Splitting Up With Apple is a Chipmaker's Nightmare (engadget.com)

Apple is such a powerful company that, for third-party suppliers, it's hard not to become reliant on the cash that it pays you. Engadget adds: But when Apple says that it's done, choosing to move whatever technology you provide in house, the results can be really painful. Imagination Technologies is one such supplier, famously designing the iPhone's PowerVR graphics as well as pushing MIPS, a rival to ARM. But back in March, Imagination publicly announced that Apple was ditching it in favor of its own graphics silicon. Now, Imagination has revealed that it's going to take Apple to dispute resolution, maintaining that the iPhone maker used Imagination's IP without permission. It's the second chipmaker in recent months who believes Apple isn't playing fair, with Qualcomm counter-suing Apple in its own licensing dispute. Secondly, Imagination is going to have to sell off MIPS and Ensigma, two parts of its business that aren't as profitable as PowerVR. Gamers with long memories will remember that MIPS designed the CPUs that lurked inside the PlayStation, PS2 and Nintendo 64.

Comments

Re:One Imagines

[Anonymous Coward]

Notably though, Imagination Tech's important patents have just expired. There's a reason that nVidia and AMD both suddenly implemented tile based renderers, and Apple suddenly decided they could viably produce their own GPU.