Anyone remember PhysX cards? Same thing will happen once this company gets a usable product out. Nvidia will surely buy them up before AMD or Intel can ever attempt to buy them, and it will become an nvidia exclusive technology.
So how much are Nvidia going to shell out for this one? Anyone care to wager? :lol:
LOL that was my first thought, except that this isn't just some one-off product by a new hotshot quickbuck firm. Imagination Technology owns MIPS and they have products in a TON of devices whether their own chips or via technology licenses. The most well-known instance? Their graphics technology (PowerVR) is in every single iPhone ever, since the very beginning with their MBX IP. PowerVR designs are found in other smartphones/mobile devices too, and back in the day they were in PCs competing with ATI and Nvidia too, and in the Dreamcast (one of my favorite consoles). But "every iPhone ever period" is the biggest example.
So I don't think it's super likely that they're going to get snatched up, but if ANYONE was going to buy them the most likely candidate would be Apple. They would be hard-pressed to let someone else potentially wreck their upcoming SoCs by buying Imagtech and refusing to license next-gen designs.
Oh and although I don't care for Apple (nor their software as a rule), I am often impressed by the performance and power envelope of their SoCs, and that is in no small part due to PowerVR's designs. At this point it would be hard for them to take on Nvidia and AMD directly in rasterization. But raycasting? I would be all over an add-on card if price and power were on target and the big engines got support for hybrid raycastingt/rasterization rendering or something along those lines. Then they could license the tech out later to anyone that wants it and ponies up.