3dfx Buyout Details

According to Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, the main motivation behind the acquisition of the 3dfx assets was to gain access to technologies and personnel without encumbering the company with the liabilities that would have come with an outright purchase of 3dfx. Nvidia plans to make offers to around 100 of 3dfx's top engineers, a number that Huang believes would have been difficult to reach if 3dfx had continued to break-up slowly over time. Nvidia plans to examine all 3dfx technologies currently in development, most notably those 3dfx acquired from Gigapixel, and will integrate them with Nvidia's products. Among the 3dfx assets not moving to Nvidia is the company's board manufacturing business, which 3dfx's remaining management will be left to sort out on its own. Though Nvidia has no plans to build its own Voodoo boards now that it owns the name, Huang did hint that they would like to combine the Voodoo brand with Nvidia technology in the future.