More Details on Apple's New Orlando 'GPU Design Center'

[MacRumors]

We've learned more details about Apple's new 'GPU Design Center' in Orlando, Florida, following our reporting from earlier this week.

Sources told MacRumors that the engineers Apple hired recently were not laid off from AMD, but were instead actively recruited -- largely via their LinkedIn profiles. Apple is said to have learned that many of AMD's 3D graphics patents were issued from its Orlando offices and targeted this area specifically. AMD has job listings for its Orlando offices to fill several of these recently vacated positions.

The temporary office space that Apple has leased for the new team in Orlando is located very close to AMD's campus in the city, though Apple is reportedly building permanent offices as well. Apple hired more than twenty employees from AMD and recruited more than that, with Apple reportedly looking to build the GPU team up to roughly forty engineers.

The newly hired employees are said to be reporting to the Austin-based former Intrinsity team that Apple acquired two years ago. Intrinsity technology was used in the A4 processor, and their expertise has contributed to Apple's more recent chips as well.

With its hiring of these 3D graphics specialists, Apple is likely working to redevelop its 3D graphics capabilities in its iOS devices. The company has made a number of acquisitions in recent years to revamp its chip design capabilities, and this new team would seem to supplement those efforts.

Article Link: More Details on Apple's New Orlando 'GPU Design Center'

 

[GeekLawyer]

I find it wonderful that Apple is beefing up its Florida presence!

Oh, and neato for graphics technology. And orange juice.

 

[macs4nw]

In house custom designed graphics. Could be very interesting.

 

[TouchMint.com]

Excited for the gpu improvement to come from this =)

 

[chrmjenkins]

In house custom designed graphics. Could be very interesting.

Indeed. This is big boy stuff that only AMD and Nvidia really do. Even Intel has outsourced some of their IGPs to be Imagination Technologies IP. No doubt Apple is doing custom implementations of their architectures (they are also a 10% owner in ImgTec). ImgTec also recently acquired MIPS. I only see Apple cores getting more custom in the future.

 

[Robert.Walter]

Linked-In?! Most likely after they put together a list of the engineer's names appearing on the AMD patents.

If you want to cut through the BS and exaggeration that can plague Linked-In, goin to the patent database will, do this quite nicely.

Then matching these two data sources and checking the grapevine, one can learn quite a bit.

 

[kockgunner]

I'm excited for all these in-house designs. Partly because of the cool factor of having something exclusive like the PPC days (immature right?) but mostly because it gives is more competition and surprise.

Currently when Intel announces something we can be pretty sure what we are going to be using in our laptops for the next 4 years. But if Apple is really pushing this area we may be seeing some crazy fast chips that are unheard of and provide even more performance.

 

[chrmjenkins]

Linked-In?! Most likely after they put together a list of the engineer's names appearing on the AMD patents.

If you want to cut through the BS and exaggeration that can plague Linked-In, goin to the patent database will, do this quite nicely.

Then matching these two data sources and checking the grapevine, one can learn quite a bit.

Well, once you get one guy in, he just dishes on who the key players are.

 

[Benjamins]

Apple TV is turning into a game console.

 

[holmesf]

I'm somewhat nervous about Apple developing its own GPU technology (if that's indeed what this means). We've seen thus far that Apple's move to develop its own CPU technology (Apple armv7s swift core versus licensing ARM Cortex A15) has served it well in the iPad 4 and iPhone 5, but licensing PowerVR intellectual property from Imgtech has always kept Apple on the forefront of mobile graphics. Every generation of iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch has licensed the GPU technology from Imgtech and they've always, always had the fastest GPUs of any given generation. And Imgtech's roadmap seems pretty Apple friendly: OpenGL ES 3.0 support and OpenCL support, the two huge graphics technologies that Apple is backing.

So I wonder what spurs this move for Apple to create its own GPU design center. What are they looking for that Imgtech has not provided them? What are they going to use these resources to do?

 

[dugbug]

They should move to Melbourne where authentec is. Much cheaper and less traffic.

 

[mozumder]

A 40 person team is huge! Apple can put up a high-end GPU up there with NVidia/AMD if they do this.

They're definitely going after the gaming market. Nothing else draws as much to 3-D graphics as gaming.

I would look to Apple introducing their high-end gaming console (or whatever needs that IP) in 4-5 years. It takes about that long to design a complete system from scratch.

 

[gnasher729]

A 40 person team is huge! Apple can put up a high-end GPU up there with NVidia/AMD if they do this.

They're definitely going after the gaming market. Nothing else draws as much to 3-D graphics as gaming.

I would look to Apple introducing their high-end gaming console (or whatever needs that IP) in 4-5 years. It takes about that long to design a complete system from scratch.

Apple isn't going to build a high-end gaming console. Consider that right now, Apple TV (Apple's little hobby) outsells XBox. There's no money to be made with game consoles. That doesn't mean that an iPad in five years time, used for casual game playing, wouldn't have considerable graphics power by today's standards.

----------

They should move to Melbourne where authentec is. Much cheaper and less traffic.

Australia is quite expensive nowadays due to the exchange rate.

 

[Millah]

They should move to Melbourne where authentec is. Much cheaper and less traffic.

As someone who lives near Authentec in Melbourne, I would love to have a bigger "Apple design center" here

Australia is quite expensive nowadays due to the exchange rate.

He's talking about Melbourne, FL silly. Its an hour away from Orlando.

 

[topmounter]

It sounds like Apple is REALLY serious about gaming on the Mac!!!!

err, oh wait

Nevermind.

 

[mrial]

Glad they went for the "A" players and not the "B" players

 

[wizard]

I'm somewhat nervous about Apple developing its own GPU technology (if that's indeed what this means). We've seen thus far that Apple's move to develop its own CPU technology (Apple armv7s swift core versus licensing ARM Cortex A15) has served it well in the iPad 4 and iPhone 5, but licensing PowerVR intellectual property from Imgtech has always kept Apple on the forefront of mobile graphics.

They could do the same for the GPU cores.

Beyond that as SoC become more and more integrated you need closer access to the GPU IP to better integrate it.

Every generation of iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch has licensed the GPU technology from Imgtech and they've always, always had the fastest GPUs of any given generation. And Imgtech's roadmap seems pretty Apple friendly: OpenGL ES 3.0 support and OpenCL support, the two huge graphics technologies that Apple is backing.

True but who is to say they are moving completely away from ImTechs cores. These guys could be doing a number of things to optimize those cores.

So I wonder what spurs this move for Apple to create its own GPU design center. What are they looking for that Imgtech has not provided them? What are they going to use these resources to do?

A highly optimized chip for heterogeneous computing would be my guess. AMD by the way was leading the way with respect to heterogeneous computing so it is no surprise that Apple targeted AMD. We might end up seeing a chip that is built in such a way that you can't even distinguish the ARM and ImgTech components. Another possibility here is that these guys will target the floating Point and vector processor capabilities built into Apples current processors. Again the potential exists to merge the ARM vector capability with that of the GPU effectively shrinking the chip while scaling performance. Apple could go so far as to drop ARM vector support all together and force all vector processing onto the GPU. In a true heterogeneous environment this would be totally transparent to the user code.

As a side note Apple has been very vocal about getting developers to use Apple supplied libraries for vector processing. This may be to keep developers away from native instructions that won't be around long.

Frankly the above are just a couple of things that first popped into my mind. There are many many other reasons to bring these people on line.

 

[swagi]

Apple isn't going to build a high-end gaming console. Consider that right now, Apple TV (Apple's little hobby) outsells XBox. There's no money to be made with game consoles.

I guess the XBox division, the Playstation division and Nintendo beg to differ. Apart from the gaming studios.

Have you actually read about the XBox division profit despite the fact they had to dish out millions of consoles for free due to that infamous RROD engineering error?

That being said the last thing I want is an Apple gaming console. The closed Apple mindset doesn't bode to well (take a look at Nintendo's lack of BluRay playback in the WiiU).

---------- edit ----------

Oh. The Apple TV sold astonishing 13 Million units according to this point.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/28/4374480/apple-tv-sales-13-million-to-date

Yeah - you can spin that statistic into "But they sold 6.5 million last year and outsold the XBox." Oh great, they outsold the gaming consoles at the end of their respective life cycles. *slow hand clapping*

 

[wizard]

They should move to Melbourne where authentec is. Much cheaper and less traffic.

Speaking of traffic I hope Apple insures these guys well. Florida has possibly the worst drivers in the country, very inconsiderate. I spent a week down there for vacation a couple of years ago. For one week I saw way to many major car crashes - very disturbing. Maybe I was unlucky but I lost several hours over the course of the week waiting for wrecks to be cleared, pretty nasty looking wrecks too.

 

[chrmjenkins]

They could do the same for the GPU cores.

Beyond that as SoC become more and more integrated you need closer access to the GPU IP to better integrate it.

True but who is to say they are moving completely away from ImTechs cores. These guys could be doing a number of things to optimize those cores.


A highly optimized chip for heterogeneous computing would be my guess. AMD by the way was leading the way with respect to heterogeneous computing so it is no surprise that Apple targeted AMD. We might end up seeing a chip that is built in such a way that you can't even distinguish the ARM and ImgTech components. Another possibility here is that these guys will target the floating Point and vector processor capabilities built into Apples current processors. Again the potential exists to merge the ARM vector capability with that of the GPU effectively shrinking the chip while scaling performance. Apple could go so far as to drop ARM vector support all together and force all vector processing onto the GPU. In a true heterogeneous environment this would be totally transparent to the user code.

