Lorne Trottier Acquires Full Ownership of Matrox, to Lead New Era of Tech Innovation

[btarunr]

Matrox is excited to announce that Mr. Lorne Trottier, co-founder of Matrox, has acquired 100% ownership of the Matrox group of companies, including its three divisions—Matrox Imaging, Matrox Graphics, and Matrox Video.

"This next phase represents a renewed commitment to our valued customers, suppliers, and business partners, as well as to our 700 dedicated employees worldwide," said Trottier. "At Matrox, our culture is defined by our passion for technological innovation and product development. We maintain the highest degree of corporate responsibility vis-a-vis production quality and industry standards. I am extremely proud of our accomplishments over our 40-plus-year history and would like to thank my co-founder for his contributions."



Since 1976, Matrox has pioneered a number of innovative hardware and software solutions for an array of high-tech industries. Matrox will continue to be at the forefront of cutting-edge technology, and work closely with its global stakeholders to solve specific real-world issues.

"I look forward to championing a corporate culture defined by forward-thinking business practices, transparency, and teamwork. I am excited to lead this great organization as we implement growth initiatives. Matrox is a great Canadian success story. We owe this success and our bright prospects to the talented and dedicated people at all levels of this organization."

Matrox remains committed to customers, suppliers, and partners, diligently focused on delivering excellent products and customer service, while fostering high-quality relationships.

Stikeman Elliott LLP and Borden Ladner Gervais LLP acted as legal counsel to Mr. Trottier in connection with the transaction, while Canaccord Genuity Group acted as M&A advisors to Mr. Trottier.

About the Matrox Group

Founded in 1976, Matrox is a privately held company based in Montreal, Canada, with offices worldwide. Its three divisions—Matrox Imaging, Matrox Graphics, and Matrox Video—provide leading component-level solutions, leveraging the others' expertise and industry relations to provide innovative, timely products.

Matrox Imaging is a leading designer and manufacturer of component-level hardware and software solutions for the machine vision, image analysis, and medical imaging industries. Among its products are frame grabbers, vision controllers, smart cameras, I/O cards, and powerful image processing development software for 2D and 3D as well as deep learning applications. Matrox Imaging is an established and trusted supplier to top OEMs and integrators worldwide.

Matrox Graphics is a global leader in AV/IT technology, offering best-of-breed hardware and software products for OEMs, value-added channel partners, and end users. Its award-winning portfolio of graphics and capture/encode/decode cards, AV-over-IP enterprise encoders/decoders, IP KVM extenders, multiviewers, and display controllers—coupled with flexible, easy-to-use, high-performance software applications and SDKs—delivers world-class content capture, real-time encoding, live streaming and recording, extension and switching, visualization, and control. Serving the Pro AV marketspace, Matrox Graphics is synonymous with quality, performance, support, and partnership.

Matrox Video is a leader in core broadcast technology, offering both PC hardware and software building blocks, upon which the industry is built. It delivers an unrivalled range of products to broadcast equipment manufacturers, comprising HD/4K-based I/O cards, ST 2110 NICs, and H.264 codec cards, all governed by one common comprehensive SDK. Matrox Video services professional broadcast and live production markets with encoding appliances for webcasting and remote production. Industry-recognized quality and commitment to customer support is at the center of its brand.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[bug]

I remember drooling all over Matrox cards (and being unable to afford one), but with just 700 employees across three divisions, I have a hard time seeing them going anywhere.

 

[btarunr]

I remember drooling all over Matrox cards (and being unable to afford one), but with just 700 employees across three divisions, I have a hard time seeing them going anywhere.

They can at least become an AIB/AIC partner to NVIDIA or AMD. They already make multi-display cards with AMD GPUs. They can enter the gaming space with 700 employees.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

I remember drooling all over Matrox cards (and being unable to afford one), but with just 700 employees across three divisions, I have a hard time seeing them going anywhere.

My first 3d card was a matrox m3d if i recall , it didn't have an output ,it ammended my onboard with polygon pushing power. I don't even remember a follow up product , shame.

Come on matrox you can do it ,make a new Gpu.

 

[bonehead123]

but...
but...
but...

will they finally introduce a video card that can play Crysis at 26,347fps at 116.287k resolution ? hahahah

IIRC, in their heyday, they were da bomb in con/prosumer video cards, unlike these little shitheaded-greedmongers we have nowadays...

