Update: Currency exchange rates have been corrected. I'm sorry for any confusion!
Intel Foundation is selling off its remaining stake in UK-based Imagination Technologies (IMG.LN). According to JP Morgan, Intel is selling off 13.4 million shares (4.9% of Imagination Technologies) for 245 GBp each. Once all shares are sold, Intel will gross just north of $50.57 Million USD.
Imagination Technologies' PowerVR Rogue Series 6XT GPU is used in Apple's A8-series chips.
Intel first invested in Imagination Technologies back in October of 2006 in a deal to gain access to the company’s PowerVR graphics IP portfolio. Since then, Intel has been slowly moving away from PowerVR graphics in favor of it’s own internal HD graphics GPUs. (Further, Intel sold off 10% of its IMG.LN stake in June of last year.) Even Intel’s low cost Atom line of SoCs has mostly moved to Intel GPUs with the exception of the mobile Merrifield and Moorefield” smartphone/tablet SoCs.
The expansion of Intel’s own graphics IP combined with Imagination Technologies acquisition of MIPS are reportedly the “inevitable” reasons for the sale. According to The Guardian, industry analysts have speculated that, as it stands, Intel is a minor customer of Imagination Technologies at less than 5% for graphics (a licensing agreement signed this year doesn’t rule out PowerVR graphics permanently despite the sale). Imagination Technologies still has a decent presence in the mobile (ARM-based) space with customers including Apple, MediaTek, Rockchip, Freescale, and Texas Instruments.
Currently, the company’s stock price is sitting at 258.75 GBp (~$3.99 USD) which seems to indicate that the Intel sell off news was “inevitable” and was already priced in or simply does not have investors that concerned.
What do you think about the sale? Where does this leave Intel as far as graphics goes? Will we see Intel HD Graphics scale down to smartphones or will the company go with a PowerVR competitor? Would Intel really work with ARM’s Mali, Qualcomm’s Adreno, or Samsung’s rumored custom GPU cores? On that note, an Intel powered smartphone with NVIDIA Tegra graphics would be amazing (hint, hint Intel!)
GBp is short for pence, if
GBp is short for pence, if Intel sold 13.4 million shares at 245 pence each, they’d net less than 33 million pounds, or a bit over 50 milllion US dollars.
Gbp stands for great Britain
Gbp stands for great Britain pound, not fucking pence, are you high or something?
GBP is for pound, GBp is for
GBP is for pound, GBp is for pence, and shares are listed in pence in the UK.
But I’m glad you got that out of your system, and now you learned something, too. What a day!
Damn sorry about that, I
Damn sorry about that, I thought it was pence at first too, but when I looked it up I got pounds. I did not realize there was a difference when capitalization was involved. I will update the article asap. Thank you for the clarification!
I updated it to say 50
I updated it to say 50 Million USD and will check for other instances asap (starting the other job now)
GBP is pounds, GBp is pence.
GBP is pounds, GBp is pence.
Like you, I’d love to see
Like you, I’d love to see Intel go with NVIDIA, but I don’t think that Intel selling its share would preclude it using the cores. Far as I know that’s what Imagination Technologies sells, licenses to use its cores. Intel could go for the most attractive core license, and if that happens to me ImgTec, why not?
Intel and Nvidia have some
Intel and Nvidia have some not too pleasant history with regards to Graphics, and motherboard chipsets, and Intel will want to push its own gimped GPUs on its SOC parts. Lack of SP/other count may be able to be accommodated for in low poly count gaming meshes, but not in any high polygon detailed graphics work, only AMD’s and Nvidia’s GPUs have the high SP/other resources for graphics work.
AMD’s Carrizo APU, looks to have a better integrated GPU SP count than my current laptop’s AMD discrete GPU, so I’ll be looking for a high polygon mesh modeling laptop to replace my current laptop, and maybe I can get a Carrizo based laptop, with a discrete AMD GPU and double, or more, the number of Polygons I can edit, without bogging down the graphics, and Intel graphics chokes and sputters on those High polygon meshes.
Intel and Nvidia, a little bit about looking like their opposing selves in the mirror when they look at each other! Not known for low pricing or reasonable licensing Terms.
Well Apple still holds a
Well Apple still holds a shedload of Imagination Technologies(IT) stock, who needs Intel, I so wish that Apple would commission a Discrete mobile GPU from IT, and be sure to include a big GPU based hardware ray tracing functional block into that commissioned mobile discrete GPU part. On IT’s blog itself posters have queried about the making of the PowerVR series into a discrete mobile part, and have been answered: If a customer commissioned/funded the part!
Apple has the funds in couch change, that randomly spill from beneath/between the cushions. Go for it Apple, and be sure to include a large amount of dedicated ray tracing circuitry on the GPU’s DIE, I would love to dispense with the need for any i7, or uber expensive workstation part, for those oh so sexy ray traced graphics.