The story
Centaur Technologies Inc. was founded in April 1995 by Glenn Henry, Terry Parks, Darius Gaskins, and Al Sato. The funding was provided by Integrated Device Technology, Inc (IDT). The business goal was to develop compatible x86 processors that were less expensive than Intel processors and consumed less power. There were two main elements of the plan:
a new design, developed from scratch, of an x86 processor core optimized differently from Intel's cores;
a novel management approach designed to achieve high productivity.
While funded by IDT, three different Centaur designs were shipped under the marketing name of WinChip. In September 1999, Centaur was purchased from IDT by VIA Technologies, a Taiwanese company. Since then, five designs have shipped with the marketing name of VIA C3, as well as a number of designs for the VIA C7 processor and its latest 64-bit CPU, the VIA Nano.
The VIA Nano design has been further refined and improved in chips produced by Zhaoxin (a VIA joint venture company).
In late 2019, Centaur announced the "World’s First High-Performance x86 SoC with Integrated AI Coprocessor", the CNS core.
In November 2021, Intel recruited the majority of the employees of the Centaur Technology division from VIA, a deal worth $125 million, effectively acquiring the talent and know-how of the x86 division. VIA retained the x86 licence and associated patents, and its Zhaoxin CPU joint-venture continues.
From Wikipedia’s article on Centaur Technology, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4