According to the Asian Press, Intel is hiring the employees from VIA’s Centaur division – the makers of “Haswell level” AVX-512 capable 8-core CPUs you can read more about here – in return for a payment of $125 million dollars.
The quotations below are translated via Google, and may have imperfections in translation.
VIA announced today that VIA and centraur Technology, a 100 percent subsidiary, have signed a contract with U.S. firm Intel to pay $125 million to hire some of the Centeraur employees of the VIA Group for CPU research and development.
IC design plant VIA held a major press conference in the evening, by the Finance Center Deputy General Manager and acting spokesman Chen Baohui explained the 100% holding subsidiary Centaur, a major deal with Intel.
‘Viax’s board of directors today approved a contract between VIA and Centaur, a 100 percent subsidiary, to join Intel, which will extend some of Its employees to Intel, and VIA will pay Centaur about $125 million,’ Chen said.
she indicated that the completion of the transaction would still be subject to the completion of the preconditions set out in the contract and that the benefits would be recognized in one lump sum at the time of delivery, in accordance with gaap.
UDN – INTEL SMASHES $125 MILLION TO HIRE VIA GROUP CPU RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT STAFF | INDUSTRIAL HOT SPOTS | INDUSTRY | ECONOMIC DAILY (udn.com)
Centaur Technology is understood to have been founded in April 1995 by Glenn Henry, Terry Parks, Darius Gaskins and Al Sato. Funded by Integrated Device Technology, Inc (IDT). The business goal is to develop compatible x86 processors that are cheaper and consume less power than Intel processors.
With IDT funding, Centaur Technology has developed three different products and is marketed under the WinChip name. Centaur Technology was acquired by VIA from IDT in September 1999. Since then, with the technical support of Centaur Technology, VIA has sold a total of five processors under the name VIA C3, as well as a significant number designed for the VIA C7 processor, as well as the latest VIA Nano 64-bit processor at the time. At the end of 2019, Centaur Technology released the world’s first high-performance x86 single-chip processor with a consolidated AI-tong processor using Centaur Technology’s CNS core.
Centaur Technology, which is headquartered in Texas, currently employs more than 100 people, according to VIA. After the deal with Intel, it is unclear how many Centaur Technology employees Intel will hire, which will respect the employee’s wishes but will not include fixed or intangible assets. At this stage, however, Intel, VIA and Centaur Technology are all optimistic about the deal. As for whether there will be other deals after the event, VIA has no official explanation on the basis of confidentiality terms.
Technews Taiwan
Sources: UDN, Dr. Ian Cutress of Anandtech (Twitter), Technews
