Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Apple To Develop Its Own GPU, UK Chip Designer Imagination Reveals In 'Bombshell' PR (anandtech.com)

Posted by msmash on from the cutting-reliance dept.

From a report on AnandTech: In a bombshell of a press release issued this morning, Imagination has announced that Apple has informed their long-time GPU partner that they will be winding down their use of Imagination's IP. Specifically, Apple expects that they will no longer be using Imagination's IP in 15 to 24 months. Furthermore the GPU design that replaces Imagination's designs will be, according to Imagination, "a separate, independent graphics design." In other words, Apple is developing their own GPU, and when that is ready, they will be dropping Imagination's GPU designs entirely. This alone would be big news, however the story doesn't stop there. As Apple's long-time GPU partner and the provider for the basis of all of Apple's SoCs going back to the very first iPhone, Imagination is also making a case to investors (and the public) that while Apple may be dropping Imagination's GPU designs for a custom design, that Apple can't develop a new GPU in isolation -- that any GPU developed by the company would still infringe on some of Imagination's IP. As a result the company is continuing to sit down with Apple and discuss alternative licensing arrangements, with the intent of defending their IP rights.

3 of 148 comments (clear)

  1. They were going to buy them... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Because they couldn't get around the patents they had. They must have figured out another way to do things if they're just cutting them loose.
    Poor guys, the stock was down 63% this morning.

  2. Has to be for mobile GPU by myowntrueself · · Score: 1, Interesting

    So far Apple haven't given a crap about graphics performance. You don't have to be an anti-fanboi to see this, even Apple fanbois admit that the GPU in existing Apple kit, especially the so called 'pro' series, is lacking and the fanboi will say that this is because Apple users have better things to do with their time than play games.

    Suddenly Apple cares enough to develop their own GPU? Are they hoping that game developers are going to start targeting the Apple user market which, for so long now, has been mostly disinterested in gaming? Are they hoping to win back the 3d graphics professionals that they've been neglecting all these long years?

    The only direction this could be headed is mobile GPU.

    Desktop graphics is a totally lost cause for Apple. No game studio is going to develop games for a platform whose users are basically disinterested in desktop gaming; because if someone were interested in desktop gaming they would have bought a PC not a Mac.

    --
    In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
  3. We will build a garden ... by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 1, Interesting
    Then a wall around that garden.

    We will make the wall taller and insurmountable

    We will grow more stuff inside and import less and less.

    By the time the inmates realize the walled garden is a prison, it would be too late. All other gardens would have been starved and withered and desolate.

    Then, ... profit?

    I remember another company trying to corner the desktop market for themselves.

    Actually one can back all the way to Morgan trying to corner the silver market.

    Well, free market and invisible hand all that will find some solution. But the people rewarded by the free markets would not be the ones hurt by the walled garden.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact