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

[alphaod]

Imagine a MacBook Pro with a mini OS for quick emails and web browsing. Maybe even listen to some music? This would be powered by the ARM processor and PowerVR GPU. It would be very energy efficient.

Since Dell, HP, and many others are already implementing this mini-Linux thing, I don't see why Apple wouldn't do a mini OS X thing considering they have multitouch trackpads and there is already a iPod touch/iPhone mini OS. Just a bit tweaking and it'll all be good!

 

[Pigumon]

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.

Thanks for telling me just what kind of thinking is behind all these idiotic negative votes.

An iPhone is a Mac. It's a miniature handheld computing device made by Apple and running Mac OS X. It could very possibly be the future of all computing.

With holographic technology, eye tracking, the need for a large screen and keyboard could be eliminated. Desktop computers have only been around a handful of years, are you really going to sit there and fawn over your precious desktop computers while the rest of the world moves forward?

If the iPhone was called NEWTON (which it is actually a very advanced version of) you'd probably be drooling over it.

 

[ryanwarsaw]

Will these be seen in the new Itouch?

 

[wizard]

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

There are a couple of issues.

First how many you can sell. You have to buy the IP anyways so it comes down to do your production numbers justify the price.

Second the vendors are not exactly specialized at least not in the sense of designing a chip for your specific purposes. Instead they design SoC to appeal to a number of potential customers. Apple on the other hand can tailor the processor to their needs. Further they can add their own IP as they see fit and be confident that it will remain secure. It shouldn't surprise anybody that Apple is going the custom route, what will be interesting is the extra sauce they throw in.

Third related to #2 above is the issue of integration if Apple can pull what ever external circuitry they can on to the SoC or virtualize it they gain manufacturing and space advantages. In the case of ARM they could go to one of the advance dual core implementations and virtualize the video decoder chip. Well in a sense as some of the new ARM hardware has acceleration for Video decode anyways. From the marketing standpoint Apple could trumpet dual cores in your hand or SMP in your hand. Frankly it could be seen as a big advantage especially if one core can be operated on an as needed basis. ***

Frankly I see so many potential ways Apple could go with custom hardware that I really find the whole thing very interesting. The engineering and cost trade offs of what ever gets implemented will be very interesting discussion. What seems to be clear here though is that Apple will be implementing more than one chip. Thus we are likely to see a range of products with varying capabilities.

Dave

***
By the way if you have been around computers for awhile you can't help but to be impressed with the performance of the 3G iPhone. It is literally faster than many of the expensive PC's I've owned in the past. Frankly it is faster then some of the PC's at work that are in some cases still running DOS.

D

 

[wizard]

Thanks for telling me just what kind of thinking is behind all these idiotic negative votes.

An iPhone is a Mac. It's a miniature handheld computing device made by Apple and running Mac OS X. It could very possibly be the future of all computing.

Exactly! My iPhone gets used more as a Micro Computer than a cell phone. It is especially useful for E-Mail bugs and all.

With holographic technology, eye tracking, the need for a large screen and keyboard could be eliminated. Desktop computers have only been around a handful of years, are you really going to sit there and fawn over your precious desktop computers while the rest of the world moves forward?

OK that may be a bit extreme. I love my iPhone but it is not a replacement for my laptop and I doubt it every will be. A screen and keyboard are hard to beat an while talking to your computer is nice in a geeky way I don't think most could stand an office filled with people talking to their PC's. It is bad enough when people are running around mumbling to themselves.

If the iPhone was called NEWTON (which it is actually a very advanced version of) you'd probably be drooling over it.

Hey I call half the new iPod Touches running through my imagination NEWTON2's. The trouble with Newton was simply being ahead of itself. The idea though was well implemented in iPhone, I'm convinced that if the tech existed at the time Newton would have had cell capability.

Dave

 

[twoodcc]

now this seems interesting. i don't know what will come out of this, but i look forward to finding out

 

[Keeval]

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

I think part of the cost is offset by the fact that if Apple/PA Semi are manufacturing the chips, THEY control who has access to them, so they can either keep hold of them tightly or allow others (via licensing) to use/make them.

The point is - they will have the control. Whereas with the MacBook Air - with intel holding the IP for the custom chip (at the time), intel had the control - it was an Apple only chip for a few weeks/months before intel started selling them to other customers.

And if these chips are going to give Apple some serious advantages in the marketplace by allowing them to have devices that outpace or do things that the competition can't match - then it's a win for them and the cost will be worth it.

 

[GregA]

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.

Would love to see it, think it makes sense... but who knows.

Can't call it an iPod.... can't call it an iPhone... can't call it a Newton-Messagepad - the only thing I can think of is an "iPad"

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

It's only more effective if you have a unique combination of requirements.

 

[CWallace]

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

Apple would likely be best off, in terms of cost and time to market, designing their own chips and then contracting with a fab to produce them. The only drawback of that is they don't maintain complete control of the IP. The fabricator has to know the chip to build it and if that information leaks, it can help competitors build their own counters.

