whats the deal with powervr?

[Hellbinder]

This gets brought up every couple years but i feel its about that time.

I know that Imagine Tech is just an *IP* company. But.. Why the heck dont they just make a couple prototypes of their modern architecture and show people and the industry what they are capable of? Can there be any doubt that if they would stop holding back all the time that they could be equally competitive with ATi and Nvidia?

I never understood why they make these Chip designs that *almost* kick major booty but are held back by a woeful case of "middle of the road" syndrome.

When you consider the advantages they could have with deferred shading and the possibilities they could offer with SLI Its just simply illogical for them to not be actively pursuing a top to bottom IP contract.

I am telling you guys all it would take is One E3 showing off a 16 pipelined 500/500 Series whatever they are on and they would have companies lining up to support them. Just one time i wish they would simply pull out the stops and show people what one of their architectures could do if given the same basic specs as the current generation.

Ok, Im done.

 

[Guden Oden]

Nah, they just want to taunt their fanpersons and turn them old and bitter like they did to me by not releasing a chip worth a damn for some ten years almost. They'll just beaver away in rainy old blighty, creating series after series and then tossing the blueprints into the incinerator without actually doing anything with them, or showing them to anyone.

God alone knows where the hell this company gets the money to fund their resultless operations, or why it hasn't gone bankrupt a million times over. I swear, they must have ties to international terrorism or something...

 

[deviantchild]

God alone knows where the hell this company gets the money to fund their resultless operations, or why it hasn't gone bankrupt a million times over. I swear, they must have ties to international terrorism or something...

they just recently had a fundraiser for £9.7M

 

[Ailuros]

Nah, they just want to taunt their fanpersons and turn them old and bitter like they did to me by not releasing a chip worth a damn for some ten years almost. They'll just beaver away in rainy old blighty, creating series after series and then tossing the blueprints into the incinerator without actually doing anything with them, or showing them to anyone.

God alone knows where the hell this company gets the money to fund their resultless operations, or why it hasn't gone bankrupt a million times over. I swear, they must have ties to international terrorism or something...

Because you're too bored to click on www.imgtec.com and read up what they're up to in the past years or what? Just because they don't release a PC graphics accelerator for several years now it doesn't mean that they're inactive or not releasing anything. In fact back when they had released the KYRO they had produced maybe 1 or 2 SoCs per year.

They're currently leading the 3D PDA/mobile and DAB market and more are going to follow.

Links:

http://www.imgtec.com/News/Release/index.asp?ID=260
http://www.imgtec.com/Investors/Presentations/AGM05/index.asp
http://www.imgtec.com/news/index.asp

 

[Ailuros]

This gets brought up every couple years but i feel its about that time.

I know that Imagine Tech is just an *IP* company. But.. Why the heck dont they just make a couple prototypes of their modern architecture and show people and the industry what they are capable of? Can there be any doubt that if they would stop holding back all the time that they could be equally competitive with ATi and Nvidia?

I never understood why they make these Chip designs that *almost* kick major booty but are held back by a woeful case of "middle of the road" syndrome.

When you consider the advantages they could have with deferred shading and the possibilities they could offer with SLI Its just simply illogical for them to not be actively pursuing a top to bottom IP contract.

I am telling you guys all it would take is One E3 showing off a 16 pipelined 500/500 Series whatever they are on and they would have companies lining up to support them. Just one time i wish they would simply pull out the stops and show people what one of their architectures could do if given the same basic specs as the current generation.

Ok, Im done.

Imagination is currently operating in market where IP licensing is a benefit; for the PC performance graphics market this isn't the case, especially with giants like ATI/NVIDIA sharing that one between them.

It would take a partner that would be either willing to take the high risk and invest large sums in order to compete on a full scale with ATI/NVIDIA or IMG could try and become a fabless semiconductor manufacturer. Latter isn't an option for them, since it would risk the existence of the company.

Besides they'll make more money on MBX alone, then they would ever with a PC GPU.

 

[MfA]

Not having a PC GPU also makes them a much harder sell for consoles, so they are missing out on two markets at once.

 

[Ailuros]

Not having a PC GPU also makes them a much harder sell for consoles, so they are missing out on two markets at once.

Ideally a company that develops graphics cores should aim to address all graphics related markets; if that isn't possible though it'll set priorities.

 

[Hellbinder]

MBX is leading something????

Last time i checked MBX was in the *extreme* minority for supported mobile/handheld accelerators.

