Home » Hardware » BREAKING: Imagination Technologies acquires Caustic Graphics

BREAKING: Imagination Technologies acquires Caustic Graphics

December 14th, 2010 Randall Hand

Caustic Graphics, a company I’ve loved since day 1, has just been acquired by Imagination Technologies for the tiny sum of $27M. Imagination Technologies makes the PowerVR SGX chips used in the newer Apple iOS devices (iPhone, iPad) among other things. When asked about it:

“Ray tracing is a key additional technology that traditionally has been regarded as the exclusive domain of specialized markets and non real-time applications,” said Hossein Yassaie, chief executive of Imagination. “We intend to change that.
Yassaie said the acquisition for $27 million will allow Imagination to create even more advanced graphics technology in the future. Caustic’s patented hardware and software technology allows for more powerful and less expensive ray tracing.

At first glance, I’m not sure if this is good or bad. Good for Caustic employees probably, but I had always hoped I’ld see a CausticTwo card in my workstation. Who knows, maybe I will but it’ll be the PowerCaustic card.

via AppleInsider | Apple partner Imagination acquires ‘cinema quality’ graphics chipmaker.

This story written by Randall Hand

Randall Hand is a computer graphics programmer and news junky that's been working in the field for the last 15 years. He's responsible for visualizations generated on some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, ytnef, mullion support in ParaView, and VizWorld.com.

Hardware caustic, imagination technologies

http://www.anatomicaltravel.com/research/ Chad
Cool. So all of us who bet that they’d get bought out before releasing a product can collect now.
I’m not liking the phrase “even more advanced graphics technology in the future”. Caustic has for a long time been saying they were very close to selling actual hardware. Getting bought by a company that doesn’t make hardware does not help here.
Peter Schmidt
Deals like this are only possible with todays internet. Otherwise nobody would have noticed this company that did not release anything spectular nor even does justice to its own chosen name. In the meantime most production realtime cpu or gpu tracers easily bypass the shoody visual quality produced by demos shown by caustics.
gpuguy
Caustic investor will get some money back. The employees wont get anything from the stock but they still have a job. The strategic direction is good. Originally, it wasn’t obvious, they understood what their market was with the previous CEO, Especially the first CEO. Targeting the mobile business, tablet business makes more sense.