this is exactly why i dont think nvidia will have much chance to succeed in cell phones. handset market is a very closed ended with in-house/proprietary hardware/softwares, compare to a standardized and commoditized hardware/software PC market.
PowerVR MBX in iPhone
- Thread starter Rob Evans
- Start date
this is exactly why i dont think nvidia will have much chance to succeed in cell phones. handset market is a very closed ended with in-house/proprietary hardware/softwares, compare to a standardized and commoditized hardware/software PC market.
They had much more than that, $225M+ in 2005 and Q106 was also a very good quarter, with $72M+. But then in Q3, after the loss of the Nano, this happened:
And this...PortalPlayer said:
PortalPlayer said:
So far so good, right? Then they got bought by NVIDIA and Q4 never got reported. But this was still said at NVIDIA's Q4 CC, keeping in mind that their Q4 ends on January 28th:
This surely was a one-time thing because of timing issues, right? But then in the Q1 CC (and this was roughly in line with the Q4 guidance)...NVIDIA said:
The expenses are what you'd expect, given that they were about $12.5M pre-acquisition and there might be some synergies at play. But the revenue? WTF?NVIDIA said:
I have yet to find a proper explanation to this. That amount of revenue would be just $6M from Apple if we expected non-Apple revenue to be flat, and a grand total of $0 from Apple if we expected non-Apple revenue to grow significantly. In either case, it doesn't make much sense to me. PortalPlayer's cash position remained roughly flat in Q4 too (because the net price was $160M, as expected) so there was no spike in this unreported quarter, as far as I can tell.
Maybe a very significant reduction in iPod Video production along with a reduction in ASPs... Still, weird.
Because the S3C2460 apparently never made it to an end-user device, perhaps Samsung's January 2004 MBX Lite license was never used up and was still available for the iPhone chip. Maybe Samsung even intentionally passed up S3C2460 sales opportunities for it, though I doubt the whole scenario.
Imgtec would probably have to share the revenue from the chip with ARM in accordance with that old arrangement in this unlikely case, too.
Imgtec would probably have to share the revenue from the chip with ARM in accordance with that old arrangement in this unlikely case, too.
Kind of like the PC discrete 3D graphics card scene, circa 1994...
extremely different.
1994 PC 3D graphics add-on ->
- Standadized hardware interface (ISA, followed by AGP and PCI-E) that allows plug/play.
- Standardized OS (DOS, Windows).
- Standardized form factor (AT, ATX)
- Commoditized product. A PC bought from Packard Bell isn't much different from that of Compaq.
- Open OEM/ODM and distribution channel. You have 345098364723986 Taiwanese guys trying to compete for the same Dell/HP order and cut throat prices. Commodity manufacturing for commodity product.
2007 cell phone graphics core ->
- NON standardized interface. sometimes an add-in chip, sometimes integrated in application processor (samsung w/ imgtec), sometimes integrated in baseband (qualcomm w/ ati). And you cant plug/play.
- NON standardized OS. In-house OS by different venders, Symbian 6, windows mobile.
- NON standardized form factor. different sized phones have different PCB real estate budgets for chips.
- Feature rich product. At a given price point, you have phones with different feature sets. e.g., W for walkman, N for smart phones, and iPhone for a cool browser.
- Closed OEM/ODM and distribution channel. Can't just go to Taiwan for 1 stop shopping for PCB, distributor, OEM, etc.
Hey, don't complain - more royalties for you guys!
What a strange video - I was surprised that it blended so quickly. I hope that dude didn't inhale the black smoke from the iPhone debris - I can't but believe that there must be some pretty toxic compounds given off.
Heh. Apple's doing the smart thing - they don't want any brand recognition to get out besides their own. Sucks for ImgTech, tho -- but I figure word will get out enough to boost their stock anyway.
Hi
Very much n00b to the embedded graphics chips so please excuse this if it's a stupid question.
So do we actually know for a fact which chip this is and how it can perform? The iPhone seems to obviously use the OpenGLES framework included, so I take it this chip is powering the fancy animations and whatever Quartz equivalent Apple is using on the phone?
According to Lazy8s, this could be quite a kickass 3D graphics processor? Could there be something in the Nintendo + iPhone rumours that were circulating a few weeks ago? At the very least we should get better graphics than the ngage which did things in software on its ARM processor right?
Very much n00b to the embedded graphics chips so please excuse this if it's a stupid question.
So do we actually know for a fact which chip this is and how it can perform? The iPhone seems to obviously use the OpenGLES framework included, so I take it this chip is powering the fancy animations and whatever Quartz equivalent Apple is using on the phone?
According to Lazy8s, this could be quite a kickass 3D graphics processor? Could there be something in the Nintendo + iPhone rumours that were circulating a few weeks ago?
At the very least we should get better graphics than the ngage which did things in software on its ARM processor right?OS maybe, but 3D API?
well, not 1994, but openGL or stuff of that sort was pretty popular at 96/97.
admittedly, i didn't get a 3D gfx card until 2001 until the beta of warcraft3.
All ARMs past 9 have the 'jazelle' stuff in them. Its mostly marketing speak as the jazelle piece doesn't seem to speed much up, and costs a bundle to license the JVM from somebody.
I'm not even sure that ARM pushes that it exists anymore.
So how much are these iPhone processors?
Especially compared to what's currently used in iPods?
There is of course speculation that the next iPods to be unveiled this fall or winter will be just the iPhone without the phone bits for current prices.
I don't know, an iPod with a 3.5-inch multitouch screen, maybe a 80 GB HDD, Wifi for $250 or $350?
With Cover Flow display and Internet features?
Do the chipsets and other components required for these features seem as likely for a $350 product compared to a $500 or $600 product?
Especially compared to what's currently used in iPods?
There is of course speculation that the next iPods to be unveiled this fall or winter will be just the iPhone without the phone bits for current prices.
I don't know, an iPod with a 3.5-inch multitouch screen, maybe a 80 GB HDD, Wifi for $250 or $350?
With Cover Flow display and Internet features?
Do the chipsets and other components required for these features seem as likely for a $350 product compared to a $500 or $600 product?
Yeah, to be precise $20 each, for bunch of 1000 pieces.
On a related note, some people noted that Cover Flow rendering on the other iPods seemed to be a bit sluggish.
Rather than Cover Flow or in addition to it, what kind of processing power and video would it take to do the visualizations which iTunes and other software do on computers?
Rather than Cover Flow or in addition to it, what kind of processing power and video would it take to do the visualizations which iTunes and other software do on computers?
That kinda seems odd to me, since it appears (though we'll know more in the next few days when teardowns happen) that the NAND, iPod Classic, iPod Touch, and iPhone video capabilities are basically identical, and might the same SOC. My guess originally would have been the different SOCs, with the Touch and iPhone having beefier processors.
But, to answer your question, I'm not sure which visualizations you're talking about, but the typical thing like spectrum analysis, or pulsating blobs, or waveform display aren't terribly intense.
The coverflow stuff is probably pretty hard on the ARM11 processor without 3d acceleration assuming it supports the reflections of the album art I've seen in some demos like I think it does. I'm sure that its possible to have some hacks to make it easier, but they don't make 3d accelerators for nothing.