Apple going with IMG for years to come ?

[tangey]

It might sound like a dumb question, but why has it to be Apple? I mean most of the interested parties know by know that Apple has used IMG IP for its iPhone, which doesn't justify the re-newed secrecy. Anyone want to take any bets on something like SONY?

Well of course there is nothing concrete that points inextricably to Apple, but looking at various circumstantial evidence, I'd be extremely confident it is Apple.

Yes Apple iphone/itouch has IMG IP in it, but that came about as a result of Samsung licensing IMG IP, the royalities are paid by Samsung to IMG, there is no licensing agreement between IMG & Apple in that respect.

IMG have never publicily or even informally admitted to any relationship whatsoever with Apple, even though various sources have confirmed that MBX is referred to many times in the iphone SDK. Apple is notoriously secretive regarding its partners and technology. IMG are keen to refer to the N95, and various other Nokia and SE end products that have their IP in them via a licence agreement with their respective chip suppliers, but never utter a word about the iphone, except to cite the general "iphone effect". One would think they'd be keen to point to the iphone given its ultra high profile.

The agreement recently announced referred back to an initial licence agreement in July '07 with the same "electronic systems company". That announcement was for, at the time, IMG's "future video and graphics IP. The agreement now announced basically says that the licencee has access to pretty much eveything current and future that IMG designs. This means that IMG probably have no more legal requirement to ever make an announcement in relation to this licencee; if you have just said they are taking the rights to everything you are going to do for years to come, you never need to make another announcement again. This fits perfectly with Apples "minimal news" requirment.

finally, Apple has a known long range plan for things in mobile and "small format" that require top end graphics and video in an efficient manner. Steve Jobs is already on record in stating that their purchase of PA semi was for future iphone/ipod, and we can be sure that he was not being candid in giving us an exhaustive list of its uses. That necessitates the purchase of graphics and video IP to fit into the vaious Socs that will be designed by PAsemi.

 

[Ailuros]

Tangey,

I asked an honest question above; I don't doubt that it is for Apple after all. I'm merely saying that at the same time the SONY PSP successor is a huge question mark. If now SONY has somewhere a deal under wraps with IMG (mark a huge "IF" since I don't know), then all I'm saying is that a large handheld deal would indirectly help i-whatever in the foreseeable future too.

 

[tangey]

Tangey,

I asked an honest question above;

I took it as an honest question, and also thought it reasonable to generally state my reasons for the conjecture, for those who aren't completely tuned into the whole scenario.


I'd take a Sony deal too

 

[ban25]

iPhone gaming is an exciting market and very likely to be big business. It's caught the eye of big name VC money like Kleiner Perkins and several game publishers. Hell, I bought a Mac Book Pro and a Touch just to get my feet wet with the SDK.

I have several friends who are already developing games for it, and the exciting thing is that many of these games will be out in only a few months! Digital distribution combined with small scale casual game development -- it's a match made in heaven!

 

[tangey]

I see appleinsider is running a story that a senior Apple engineer let slip on an online CV that he was working within PAsemi on Arm based processors.

If true this would add further credence to the speculation that PAsemi is integrating ARM processors and IMG graphics IP for next gen iphone platforms.

The CV has since been removed.

http://www.appleinsider.com/article..._working_on_arm_chip_for_next_gen_iphone.html

 

[tangey]

As the originator of this thread, its nice to be able to add to it that IMG have finally been able to confirm that Apple is a licencee, via a news announcement stating that Apple have taking a stake in IMG.

http://www.imgtec.com/corporate/newsdetail.asp?NewsID=420

This is the first time IMG have been able to formally identify Apple as a licencee. Previously, Apple was referred to as an "international electronic systems company"

 

[Ailuros]

Frankly at the ridiculous rate the IMG stock value has fallen to, it's barely a wonder that Apple takes the opportunity to invest in IMG.

Something else: http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=10997&Itemid=1

 

[Entropy]

Frankly at the ridiculous rate the IMG stock value has fallen to, it's barely a wonder that Apple takes the opportunity to invest in IMG.

