Canyon Bridge, a private investment LLC and a believable codename for an Intel processor architecture, has just reached an agreement with Imagination Technologies to acquire most of their company. This deal is valued at £550 million GBP and does not include MIPS Technologies, Inc., which Imagination Technologies purchased on February 8th of 2013.
According to Anandtech, however, MIPS Technologies, Inc. will be purchased by Tallwood Venture Capital for $65 million USD.
The reason why Imagination Technologies is expected to be split in two like this is because purchasing CPU companies places you under national security review with the United States, and Canyon Bridge is backed by the Chinese government. As such, they can grab everything but the CPU division, which lets another party swoop in for a good price on the leftover.
That said, it is currently unclear what either company, Canyon Bridge Capital Partners or Tallwood Venture Capital, wants to do with Imagination Technologies or MIPS Technologies, Inc., respectively. When Canyon Bridge attempted to purchase Lattice Semiconductor last year, they mentioned that they were interested in their FPGAs, their “video connectivity” products (HDMI, MHL, etc.), and their wireless products (60 GHz, etc.). I would assume that they’re just picking up good technology deals, but it’s also possible that they’re looking into accelerated compute companies in particular.
There’s still a few barriers before the sale closes, but it’s looking like we’re not going to end up with Imagination just merging into an existing player or something.
Tallwood Venture Capital will
Tallwood Venture Capital will have the MIPS CPU IP that is still used in a lot of embedded systems, and any of Imagination Technologies’ SOC offerings if Imagination Technologies’ new owvers(Subjet to approvial) wish to continue with the MIPS Warrior CPU/PowerVR SOC products!
I’d think that Tallwood would still have to license to Imagination Technologies(New Owners) for those MIPS based designs, and there are others also who were also licensing MIPS IP from Imagination Technologies that will now have to License MIPS from the Tallwood Venture Capital owned MIPS Entity, whatever it will be called after Tallwood Venture Capital gets ownership.
The MIPS IP ownership stays in the US while the Imagination Technologies IP will be in the hands of the new owners and those investors can come from many sources. That Chinese Government Direct investment in Canyon Bridge/private investment LLCis is the reason that the MIPS rights had to stay in the US while it’s up to the British Government the status of the final approvial for the transfer of ownership for Imagination Technologies to the Canyon Bridge/private investment LLC entity. So the overall ownership of Imagination Technologies will be looked at closely by the British Government before final approvial.
The latest Imagination Technologies GPU IP could certianly be scaled up to reach discrete mobile GPU levels of performance at a cost to any new Investor. It’s because Imagination Technologies PowerVR GPUs are a mobie first design and Nvidia, since Maxwell, has had a Mobile first design that Nvidia has scaled up to the discrete mobile level and higher. That PowerVR Wizard Hardware Based Ray Tracing IP would make for some nice Ray Tracing PCIe card products if there where some investment in that part of Imagination Technologies’ Hardware Ray Tracing IP for maybe some Ray Tracing accelerator products.
I’ll wait and see though for Imagination Technologies’ sale to be approved by the British Government first and the Chinese Government investment/control in that will make it hard for approvial unless the other private investors have the majorty stake with the Chinese Government limited to a smaller stake. I could see maybe the deal having maybe some SoftBank involvment before any final approvial is granted but who knows with all these private investment entities being so cross invested in the world’s technology markets in the first place.
Canyon Bridge, a private
Okay, I admit it, I LOL’ed at this. Well done!
Thanks! : D
Thanks! : D