Dave, Re: "who was the graphics chip company that went bankrupt and NVDA bought, post bankruptcy?
Can you speculate as to why Intel didn't "snap" up their assets..."
You are thinking of 3Dfx. They went bankrupt trying to compete with nVidia with technology that just became more and more obsolete. They spent a lot of money on advertising, but that didn't make up for the fact that their products ran like a dog compared to the GeForce, and nVidia continued to have a much shorter development cycle.
I recall nVidia being the one to seize the rest of the 3Dfx assets and collect the last of the employees. I'm not sure why Intel didn't bid higher, but I can think of several possibilities. Either nVidia wanted them more, and Intel didn't want to get into a bidding war on a graphics company, or Intel felt that integrated graphics performance wasn't a key selling feature for low end chipsets, and thus they could make due with their C&T investment.
Of course, that was then, and things have changed since. nVidia has now shown that they are willing to compete in some of Intel's markets, primarily chipsets. Had Intel known that nVidia was to be a competitor, I'm sure they would have bid on 3Dfx instead.
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