 

[Steevo]

I remember drooling all over Matrox cards (and being unable to afford one), but with just 700 employees across three divisions, I have a hard time seeing them going anywhere.

Same thing killed VIA and Cyrix, Cirrus Logic, and almost AMD/ATI.

Billions of transistors are hard to assemble with constrains placed by process and other manufacturing problems.

Our first fully designed and working AI chips would be a great investment for them to persue

 

[Deleted member 158293]

Amicable or not-so-amicable buyout? Curious...

 

[Deathy]

I remember them being the first GPUs with multi simultaneous display outputs and back when analog signal quality was still an important thing, they always topped the charts in those rankings as well (c't was my magazine of choice back then and they loved them... for everything that wasn't gaming). They had a competitive-ish graphics card in the pre-Geforce days (G400 I think?). After that, it wasn't looking so good on the performance side of things. I don't see how they can catch up to be relevant in the modern mainstream space.

 

[TheLostSwede]

They can at least become an AIB/AIC partner to NVIDIA or AMD. They already make multi-display cards with AMD GPUs. They can enter the gaming space with 700 employees.

Why would they waste their time and money on that? That would just be foolish, considering they haven't been in that market for over 20 years.
It's hardly worthwhile going into that competitive market. Instead, they would have a better chance to stay in the niche markets they're in and build on that.

My first 3d card was a matrox m3d if i recall , it didn't have an output ,it ammended my onboard with polygon pushing power. I don't even remember a follow up product , shame.

Come on matrox you can do it ,make a new Gpu.

Had one of those too, they were going for little to no money at the end. They were quite crappy to be honest, but back then, it was amazing...
It wasn't so much that they didn't, as in PowerVR focusing on the Dreamcast instead, so there was no new product to use until much later.
The Kyro II was pretty decent at the time, but had a bit lacking in terms of support. The next one never launched as well so...

PowerVR - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Same thing killed VIA and Cyrix, Cirrus Logic, and almost AMD/ATI.

Billions of transistors are hard to assemble with constrains placed by process and other manufacturing problems.

Our first fully designed and working AI chips would be a great investment for them to persue

Huh? VIA/Cyrix (VIA bought Cyrix) is still around, so is Cirrus Logic, so not sure where you're getting your facts.

 

[sam_86314]

If it could mean another player in the industry, then I'm all for it.

 

[eidairaman1]

They can at least become an AIB/AIC partner to NVIDIA or AMD. They already make multi-display cards with AMD GPUs. They can enter the gaming space with 700 employees.

The parahelia was a flop though

 

[FreedomEclipse]

I still have a Matrox Millenium G200 and G400 tucked away somewhere....

 

[L'Eliminateur]

¿where to begin?, that news release is so full of boilerplate bullshit i feel like i'm reading an EA apology.

• "Matrox will continue to be at the forefront of cutting-edge technology, and work closely with its global stakeholders to solve specific real-world issues."
  Matrox has been irrelevant in the consumer industry for 2 decades and they don't have anything even near the edge, let alone "cutting".
  About solving specific issues, yes, it's true, they're about the only company with a decent/complete multimonitor GPU for professional use(we're talking 6+ outputs on one GPU with fanout cables) which is where they've carved their niche, very useful for financial and medical, with good software support for that as well. Mainstream cards top out at 3 outputs at the most and support is spotty at best.

their nail in the coffin was the failhelia, that promised the world and was a monumental flop, after that they exited the GPU business completely.

Their G400 is still in use today in 99% of the servers out there, they licensed the GPU design to Avago and others and then those companies integrate it into their "super io/kvm/OOB" chips as the graphic card for the system, usually with 2 or 4MB of VRAM(shared with the rest of the ram for the chip, usually 64/128+MB), since every windows and every OS has out of the box drivers for the G400 and it's used only as a 2D "accelerator".

From the rest of the article it seems they have a firther niche in back-end and industrial systems, where they will probably remain as they're a very small company, like you guys said, 700 employees is next to nothing once you factor in administrative, sales, logistics, IT, leaves for a very very small engineering team. Hell nvidia probably has more engineers working on a part of a single GPU in one of their (several) engineering locations than matrox has employees

 

[bug]

their nail in the coffin was the failhelia, that promised the world and was a monumental flop, after that they exited the GPU business completely.