 

[Arun]

Hellbinder, it is leading the 3D part of the market and they got a high number of licenses. Obviously, most of the mobile market isn't really 3D yet, but PowerVR is in a great position. And regarding financials, stop being so blind and consider they got a parent company. Heh.
Although with MBX, I'm pretty sure PowerVR itself is profitable at this point.

Uttar

 

[TEXAN]

PoweVR isn't a company owned by another company.

It's just a division within a company.

 

[Ailuros]

Hellbinder, it is leading the 3D part of the market and they got a high number of licenses. Obviously, most of the mobile market isn't really 3D yet, but PowerVR is in a great position. And regarding financials, stop being so blind and consider they got a parent company. Heh.
Although with MBX, I'm pretty sure PowerVR itself is profitable at this point.

Uttar

Not yet profitable at all; integration of 3d capable chips took longer than expected and royalty inflow is yet low and moving slowly. Since most major partners are done by now integrating and as soon as the whole thing starts rolling, royalty revenue will show a rapid increase.

Renesas's car navigation systems seems to also sell well with already Pioneer, Alpine, Mitsubishi being signed up.

IMG is one of the investors at Frontier Silicon by the way (which uses IP from PVR, Ensigma and Metagence); according to their claims they currently hold the 70% of the DAB market and technology being integrated in over 80 final products so far; mobile TV being the next major project.

 

[Ailuros]

MBX is leading something????

Last time i checked MBX was in the *extreme* minority for supported mobile/handheld accelerators.

Series3/KYRO got one license from ST Microelectronics.

Now let's count MBX licensees:

Intel, Samsung, Texas Instruments, Sharp, Philips, Freescale, Renesas, Sunplus, Sega/Sammy, Sony/Ericsson and I must be missing some.

Some of them came through the stratetic partnership with ARM, but none of them spent millions on licenses to just sit on them. And millions just because there many amongst them that have more than one license and a respectable number of repeat licenses, Intel, TI and Sharp being amongst them.

How many 3D capable mobile phones are you aware of being available from other IHVs this far?

 

[amk]

Not having a PC GPU also makes them a much harder sell for consoles

Why?

 

[KimB]

Because PC's are closest to consoles in price, performance, and power consumption pressures for the GPU's.

 

[Megadrive1988]

I believe ImgTec will re-enter the PC graphics industry with Series5 - not at the very highend
($500 and up) but at the mainstream segments ($200 to $300) and capture some marketshare from Nvidia and ATI.


the Series3 was probably ImgTec's biggest success in the PC industry and I expect them to surpass that success with Series5.


Series4 never got its shot, sadly, and that explains much of ImgTec's absence from the PC industry over the last 3-4 years or so.

It seems they made mobile their #1 priority with MBX and now SGX but I do expect some great destop products over the next year or so with Series5.

 

[KimB]

The problem with PowerVR is that they're an IP company, and thus will never be able to have the time-to-market of ATI or nVidia, and thus will always be a generation behind in technology. So no, I don't think they'll come back any time soon. Maybe if the PC market dies down significantly, but not before.

 

[Lazy8s]

PowerVR will very probably be shipping hundreds of millions of processors annually within a few years on current projections due to their ubiquity among the industry's new wave of mobile SoCs.

 

[Ailuros]

The problem with PowerVR is that they're an IP company, and thus will never be able to have the time-to-market of ATI or nVidia, and thus will always be a generation behind in technology. So no, I don't think they'll come back any time soon. Maybe if the PC market dies down significantly, but not before.

While I'll agree on the drawbacks of the IP business scheme, SGX is actually quite a bit ahead technology-wise compared to what ATI and NVIDIA have currently available.

With unified shaders and procedural geometry/HOS, where exactly are they one generation behind?

 

[Hellbinder]

I disagree,

ATi just designed an *ip only* Chip package for the Xbox360 that is even 90% of a Generation ahead of the generation that isnt even completely *currently* represented.

All it takes is to Design an IP at that level make a couple prototypes and show it to the world. Some Company is going to glom onto it get the party started and the rest is history.

Example.. Why not XGI?

 

[rwolf]

While I'll agree on the drawbacks of the IP business scheme, SGX is actually quite a bit ahead technology-wise compared to what ATI and NVIDIA have currently available.

With unified shaders and procedural geometry/HOS, where exactly are they one generation behind?

Lets see it work.