On the flip side, fabs are not cheap. Even small ones can run into the hundreds of millions and the big ones that Intel and IBM and AMD use are many billions. So unless you're making a few million chips a year - and those chips are not too complicated - you're likely better off outsourcing to a third-party fabricator with the space to lease.

Just make sure they are someone you can trust.

 

[GregA]

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.

I think there's a new market in there... but I'm not sure what will emerge.

I assume you're talking about small cheap terminals that can be used throughout a home or business. Should it connect to a local Mac as a server or connect over the net to Apple? Should it run anything locally or just display server based content?

Imagine in your household buying an iMac with lots of ram, and having a terminal for each family member. The terminals could act as though they're an iMac, just cheaper. The same could be used in an office.

I don't know how that interacts with this rumour - except if the custom chip makes it possible. But I would think you'd need quite high end requirements for handling the graphics, with no CPU.

Is that what you meant by Nettop?

ps.
I volunteer at a charity and our computers are now all less than 10 years old . Microsoft gave us their Terminal server for virtually nothing - so we bought a fast but low end Dell, installed Terminal server, and I now have 6 'antique' computers running off the one Terminal Server at lightning speed. Unfortunately the Terminal Server is very expensive for regular companies... may as well buy 6 new Dells instead. If Apple offered companies the chance to install one Mac and use all their old windows machines as terminals... they'd switch a whole company to Apple in one step.... and sell future terminals and laptops to that company.

 

[ChrisA]

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

It is if making them yourself allows you to offer a device that is smaller and has better battery life. Hand held devices are very sensitive to power consumption. Apple has to make sure that it's phone and iPod i not just another "me too" device built from commodity parts.

This can be economical if you intend to sell tens of millions of the device.

 

[iBunny]

There are Laptop and Desktop variants of these chips too.

SGX540 (1000Mpix/s, 20-35MPolys/s), SGX545, SGX 550 (100 MPolys/sec) and SGX555 for advanced consumer devices, laptop, and desktop products.

What I am curious to see is how these perform compared to NVidia and ATi counterparts....

 

[iMacmatician]

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.

Based on Mac models, it's not a major change.

The current MacBook Pros which were released in June carry a system identifier label of "MacBookPro3,1". One reader notes that an application called MiniBatteryLogger provides public battery tracking logs, and recently revealed an entry with an identifier of "MacBookPro4,1". "MacBookPro4,1" is presumably the identifier for the unreleased MacBook Pro revisions.

Neither the Santa Rosa nor the Penryn MacBook Pro was a major change.

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

Therefore there must be a very good reason for doing so.

Just make sure they are someone you can trust.

Intel.

 

[happydude]

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

maybe we'll find out on tuesday?!

 

[theBB]

It is if making them yourself allows you to offer a device that is smaller and has better battery life. Hand held devices are very sensitive to power consumption.

If you spend a lot of money and time to develop something that is really much better than the existing alternatives, you could make a lot more money by selling it to anybody who is willing to pay for it instead of artificially limiting your customers. There used to be a lot of electronics companies, such as Rockwell, Motorola, Phillips and Siemens, that also owned chip design and fabrication businesses. One by one they spinned off their chip design departments, so that the parent company could buy from among many competitors to get better price or performance and the spin-offs could sell their chips to different customers (some of whom are bound to be competitors of the old parent company) and get more income.

Besides, the attention and resources spent by top managers are bound to be lacking if the company's main business is not chip design. A company focused mainly on chip design has much better chance of keeping up with the developments in the field and respond faster. It makes it easier to recruit good employees, as it is very effective when you tell recruits that he will be a very valued person for this company and be compensated or promoted accordingly, instead of being just a cog in a big machine.

I don't see this business model working out in the long run, but it could pay off for a short period of time if Apple spins it off before the in-house chip design efforts stagnate.

 

[winterspan]

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

There are Laptop and Desktop variants of these chips too.
SGX540 (1000Mpix/s, 20-35MPolys/s), SGX545, SGX 550 (100 MPolys/sec) and SGX555 for advanced consumer devices, laptop, and desktop products.
What I am curious to see is how these perform compared to NVidia and ATi counterparts....

It's actually pretty complicated to compare graphics cards based on polygons or triangles or vertices per second because of the many variables. However, that said, 100 million polygons per second is about at the level of original Xbox 0 or playstation 2, so no, PowerVR is NOT going to be competing with Nvidia or ATI on laptops/desktops/consoles.

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.

Yes, this is for mobile devices. PowerVR tech is not powerful enough for desktop/laptop level. Imagination used to create PowerVR graphics cards for PCs, but that was way back in the early days of 3D graphics.

 

[GregA]

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. 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.

Do the PowerVR cores include their VXD technology? The VXD allows HD video (up to 1080p) to be outputted from mobile devices onto HD screens.

