Today Phoronix broke the news that VMware acquired Tungsten Graphics.
The little company is behind the development of hugely popular Linux graphics technologies like:
- Mesa3D, the OpenGL component used by the X Window System
- Gallium3D, a software library for 3D graphics drivers
- TTM Manager, a video memory manager
So far VMware didn’t confirm the news or unveiled the amount of the acquisition, but the news is reported on the official website of the new subsidiary.
It seems pretty clear that VMware acquired Tungsten Graphics to power its upcoming client hypervisor, a key part of its pervasive VDI strategy vCloud, where every centrally-managed virtual machine can be checked out and executed locally.
Running a hypervisor on consumer hardware like laptops granting all functionalities that the real hardware provides, like 3D rendering, requires some remarkable engineering work.
Several companies are walking the same path, including Phoenix Technologies, Neocleus and Citrix but none of them acquired yet a company that masters the art of graphics acceleration.
With Tungsten Graphics VMware reaches twelve acquisitions:
11. Trango Virtual Processors (mobile hypervisor)
10. Blue Lane Technologies (intrusion prevention system)
9. B-hive (performance monitoring)
8. Thinstall (application virtualization)
7. Foedus (consulting services)
6. Sciant (software development)
5. Dunes Technologies (virtual data center orchestration)
4. Determina (intrusion prevention system)
3. Propero (virtual desktop infrastructure)
2. Akimbi (virtual lab automation)
1. Asset Optimization Group (capacity planning)