Apple Licensing Imagination's PowerVR Graphics Cores for Future Products?

[MacRumors]

Imagination Technologies announced today that they have secured a new multi-year, multi-use license agreement which gives an unnamed company access to the company's wide range of current and future PowerVR graphics and video cores.

As a result of this new agreement, it is expected that Imagination’s IP cores will feature in a number of new SoCs to be used in this company’s future products. Under the terms of the above licensing arrangement, Imagination will receive on-going licence fees as well as royalty revenues on SoCs incorporating Imagination’s IP.

It's been widely speculated that Apple is the licensee for Imagination Technology's graphics cores. Apple currently uses the fourth-generation PowerVR chipset in the iPhone and iPod Touch.

EETimes ties this together with rumors that Apple had also acquired a major architectual licensing deal with ARM, which also powers the iPhone. If true, Apple is positioning itself to deliver custom chipsets based on existing iPhone technologies for future devices.

Apple's recent acquisition of P.A. Semi certainly brings this speculation into the realm of possibility.

Article Link

[g4cubed]

Looking forward to seeing what comes out of this.

[DMann]

Seems promising.

[Clayne]

could this effect this Tuesday? The agreement was back in July, right?

[Analog Kid]

Wow-- this almost looks like there was a plan all along!

[SirOmega]

Apple, when they decide to release it, is going to make the nettop to kill all nettops. The pieces that are being put into place aren't for laptops and desktops, its all that the ipod to nettop sized market.

[manhattanboy]

hopefully something is coming for the touch laptops

[crees!]

Originally Posted by SirOmega

Apple, when they decide to release it, is going to make the nettop to kill all nettops. The pieces that are being put into place aren't for laptops and desktops, its all that the ipod to nettop sized market.

Exactly. This is gonna rock. Now that we have the iPhone and iPod touch we're already feaming for more.

[blakespot]

Look at "Apple Unidentified" under the Series 5 cores...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerVR

...




blakespot

[CWallace]

Originally Posted by SirOmega

Apple, when they decide to release it, is going to make the nettop to kill all nettops. The pieces that are being put into place aren't for laptops and desktops, its all that the ipod to nettop sized market.

And yet, with Grand Central and nVidia's CUDA technology on the desktop and laptop also offering new options, Apple could really be looking to provide a "holistic" approach across all form factors from the iPod Touch/iPhone through the "MacNettop" and on up through the iMac/MacBook/Mac Pro.

Talk about leverage.

[SpinThis!]

Originally Posted by Clayne

could this effect this Tuesday? The agreement was back in July, right?

Yeh, last July (2007)...

[BRLawyer]

Originally Posted by g4cubed

Looking forward to seeing what comes out of this.

Apple already uses it, so it's nothing new...besides, it's not related to Macs, as it only powers small devices like the iPhone...so yep, it's worth a negative vote.

[dongmin]

Originally Posted by CWallace

And yet, with Grand Central and nVidia's CUDA technology on the desktop and laptop also offering new options, Apple could really be looking to provide a "holistic" approach across all form factors from the iPod Touch/iPhone through the "MacNettop" and on up through the iMac/MacBook/Mac Pro.

Talk about leverage.

That's the beauty of Apple. If there's a piece of technology and design in the iPod that becomes a major hit, Apple can implement that technology all through their PC line. And vice versa. Same with software. One product line becomes the testing ground for the entire integrated Apple universe.

[fluidedge]

forgive me but i never understand these stories - what sort of future products are we talking about 3rd generation iPhones/ipods or something much bigger/better like nano computing and flying cars? How big a deal is this?

[iMacmatician]

I wonder if this has anything to do with the rumored mini-tablet.

[wizard]

Hi folks;

One has to believe that with the timing of this and some other recent announcements that everybody is getting their ducks in a row for a big announcement from Apple. Without a doubt Apple has products based on the PA Semi work in the wings.

Of course the first thought is that the SoC will go into the new iPods coming on the ninth. But would that be a waste considering just how powerful the variant could be? I'm still of the mind that iPod Touch Maxi (Newton2) is coming. Of course Apple won't use those names but the concept of a slightly larger device serving a broader market than the current Touch is what is imagined.

Actually my imagination runs wild with the possibilities here. Depending on what PA can jam into the SoC, new flash tech from Micron and other tech we could end up with one powerful hand held device. I also have to wonder about that new Silver based battery tech that was announced recently. Apple could literally make giant strides over and above what other manufactures could deliver. Have PA add a little bit of Apple specific processing capability and they would be untouchable for at least a couple of years.

Or at least that is the way my imagination goes. I just see huge potential in separating Apple from the pack.

Dave

[kabunaru]

Mac Tablet, here you come with this technology.

[wizard]

Originally Posted by fluidedge

forgive me but i never understand these stories - what sort of future products are we talking about 3rd generation iPhones/ipods or something much bigger/better like nano computing and flying cars?

Only Apple knows for sure.

How big a deal is this?

It is huge!

Lets put it this way a company doesn't enter into a program and keep in secret for a year and a half and then just casually mentions "oh we have this year old program that we can't talk much about but it is big" or there abouts. That is a clear signal to investors that they might want to look at their portfolio as something is about to be released.

Now that something could realistically be a device from another manufacture. But we have to look at the timing and recent news it is not a stretch to suspect Apple. Apple is about to release new iPods for one. They just recently acquired PA Semi with the intent to finish off an outstanding iPod chip project. Current iPods use PowerVR. There is a huge amount of talk about other Touch based devices at Apple under development and maybe ready to ship. Take these all together and I don't think it is much of a jump so suspect that Apple will have some really interesting hardware on the market in a few weeks.

Dave

[Keeval]

Originally Posted by BRLawyer

Apple already uses it, so it's nothing new...besides, it's not related to Macs, as it only powers small devices like the iPhone...so yep, it's worth a negative vote.

Well to be fair - the PowerVR tech scales up from a few MPolys/sec to around 100MPoly/sec depending on the variant used. So from mobiles to PDAs to notebooks to desktops. If it is Apple that's licensed it - should be interesting

More info: Imagination Tech

[spacevator]

Could this be related to the 2nd gen iPod Touch model, iPod 2,1 that was rumored to be in the iPhone 2.1 firmware beta? This was thought to signify a major change in the iPod Touch. Maybe a mini-tablet or e-reader device and then iTunes 8 would sell e-books.

[BenRoethig]

I don't see this as a product for computers, but rather for handheld and set top applications. Creating a custom computer GPU based on PowerVR tech would probably be expensive and put Apple and the Mac at a disadvantage.

[stuy119]

I would love to see the capability to sell e-Books for iPod or iPhone.

[WoFat]

I'm betting it's Pystar, not Apple.

[wizard]

Originally Posted by BenRoethig

I don't see this as a product for computers, but rather for handheld and set top applications. Creating a custom computer CPU based on PowerVR tech would probably be expensive and put Apple and the Mac at a disadvantage.

Yeah at least in a couple of forms this signals the use of PowerVR in more hand held devices. That is where I expect to see products of this agreement first, likely in a couple of days.

I disagree with your assessment with respect to CPU's and PowerVR, PowerVR is an option for Intel's Atom processor. Even then Power VR should be cheaper than many of the mainstream GPU's and certainly would use less power. The thing is Power VR does not appear to be powerful enough for mainstream desktop usage thus eliminating Macs of the current form. It is future forms that we need to be concerned about, such as Micro notebooks, tablets and the such. In some of these forms Apple would have little choice in an embeddable GPU core that meets power demands.

Dave

[theBB]

I am still not convinced that making your own chips is more cost effective than buying from specialized vendors.