Not only would it be great to watch HD from future iPod touch/iPhones, but perhaps AppleTV could be re-imagined with basic iPhone chips, HD output, and the iPhone OS (with Frontrow). It might run a bit cooler than the current AppleTV too

I'm assuming that having the basic iPhone chipset + HD output in an AppleTV would be capable of everything the current AppleTV can do, plus be cheaper - and that using the iPhone OS (+ Frontrow) would be easier for Apple. What do you think?

 

[GregA]

Imagine a MacBook Pro with a mini OS for quick emails and web browsing. Maybe even listen to some music? This would be powered by the ARM processor and PowerVR GPU. It would be very energy efficient.

Since Dell, HP, and many others are already implementing this mini-Linux thing, I don't see why Apple wouldn't do a mini OS X thing considering they have multitouch trackpads and there is already a iPod touch/iPhone mini OS. Just a bit tweaking and it'll all be good!

I take it you mean like a much smaller MacBook Air, like a 9 inch screen (instead of 13 inch), small keyboard, mini/touchOS etc?

Instead of a chunky MacBook, it's an iBook?

 

[Clayne]

Only Apple knows for sure.

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

That would finally justify why Apple would call this event a big deal for just iPods.

 

[RobTuck]

It's actually pretty complicated to compare graphics cards based on polygons or triangles or vertices per second because of the many variables. However, that said, 100 million polygons per second is about at the level of original Xbox 0 or playstation 2, so no, PowerVR is NOT going to be competing with Nvidia or ATI on laptops/desktops/consoles.

Yes, this is for mobile devices. PowerVR tech is not powerful enough for desktop/laptop level. Imagination used to create PowerVR graphics cards for PCs, but that was way back in the early days of 3D graphics.

I think you need to clarify that statement. PowerVR MBX isnt really suited to desktop/laptops, but PowerVR SGX is more than capable.

Also, I still own a Series 3 STG4500-based PowerVR graphics card, which isn't that old. Certainly not from 'the early days'. Im assuming you're referring to the Series 1 (PCX-1/PCX-2) cards.

Regarding your first comment - youre absolutely right, it is pretty complicated to compare graphics cards. Even more so where the PowerVR chips are concerned, due to the Tile-based rendering techniques and hidden surface removal. PowerVR chips have never needed to push as many polygons as its competitors, so you really cant compare based on those figures.

 

[HaiRy]

I think you need to clarify that statement. PowerVR MBX isnt really suited to desktop/laptops, but PowerVR SGX is more than capable.

Also, I still own a Series 3 STG4500-based PowerVR graphics card, which isn't that old. Certainly not from 'the early days'. Im assuming you're referring to the Series 1 (PCX-1/PCX-2) cards.

Regarding your first comment - youre absolutely right, it is pretty complicated to compare graphics cards. Even more so where the PowerVR chips are concerned, due to the Tile-based rendering techniques and hidden surface removal. PowerVR chips have never needed to push as many polygons as its competitors, so you really cant compare based on those figures.

Exactly, people are dismissing the article as pointless but simply due to their lack of knowledge of the graphics card market. PowerVR had the Kyro and Kyro 2 back in.. 2002/2003 (correct me on this) and the Kyro 2 was quite capable at the time and was comparable to some of the Geforce 2 variants. The one big thing that held it back was the lack of hardware T+L which pretty much every other new card had. The point I'm trying to make is that although Apple were already purchasing items for the iPhone, there is still a very clear possibility of using these in laptops or desktops.

 

[diamond.g]

Exactly, people are dismissing the article as pointless but simply due to their lack of knowledge of the graphics card market. PowerVR had the Kyro and Kyro 2 back in.. 2002/2003 (correct me on this) and the Kyro 2 was quite capable at the time and was comparable to some of the Geforce 2 variants. The one big thing that held it back was the lack of hardware T+L which pretty much every other new card had. The point I'm trying to make is that although Apple were already purchasing items for the iPhone, there is still a very clear possibility of using these in laptops or desktops.

The other problem is PowerVR sucked at drivers. About as bad as Matrox. I would worry if Apple decides to go with them for notebooks and desktops. Unless Apple has some awesome driver writers for 3D hardware that know the PowerVR arch well enough to extract all the available power...

I actually am thinking that Apple should have used SGX in the iPhone 3G. It would have made the unit more future proof (in respects to capability) The downside would have been leaving the Original iPhone behind. Or even a full MBX versus MBX Lite.

 

[Wolfpup]

I had no idea the iPhone/Touch platform had any graphics hardware at all. This is the first I'd heard of that. I wonder what their 4th gen technology's capabilities are?

 

[citi]

I had no idea the iPhone/Touch platform had any graphics hardware at all. This is the first I'd heard of that. I wonder what their 4th gen technology's capabilities are?

all electronics with a video screen have some level of graphics chips installed, whether it is standalone or integrated in the ram makes no difference. You need something to tell the electronic device what to display.

 

[granex]

Can't call it an iPod.... can't call it an iPhone... can't call it a Newton-Messagepad - the only thing I can think of is an "iPad"

Sounds like a feminine hygiene product.