaper.Alexvrb - Thursday, June 22, 2017 - link
Yeah it actually goes back to what the OP was saying. It is in their best interests to actually wait until they're struggling financially and then scoop them up. I really hope someone other than Apple buys them.Wolfpup - Thursday, June 22, 2017 - link
I didn't realize Apple had already offered. Wonder if this is all negotiation then....Doesn't Apple already own like 10% of them?
The problem is, Qualcom of course owns their own GPUs, and it doesn't matter if their chips are any good or not, they have such a monopoly. Aside from Apple, they just have small design wins here and there it seems like. Samsung's used them outside of the U.S....maybe a ton, I'm not sure, and there's some other design wins, but...
Torrijos - Thursday, June 22, 2017 - link
Damn Apple pouring billions of dollars into a company so all their competitors could get the benefits developed, into a chance to revive their bad businesses...Somehow it would feel logical to me, that whatever cash they invent improving a very important field of tech would benefit them mostly.
Still no news or analysis whether or not the A10X GPU is based on Imagination tech or if it is the first in-house released?
name99 - Thursday, June 22, 2017 - link
There is zero reason to believe that the A10X GPU is anything other than what you would expect, namely a core-increased version of the A10 GPU. That has been the Apple pattern since the A5X, and there are no strange performance anomalies or whatever that indicate anything different this time round.Most significantly, the master "feature" PDF that describes what Metal features are available on every specific GPU that Apple supports does not distinguish between A10 and A10X; it only refers to iOS_GPUFamily3
https://developer.apple.com/metal/Metal-Feature-Se...
lucam - Thursday, June 22, 2017 - link
It's IMG PowerVr Apple customer version. It is stated inside the Metal and Open GL drivers.Cygni - Thursday, June 22, 2017 - link
These are huge companies, not pals working in a garage on a toy. Not sure why people try to anthropomorphize business all the time like its a soap opera.Apple was paying hundreds of millions for their tech, and eventually decided they could do it in-house instead. That's business.
beginner99 - Thursday, June 22, 2017 - link
Somewhat true but basing your business on 1 or even just a handful clients is plain and simple stupid and will ruin you sooner or later. A business that relies on 1 customer has actually never been healthy.iwod - Friday, June 23, 2017 - link
IMG's GPU licenses were expensive, and honestly their drivers support aren't industry leading either. And hence why most decide to go with the ARM Mali route, dispirit being an inferior solution in terms of hardware, their software / drivers are much better. And anyone who follow GPU knows Hardware isn't even half the story, it is the drivers that matters.Since Apple write its own drivers anyway, it didn't really matter. So Apple decided to ask IMG to lower its IP price because Apple wasn't using much of its "Services" anyway. IMG refuse, and Apple asked IMG if they could sell their GPU business instead when the Company was valuing close to 1.3B. They also said no.
I mean if you are old enough to follow IMG's days since the Voodoo era you should know what kind of company they are.
tipoo - Wednesday, June 28, 2017 - link
Where would they have been without years of getting hundreds of millions off the iPhone?They're in a better market position than they would have been without them. A partner can dump you at any time. That they had most of their eggs in one basket is unfortunate.
arnd - Thursday, June 22, 2017 - link
One of their current customers (Tsinghua Unigroup) bought 3.1% of ImgTec On May 23, but has now started selling again on Jun 19:http://www.4-traders.com/IMAGINATION-TECHNOLOGIES-...
Other big customers for the GPU are of course TI and Renesas, which I would guess are also watching carefully.
SquarePeg - Thursday, June 22, 2017 - link
It seems that Imagination would be a good fit for Samsung or Google. I'm sure they would like the patent firepower to use against Apple should their upcoming GPU architecture steal Imagination IP. It would also give each company a further way to differentiate themselves on upcoming SOC designs.BrokenCrayons - Thursday, June 22, 2017 - link
I have to admit, I didn't see that one coming at all. It makes sense though to just flee the ship if it looks like it'll sink and, as SquarePeg rightfully points out, owning Imagination's IP portfolio would give another company a pretty large litigation stick to shake at Apple if Apple is indeed using technologies similar to Imagination's in their new products. A buyer would have to weigh the cost of purchase against the value gained from litigation (risky business to say the least) and any potential profits reaped from selling newer/better products using Imagination's assets.Samus - Thursday, June 22, 2017 - link
Apple has some of the best IP lawyers in the world. They wouldn't break ties with Imagination if it would bite them in the future; licensing will likely carry over without legal retribution with Imaginations new owner.And that has significant weight in their valuation. It effectively makes their patent portfolio useless against Apple.
