Facebook’s Oculus Rift Unveiled: Texas Instruments, Cypress Inside
Wall Street largely yawned Thursday after an iFixit teardown showed that Facebook ( FB )-owned Oculus Rift totes chips from STMicroelectronics ( STM ), Texas Instruments ( TXN ) and Cypress Semiconductor ( CY ). In afternoon trading on the stock market today , STMicroelectronics stock was up 1%, but shares of Texas Instruments and Cypress were down 1%. Shares of graphics chipmakers Nvidia ( NVDA ) and Advanced Micro Devices ( AMD ) were both down a fraction. Their GPUs (graphics processing units) are recommended for installation in PCs running the Rift headset. Oculus’ virtual reality headset has been in development for four years, according to iFixit, which also dismantled two earlier developmental versions. Facebook acquired Oculus in July 2014 for $2 billion. The Rift was finally unveiled March 28. On Wednesday, iFixit’s teardown sent shares of Cypress and Texas Instruments up as much as 5.8% and 2.4%, with both ending the day up about 1.6%. Cypress supplies a hub controller, which allows multiple USB-connected devices to be plugged in at once. Texas Instruments’ input comes in the form of an LED driver, which controls for image brightness and grayscale. STMicroelectronics supplied the Rift with an ARM-based microcontroller. But STMicroelectronics stock fell 1.1% Wednesday. Shares of Advanced Micro Devices and Nvidia flew as much as 4.2% and 2.4% Wednesday, before closing flat and up 1.1%, respectively. Image provided by Shutterstock .