I think that wasn't as much a fail, as it was ATI and Nvidia outplaying everyone else. There were several players in the market back then and they all went under pretty much at the same time. Not to mention players that were getting ready to enter the market that were swept away as well (anyone remembers Bitboys?).

 

[L'Eliminateur]

the parhelia was a fail, not because of comparisons to ati an nvidia at the time, but to itself, it could not do a fraction of the performance it promised priori to launch i vividly remmember that john carmack did a review of the card and even after some specific careful programming the card was faulty(as in design faulty) and that famed "512bit bus" was useless.

 

[R-T-B]

where to begin?, that news release is so full of boilerplate bullshit i feel like i'm reading an EA apology.

It's a press release, so... Yeah.

 

[Scrizz]

I think that wasn't as much a fail, as it was ATI and Nvidia outplaying everyone else. There were several players in the market back then and they all went under pretty much at the same time. Not to mention players that were getting ready to enter the market that were swept away as well (anyone remembers Bitboys?).

one word: 3dfx

 

[1d10t]

It's been a decade I didn't hear about Matrox
I remember using Matrix SDI, their solution was top notch at the time. Sadly, since consumer GPU like AMD Radeon HD5870 are able to drive 6 monitor, their market slowly depriving. They surely will face ruthless competition since many consumer card can drive up to 6 monitor, embedded H.264 codec acceleration, cheapo Chinese card and streaming service like YouTube and Twitch which eroding broadcast platform.

 

[Frick]

If it could mean another player in the industry, then I'm all for it.

They are a player, not just in the consumer GPU industry.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Voodoo....

my first tech woodie was over a Voodoo (pre-Nvidia). upgrade from a Mystique.

 

[Steevo]

Why would they waste their time and money on that? That would just be foolish, considering they haven't been in that market for over 20 years.
It's hardly worthwhile going into that competitive market. Instead, they would have a better chance to stay in the niche markets they're in and build on that.


Had one of those too, they were going for little to no money at the end. They were quite crappy to be honest, but back then, it was amazing...
It wasn't so much that they didn't, as in PowerVR focusing on the Dreamcast instead, so there was no new product to use until much later.
The Kyro II was pretty decent at the time, but had a bit lacking in terms of support. The next one never launched as well so...

PowerVR - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Huh? VIA/Cyrix (VIA bought Cyrix) is still around, so is Cirrus Logic, so not sure where you're getting your facts.

I meant out of the companies there used to be, only a few left are actually making the products they started with, Cirrus Logic was a 2D/kinda 3D chip maker. Now they do niche products as a fabless patent troll as does VIA.

I can't buy a new Cyrix, VIA, or other CPU that competes with AMD or Intel. Billions or trillions of transistors are hard to work with.

 

[TheLostSwede]

I meant out of the companies there used to be, only a few left are actually making the products they started with, Cirrus Logic was a 2D/kinda 3D chip maker. Now they do niche products as a fabless patent troll as does VIA.

I can't buy a new Cyrix, VIA, or other CPU that competes with AMD or Intel. Billions or trillions of transistors are hard to work with.

Really? I guess you're not in the business then if that's what you think.

Cirrus Logic still makes ICs, maybe not for graphics, but they make plenty of audio solutions, many of which are used by Apple for example. Their products are also used in a lot of AV equipment, but hey, patent troll...

VIA CPUs are available and they're in fact busy developing new products at Centaur in Texas https://centtech.com/
They also have a partnership with Zhaoxin in China and offer a wide range of products there.
VLI is also a division of VIA and makes plenty of USB 3.x chips, but again, clearly a patent troll...

 

[TheLostSwede]

I meant out of the companies there used to be, only a few left are actually making the products they started with, Cirrus Logic was a 2D/kinda 3D chip maker. Now they do niche products as a fabless patent troll as does VIA.

I can't buy a new Cyrix, VIA, or other CPU that competes with AMD or Intel. Billions or trillions of transistors are hard to work with.

You should have a look here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_graphics_chips_and_card_companies
Maybe you should also be complaining that Western Digital doesn't make graphics chips any more, since they used to make them back in the day.
In fact, that's what I had in my first PC, with a massive 512KB of graphics memory.