Bitboys Oy was a hardware development and licensing company based in

Finland Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...

, founded in 1991 and acquired by

ATI Technologies ATI Technologies Inc. was a Canadian semiconductor industry, semiconductor technology corporation based in Markham, Ontario, that specialized in the development of graphics processing units and chipsets. Founded in 1985, the company listed pub ...

for up to

US$ The United States dollar (Currency symbol, symbol: Dollar sign, $; ISO 4217, currency code: USD) is the official currency of the United States and International use of the U.S. dollar, several other countries. The Coinage Act of 1792 introdu ...

44M on May 2, 2006. Until the acquisition, Bitboys had focused on

mobile phone A mobile phone or cell phone is a portable telephone that allows users to make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while moving within a designated telephone service area, unlike fixed-location phones ( landline phones). This rad ...

gaming Gaming may refer to: Games and sports The act of playing games, as in: * Legalized gambling, playing games of chance for money, often referred to in law as "gaming" * Playing a role-playing game, in which players assume fictional roles * Playing ...

, and had developed a large

vector graphics Vector graphics are a form of computer graphics in which visual images are created directly from geometric shapes defined on a Cartesian plane, such as points, lines, curves and polygons. The associated mechanisms may include vector displ ...

-related portfolio. Bitboys was formed by some of the members of the

demogroup Demogroups are teams of demosceners, who make computer based audio-visual works of art known as demos. Demogroups form a subculture collectively known as the demoscene. Groups frequently consist of students, young computer enthusiasts who spen ...

Future Crew Future Crew was a Finnish demogroup that created PC demos and software, active mostly between 1987 and 1994. History The group was founded in 1986 by PSI (Sami Tammilehto) and JPM (Jussi Markula) as a Commodore 64 group, before moving to the ...

. Bitboys became infamous after the 1999 announcement of their

Glaze3D Glaze3D was a family of graphics cards announced by BitBoys Oy on August 2, 1999, that would have produced substantially better performance than other consumerPetri Nordlund. "Glaze3D". Bitboys Oy. products available at the time. The family, which ...

series of

graphics card A graphics card (also called a video card, display card, graphics accelerator, graphics adapter, VGA card/VGA, video adapter, display adapter, or colloquially GPU) is a computer expansion card that generates a feed of graphics output to a displa ...

s, which later turned out to be

vaporware In the computer industry, vaporware (or vapourware) is a product, typically computer Computer hardware, hardware or software, that is announced to the general public but is late, never actually manufactured, or officially canceled. Use of the w ...

. When

Infineon Technologies Infineon Semiconductor solutions is the largest microcontroller manufacturer in the world, as well as Germany's largest semiconductor manufacturer. It is also the leading automotive semiconductor manufacturer globally. Infineon had roughly 58,0 ...

shut down its embedded

DRAM Dram, DRAM, or drams may refer to: Technology and engineering * Dram (unit), a unit of mass and volume, and an informal name for a small amount of liquor, especially whisky or whiskey * Dynamic random-access memory, a type of electronic semicondu ...

production line, Bitboys quickly transformed from PC desktop graphics chip business to mobile graphics IP business. They could not find another manufacturer capable of producing the part because of the high amount of embedded

used. After the merger of ATI into the AMD Graphics Product Group, the entire BitBoys Oy team was acquired by

Qualcomm Qualcomm Incorporated () is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. It creates semiconductors, software and services related to wireless techn ...

on January 22, 2009, following the sale of AMD

Imageon Imageon (previously ATI Imageon) was a series of media coprocessors and mobile chipsets produced by ATI (later AMD) in 2002–2008, providing graphics acceleration and other multimedia features for handheld devices such as mobile phones and Pers ...

IP to Qualcomm.

References

External links

Bitboys Oy official website (archived version 2006)
Graphics hardware companies Electronics companies established in 1991 Electronics companies of Finland Finnish companies established in 1991 2006 mergers and acquisitions 2009 disestablishments in Finland Electronics companies disestablished in 2009 {{Europe-videogame-company-stub