They could take the opportunity to invest in a lot of things. No, this is about future products.

 

[Ailuros]

They could take the opportunity to invest in a lot of things. No, this is about future products.

Of course is it also in relative terms a form of an aid to IMG for future development. In any case it isn't a coincidence either that Apple has bought shares when they were close to the lowest rate of the entire year:

http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=...=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=on;source=undefined

Would they had bought the shares when they closed the long term licensing deal, they might have ended up paying nearly twice as much per share.

 

[roninja]

Astute timing these Apple folks, clearly these guys know a thing or two about making money as well as some good gear! Given the Apple folks are now shareholders along with Intel, I guess they may have even more say about IMG's future roadmap.

 

[Arun]

FWIW, I'll repeat what I said in another thread. This is what I speculate Apple's PowerVR-based roadmap looks like:
0) 90nm/ARM11/MBXLite/In-House or Samsung Audio&Video (2007/2008 iPhones)
1) 65nm/ARM11/SGX520/VXD330/In-House Audio&ISP (2009 iPhone & iPhone Nano)
2) 45nm/Cortex-A9/SGX540/VXD380/VXE280/In-House Audio&ISP (2010 iPhone)

However there is still the mystery of the higher ARM clock speed for the iPod Touch 2G (which I love BTW, it does feel smoother compared to my 1G ) - I wonder what's up with that.

 

[argor]

announcement stating that Apple have taking a stake in IMG

hum http://www.appleinsider.com/article...e_in_imagination_following_apples_buy_in.html

 

[wco81]

Apple is advertising games this Holiday season for the Touch and iPhone. But is it possible that they'd integrate faster GPUs for purposes other than gaming? Or for general UI effects or OS performance while getting better gaming performance in the bargain?

Haven't they said something about how in the Mac OS would use available cycles from the GPU?


I don't think Apple is going to displace Nintendo any time soon, if ever. Best they could hope is that they get the spillover from the handheld and console spaces. That is, developers could leverage titles developed for other platforms and port it for a simple-to-license, simple-to-distribute platform which has an attractive target demographic.

 

[Ailuros]

FWIW, I'll repeat what I said in another thread. This is what I speculate Apple's PowerVR-based roadmap looks like:
0) 90nm/ARM11/MBXLite/In-House or Samsung Audio&Video (2007/2008 iPhones)
1) 65nm/ARM11/SGX520/VXD330/In-House Audio&ISP (2009 iPhone & iPhone Nano)
2) 45nm/Cortex-A9/SGX540/VXD380/VXE280/In-House Audio&ISP (2010 iPhone)

However there is still the mystery of the higher ARM clock speed for the iPod Touch 2G (which I love BTW, it does feel smoother compared to my 1G ) - I wonder what's up with that.

I've no idea what the iPhones of the next two years will look like, but the ballpark between MBXLite and 520 sounds too small to me and the differenc between 520 and 540 too big. Are you sure the 2009 thingy won't contain something like a 530 for instance? Merely because the 530 is "older" than the 520 and its integration has better chances.

 

[silent_guy]

Best they could hope is that they get the spillover from the handheld and console spaces.

They're going after a much larger group: those who'd never consider buying handheld gaming devices or console or a PC game, but don't mind spending a few dollars on an impulse buy that may or may not work out, as long as it just require a few taps on a screen.

IOW, they aiming straight at me and, boy, it is working.

 

[Entropy]

I find this article in Appleinsider quite interesting as well. It deals with IMG hiring OpenCL engineers, but also goes into the role of OpenGL in the future.
It introduced a viewpoint that I hadn't really considered much, but that seems quite valid. Definitely another perspective than what is typical on these forums as a whole.

 

[Ailuros]

I find this article in Appleinsider quite interesting as well. It deals with IMG hiring OpenCL engineers, but also goes into the role of OpenGL in the future.
It introduced a viewpoint that I hadn't really considered much, but that seems quite valid. Definitely another perspective than what is typical on these forums as a whole.

