Apple Licensing Imagination's Graphics Cores?

[MacRumors]

EETimes reports on speculation that Apple may be a licensee for Imagination Technologies Group's "next-generation" graphics and video cores.

The conclusion appears to be entirely speculative, with Imagination reporting only that "an international electronics systems company" has signed a multi-use licensing agreement.

Observers have speculated that Apple will use the SGX 3D graphics and video cores in forthcoming products, with future generations of the iPhone as obvious candidates. The SGX core may also, or alternatively, be destined for inclusion in an Apple IPTV product, one observer said.

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[whooleytoo]

Some more info about the core here.

That doesn't say much to me, but does seem to focus on the 3D elements.

It also has MPEG4 and H.264 encoding & decoding, & motion compensation (if Apple is the licensee, might this imply video capture in the next gen. iPhone?)

[samh004]

So it's a dedicated chip that controls several key functions for a next-generation device, instead of getting several chips to each control said functions ?

And those functions revolve around audio and video.

[twoodcc]

sounds like good news to me

[note235]

can the current iphone do 3d stuff?

[Clive At Five]

Originally Posted by note235

can the current iphone do 3d stuff?

Technically, CoverFlow is 3D. I think they use Quartz for it (as well as some other blending & motion effects I would assume). So this core must be able to chug that out pretty well.

-Clive