Chromatic Research Inc, which recently halted the development of its Mpact media chip and cut half of its staff, may be acquired by ATI Technologies Inc, according to industry reports. Chromatic was forced to give up on its ambitious two-year Mpact 3 media chip project back in July, partly because the multimedia PC market had not developed as predicted (CI No 3,448). Canadian chip-maker ATI, set to reveal more details about its latest Rage graphics chip at the Microprocessor Forum in San Jose this week, is said to be interested in Chromatic’s exotic very long instruction word technology, which could be used in low-cost PCs and set-top boxes. Chromatic still has around 1345 staff.
