11–20 of 22 posts
Edit: I misspoke, I had the wrong company in my sights. Sorry folks.
EDIT: Are you thinking of "Immersion" [1]? Completely different company.
I can't wait to see how the Qualcomm case plays out. I'm not a lawyer, but the recent Supreme Court decision on Lexmark seems like a huge threat to Qualcomm's business model.
Edit: I misspoke, I had the wrong company in my sights. Sorry folks.
I feel like Imagination Tech can't die fast enough. These guys aggressively created patent clouds around anything and everything 3D graphic. It wasn't until a lot of the base patents on 3D acceleration started expiring that anyone would even consider the move Apple made. I hope that in 5 years we've got SoC's with fully open GPUs that are at least as powerful as the old 3Dfx Voodoo and Nvidia TNT series from the 90s.
PowerVR have never filed a single patent suit. Are you confused with a different company? Like NVidia [1] or AMD [2] or something? [1] https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2014/09/04/nvidia-launches-pat... [2] http://www.anandtech.com/show/11101/amd-files-patent-complai...
https://patents.google.com/?assignee=Imagination+Technologie...
Google seems to be interested in hardware, hiring an ex Apple chip designer. Maybe they would be interested in this sale.
For 500 mil it should be a no brainier. Its like a rounding error for google.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
PowerVR have never filed a single patent suit. Are you confused with a different company? Like NVidia [1] or AMD [2] or something? [1] https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2014/09/04/nvidia-launches-pat... [2] http://www.anandtech.com/show/11101/amd-files-patent-complai...
Perhaps not, but it certainly owns a lot of patents: https://patents.google.com/?assignee=Imagination+Technologie...
I feel like Imagination Tech can't die fast enough. These guys aggressively created patent clouds around anything and everything 3D graphic. It wasn't until a lot of the base patents on 3D acceleration started expiring that anyone would even consider the move Apple made. I hope that in 5 years we've got SoC's with fully open GPUs that are at least as powerful as the old 3Dfx Voodoo and Nvidia TNT series from the 90s.
Nvidia and AMD are doing the same thing. Outside of X86 GPUs are probably the most walled off market, you literally cannot make a GPU today without violating a patent.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For 500 mil it should be a no brainier. Its like a rounding error for google.
ImgTech has been a bit of a basket case for a long time. Why did they buy MIPS for $100m? Why have they just (last year) built a huge posh new HQ when they were losing money? I don't think it's something Google would want.
My cynical take: Imagination Tech's legitimate business is vulnerable to an Apple counter-suit. Without that legitimate business weighing it down it would be much more valuable as a patent troll.
Or the threat of a counter-suit is low but they want to weaponize the company out of spite and the low chance of recovering as a producer of new IP. My recollection might be off but didn't Apple want to purchase Imagination but Imagination wanted to remain an independent company, so Apple hired away their talent instead? Or am I confusing this with what they did to Nuance?