Archie2085 - Thursday, June 22, 2017 - link
I would guess it would be a good fit for AMD considering the past when past CEO sold off the mobile arm which became snapdragon.Could be a good time for AMD to jump back into the market considering its more stronger now
Wolfpup - Thursday, June 22, 2017 - link
Maybe if AMD needs their patents for anything, but of course they've already got great tech for what they do, and wouldn't be able to do much better/different in the ultra-mobile space where Apple does it's own thing, and everyone else is stuck using whatever garbage Qualcom forces on them.silverblue - Friday, June 23, 2017 - link
Well, apparently Vega has some sort of tile-based immediate rendering (not to be confused with tile-based deferred rendering, but you know that ImgTec's solution will be more advanced.It's a shame that ImgTec never sought to return to the PC space; a card with TBDR and similar raw specs to a GTX 1070 would be monstrous. If anything, it'd show how effective TBIM actually is.
Yojimbo - Thursday, June 22, 2017 - link
The current stock price of 144 isn't much lower than the historical average over the past 3 years, which looks like it is a little over 200. On January 15, 2016 it closed at 110. Now its largest potential buyer is known to not be buying it. The jump in the price from this announcement doesn't seem to make sense. It's speculation that I think probably won't pan out.SunnyNW - Thursday, June 22, 2017 - link
What is the difference between the company having been taken over say a month ago versus after formally being put up for sale?Bullwinkle J Moose - Thursday, June 22, 2017 - link
"What is the difference between the company having been taken over say a month ago versus after formally being put up for sale?"--------------------------------------------
That was then and this is now!
I'm kidding of course, time is just a man made concept and was never a real thing
But seriously, the difference is that the sale is REAL and a takeover last month is just your "Imagination"
webdoctors - Thursday, June 22, 2017 - link
Its gonna be a buyer's market, definitely no bidding war. Patents aren't worth as much as they used to be, and the individual folks are much cheaper to hire individually.If I was holding onto their stock I'd sell ASAP.
id4andrei - Thursday, June 22, 2017 - link
This painting perfectly describes the Apple and supplier relationship.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_Devouring_His...
Seriously, Apple bled Imagination dry. It's not like some fanboys here claim that IM has focused only on one customer. Apple has poached it and reverse engineered it into the ground. I wish Qualcomm luck so as not to buckle like Nokia and Ericsson.
name99 - Thursday, June 22, 2017 - link
Really? And how are you so aware of Apple's relationship with Imagination? Since you know all the details, please give us some details into exactly what happened when Apple tried to buy IMG a few months ago and why IMG refused to sell.You appear to be remarkable knowledgeable about Apple's HR practices. So how many engineers has Apple "poached"? Now, the last time I checked human beings [even engineers] were not slaves and had the right to work for whoever offered them a better deal... So would you also consider it "poaching" when Chris Lattner left Apple for Tesla? Likewise Bozoma St John leaving for Uber?
Likewise you seem remarkably knowledgeable about Apple's forthcoming GPU ("reverse engineered it into the ground"). I'm sure you wouldn't be insulted if I ask that you provide just a few tech details about this Apple GPU (surely you know them, since you know it was reverse-engineered for IMG IP) --- we're all very curious about this next product.
Tangey - Friday, June 23, 2017 - link
"IMG refused to sell"Do you have any idea how listed companies work ?
If Apple wanted to buy them, they just buy the shares. IMG would have zero say in it.
IMG could not refuse as the process is not within their control
Tyler_Durden_83 - Friday, June 23, 2017 - link
A company can be listed for 10% so buying that gives you zero control over itTangey - Friday, June 23, 2017 - link
IMG is 100% public share issued. If apple (or anyone else) wanted to buy it, all it had to do was set a price that the major financial institutions (which hold most of IMGs shares) would find attractive to buy. IMG could not impede the sale. But perhaps a buyer would prefer a friendly rather than hostile takeover.Yojimbo - Friday, June 23, 2017 - link
It's more complicated than that. Hostile takeovers are more difficult and costlier than negotiated buyouts. Firstly there are often what they call poison pills that make it harder and costlier for someone to enact a hostile takeover. Secondly, often times a large amount of stock is being held by a small number of people who are against the takeover. Those people will not sell out, so the buyers need to buy almost all of the rest of the shares. That will increase the cost of the buyout.Gothmoth - Wednesday, June 28, 2017 - link
apple is what comes out of a cows rectum.and all these brainwashed apple fanboys.. jut look at them. bah....
Wolfpup - Thursday, June 22, 2017 - link
It seems like being a GPU vendor for ultra-mobile devices that are always combo-CPU/GPUs would be tough... I mean Nvidia is that, but they do have their own CPU, and it's not their primary business.Gothmoth - Wednesday, June 28, 2017 - link
damn bastards killed brazil R/S... or was it the company before them???... anyway.. they are sucker.