As a side note Apple has been very vocal about getting developers to use Apple supplied libraries for vector processing. This may be to keep developers away from native instructions that won't be around long.

Frankly the above are just a couple of things that first popped into my mind. There are many many other reasons to bring these people on line.

Good post. I'm sure all of this is true to some extent. Apple can become even more vertically integrated than AMD is in this regard since they also control the APIs that target their hardware.

 

[shompa]

ARM is intently competitive. Both reference design chips and custom chips.
Thats why we have had such an insane speed growth in ARM since Iphone. It was an 416mhz ARM.

Today we have 4+4 cores/4 cores ARM 15 at 2 to 3 ghz. Upwards 20 times faster in 7 years.

Compare that with X86 since 2006. Less then 200% speed increase till 2013.

Its incredible that Apple choose to compete in this market when there are so many vendors to pit against each other. But this is Apples unique position: they control both hardware and software. This gives Apple the ability to put custom DSP and stuff into their SoC's just for their OS.

The A5 SoC had 30% die area with Apple specific stuff. Like the "Apple visual processor (in real world NOVA SIMD), noise cancellation DSPs for Siri, Dual channel RAM and so on.

Apple will continue with their custom SoCs. One thing that is real interesting is Anobit and their/Apples SSD controllers. We will move to fast NAND FLASH chips in iPad/iPhone. Imagine having 550 megs/sec bandwidth. Its possible with lightning to thunderbolt connector or gigabit WiFi.

Remember that Apple's goal is to replace Intel with their own SoC. Todays AIRs/Macbook pros the Intel CPU/Motherboard is 50% of BOM. Apple and the consumers could save huge by dumping X86. A 1970 technology.

 

[wizard]

A 40 person team is huge! Apple can put up a high-end GPU up there with NVidia/AMD if they do this.

Actually I'm under the impression that that would be a rather small team.

They're definitely going after the gaming market. Nothing else draws as much to 3-D graphics as gaming.

I doubt this very much. Beyond that you seem to underestimate just how often GPUs are used in today's software. Often the usage has nothing to do with gaming. Further I'd expect the results of this expansion to produce a processor that looks significantly different than today's SoC.

I would look to Apple introducing their high-end gaming console (or whatever needs that IP) in 4-5 years. It takes about that long to design a complete system from scratch.

Well one thing for sure people expecting to see the fruits of these hires in the next few months are way off base.

 

[dugbug]

Speaking of traffic I hope Apple insures these guys well. Florida has possibly the worst drivers in the country, very inconsiderate. I spent a week down there for vacation a couple of years ago. For one week I saw way to many major car crashes - very disturbing. Maybe I was unlucky but I lost several hours over the course of the week waiting for wrecks to be cleared, pretty nasty looking wrecks too.

That's why you go to melbourne

two hours from miami, one to orlando. 40 minutes to the cape. Plenty of tech companies.

 

[chrmjenkins]

ARM is intently competitive. Both reference design chips and custom chips.
Thats why we have had such an insane speed growth in ARM since Iphone. It was an 416mhz ARM.

Today we have 4+4 cores/4 cores ARM 15 at 2 to 3 ghz. Upwards 20 times faster in 7 years.

Compare that with X86 since 2006. Less then 200% speed increase till 2013.

Its incredible that Apple choose to compete in this market when there are so many vendors to pit against each other. But this is Apples unique position: they control both hardware and software. This gives Apple the ability to put custom DSP and stuff into their SoC's just for their OS.

The A5 SoC had 30% die area with Apple specific stuff. Like the "Apple visual processor (in real world NOVA SIMD), noise cancellation DSPs for Siri, Dual channel RAM and so on.

Apple will continue with their custom SoCs. One thing that is real interesting is Anobit and their/Apples SSD controllers. We will move to fast NAND FLASH chips in iPad/iPhone. Imagine having 550 megs/sec bandwidth. Its possible with lightning to thunderbolt connector or gigabit WiFi.

Remember that Apple's goal is to replace Intel with their own SoC. Todays AIRs/Macbook pros the Intel CPU/Motherboard is 50% of BOM. Apple and the consumers could save huge by dumping X86. A 1970 technology.

I think you're over-romanticizing the rise of ARM and exaggerating x86's faults. ARM's rise owes a lot to all the money pouring into it. More money means more engineering and it also means higher demands. TDPs have also been going up, based solely on the principle that your processor is on less and your average usage is still constant.

Meanwhile, x86, an already mature technology, has always had the high performance requirements in a relatively static TDP. It's also been converted into a mobile platform that can finally compete with ARM on a performance/watt basis.

Well one thing for sure people expecting to see the fruits of these hires in the next few months are way off base.

Yes, it took several years for Intrinsity and PA Semi to crank out Swift. Expect the same time-frame for a custom GPU implementation.

 

[gotluck]

gogo CFL, it's nice here... hopefully everyone doesn't figure that out and make it like SFL.