Nice finding. Apple's longterm goals were clear when they introduced OpenCL and I suspected that IMG will jump on the OpenCL bandwagon since afaik SGX was designed around GPGPU capabilities amongst others.

Eventually it aids both companies: Apple can broaden its software and hardware presence from top to bottom and in relative terms prevent any possible future domination of Microsoft's OSs in the small form factor markets and IMG can try to scale itself up step by step instead of being stuck only in mobile phones/PDAs/handhelds.

The perspective though is there for quite some time as some parts of it can be seen f.e. here:

http://www.imgtec.com/corporate/presentations/InterimDec08/index.asp?DisplayPage=26&#ViewTop

http://www.imgtec.com/corporate/presentations/InterimDec08/index.asp?DisplayPage=37&#ViewTop

 

[tangey]

Nice finding. Apple's longterm goals were clear when they introduced OpenCL and I suspected that IMG will jump on the OpenCL bandwagon since afaik SGX was designed around GPGPU capabilities amongst others.

I think you'll find IMG has been "in" on OpenCL from the start as they are one of the co-authors of the OpenCl standard...

http://www.khronos.org/news/press/releases/the_khronos_group_releases_opencl_1.0_specification/

in which Tony King-Smith from IMG said
"Imagination is delighted to have been involved in the authoring of OpenCL, which we see as a significant development for the future of GP-GPU based computing for multimedia.”

 

[Arun]

I've no idea what the iPhones of the next two years will look like, but the ballpark between MBXLite and 520 sounds too small to me and the differenc between 520 and 540 too big. Are you sure the 2009 thingy won't contain something like a 530 for instance? Merely because the 530 is "older" than the 520 and its integration has better chances.

Remember the MBX Lite in the current iPhone is clocked at 50MHz it seems, while a SGX 520 on 65nm would be clocked at 150-250MHz. That seems like a very reasonable performance improvement to me if Apple doesn't increase the screen solution, which I wouldn't expect them to do before 2010.

I find this article in Appleinsider quite interesting as well. It deals with IMG hiring OpenCL engineers, but also goes into the role of OpenGL in the future.

It's indeed not a bad article but I can't help but roll my eyes at things like this:

Apple's strength in the iPod segment and its strong start with the iPhone are both helping build critical mass around OpenGL in the mobile development space.
[...]
Additionally, OpenCL's similarities to the OpenGL APIs will help entrench both open standards in mobile development before Microsoft's DirectX has a chance to monopolize the market. That in turn will create a mobile bulwark which will likely help marginalize the dominance of DirectX in the broader computing landscape, just as the iPod pulled the wind from the sails of Microsoft's Windows Media DRM strategy. In the game console market, DirectX on the Xbox 360 faces Nintendo and Sony, both in the OpenGL camp.

Seriously guys, what the hell? I know your love Apple, that's the entire point, but that doesn't force you to love every damn thing loosely related to Apple no matter how absurd the reasons! Rest of the article isn't bad at all though, but I still think the boost from GPGPU on handhelds will remain much smaller than on desktops.

 

[Entropy]

One of the aspects I thought was interesting was exactly that the Microsoft virtual monopoly for PCs is still mostly undisputed (even though it leaks in the seams). It is simply gradually becoming less important in the greater scheme of things as overall interest shifts to other areas.

How important OpenCL on mobile platforms becomes will depend on a lot of things, but I think it can be fairly argued that it is likely to be more important there than on Wintel PCs equipped with increasingly capable floating point hardware as standard. For just about every floating point code I come across, the limitation already lies in the memory subsystem rather than the FP hardware. And Intel is set to provide additional capabilities in their next generation CPUs. In mobile space, performance is still an issue, and having underutilized transistors is not only a cost in terms of money, but the cost in power draw is a very serious issue. If having OpenCL has the potential to save transistors, or even entire chips elsewhere in the system, this is quite significant. Is this the case though? I honestly don't know.