Centaur Technology

History

2021: Intel bought from the chip development team from Centaur Technology for $125 million

VIA Technologies will transfer Intel the development team from its architecture-based processor research and development subsidiary Centaur Technology. The x86 relevant agreement was announced in early November 2021.

Under the terms of the agreement, Intel will pay Centaur Technology $125 million to "recruit" employees from the company's engineering staff. Notably, the agreement between VIA and Intel does not mention any other parts of Centaur Technology.

Intel acquired a chip development team from Centaur Technology for $125 million

Centaur Technology, based in Austin, Texas, has been a subsidiary of VIA since 1999. The company is developing "x86 core projects" for VIA, as well as their own "auxiliary IP addresses," which are used for deep learning.

The last development of Centaur by November 2021 - the core of CNS x86 - was announced in the fourth quarter of 2019. The x86 core architecture focuses on server-level workloads and demonstrates "overall processor performance, such as Haswell," combined with AVX-512 support, which performs two cycles using "256-bit SIMD." Centaur then uses CNS to create CHA, adding structure, I/O, and "integrated and unique deep learning accelerators." The original silicon-based CHA product was planned to be released in 2020 in the second half of the year, but the project was never developed.

Centaur never fully implemented its x86 architectures, which AMD and Intel had access to, but has remained on the x86 market map since their inception in 1999 by VIA Technologies.

As AMD and Arm processors are a strong competitor to Intel, this new agreement strengthens Team Blue's position with the possible alignment of one of the less significant x86 developers and access to their technologies.^[1]

Notes