Bitboys, a company known for its promises to develop an ultimate graphics processor for desktops and later switching to mobile graphics chips, has been acquired by a leading supplier of graphics processors – ATI Technologies.

ATI acquired privately held Bitboys Oy, a 15-year veteran of the graphics industry for up to $44 million. The final value is subject to certain performance-related conditions. According to ATI, Bitboys brings valuable engineering experience, technology and customer relationships that enhance ATI’s existing mobile phone multimedia offerings. Based in Finland, the Bitboys team will be fully integrated in to ATI’s handheld business unit, and form the nucleus for a key design centre for ATI in Europe.

ATI is well-known in the mobile phone industry for providing graphics and multimedia solutions; this acquisition enhances ATI's product portfolio with a number of technologies, including OpenGL ES 2.0 3D graphics and OpenVG 1.0 2D vector graphics technologies optimized for high-volume mainstream mobile phones. These graphics cores will be supported by ATI’s common software stack which covers its complete range of multimedia co-processors. This unified software environment allows developers to easily create content for a range of devices and offers mobile phone manufacturers faster time to market.

Bitboys is research and development lab, who has been licensing its technologies to third parties since 2002.