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

[Wolfpup]

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.

Obviously there has to be some physical interface to it, but I assumed it was just the CPU doing all the work as I'd never heard otherwise until now.

 

[jouster]

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

Apple had a separate event for the HiFi thing and the $99 leather wallets, so I don't think they have any problems with restricting an event to iPod updates.

 

[iMacmatician]

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?

I'd buy one of those.

 

[Lynxpro]

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

I'm a big fan of vertical integration in terms of chip fabrication. It is what separates a real computer/technology company from a glorified screwdriver shop operation and/or a branding company who lets other build their products for them [both of these examples have fit Dell at different stages of that company's history] until the subcontractors [like ASUS for example] decide they no longer what to play the game and would prefer to grow their own company as an end-user brand. Vertical integration of chip production was the reason why Commodore won the 8-bit computer era, and had Atari - or more importantly Warner - listed to Al Alcorn back in 1976 and acquired MOS Technologies, the computer industry would look much different today.

I want to see a return to specialized hardware from different computer manufacturers. I don't care what critics say, but innovation happened much quicker under that environment than it did when Intel and Microsoft took control of the industry. Sure, there were incompatibility issues due to the competing companies using different operating systems, but now we have Unix/BSD/Linux and the net to draw upon and allow for cross-compatibility across customized hardware platforms. The tools are present, it just takes initiative to make it happen.

 

[Lynxpro]

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.

3dfx kicked PowerVR's tile based posteriors back in the day. The only reason why PowerVR is still around now versus 3dfx is because NEC cried foul to Microsoft for allowing Sega to choose 3dfx for the GPU to the early versions of what became the Sega DreamCast. Microsoft paid for the development of the DreamCast since Sega agreed to use WindowsCE for the OS, and plus Sega was really hurting financially at the time. And thus Microsoft used this leverage to cause Sega to break their contract with 3dfx - not to mention Sega was a 3dfx shareholder - and thus NEC's licensed PowerVR became the GPU solution to the DreamCast. The DreamCast ultimately got crushed by Sony's PlayStation 2, and Microsoft gained experience in the video game console industry on the cheap and was able to force Sega's exit from a hardware company which reduced Microsoft's own potential future competition.

3dfx never really recovered after that debacle. They settled out of court with Sega but that was really the start of 3dfx's slide into bankruptcy oblivion and asset acquisition by Nvidia.

Remind me again, has Nvidia GPL'ed 3dfx's GLide API and associated IP yet? To my knowledge, they've also sat on the other graphical API that 3dfx acquired prior to its bankruptcy. The only thing Nvidia seems to have embraced of 3dfx was SLI.