Just over two months after Apple told it that it would no longer be using Imagination Technologies GPU offerings, the company is seeking to sell itself off, either in chunks or as a larger whole.
Apple is building its own GPU architecture, but why? Rather than being motivated by simple cost savings, evidence points to the timing of a significant technical leap forward that could be as big of an advance as iOS was ten years ago.
Ten years after Apple effectively created a viable, high-end mobile graphics business for Imagination Technologies—and a year after the iPhone maker publicly declined to acquire the company—the British graphics technology firm now appears to be in full panic mode that its mobile technology may end up abandoned like MIPS, PowerPC, Nvidia's Tegra and Texas Instrument's OMAP.
Apple partner Imagination Technologies on Wednesday unveiled PowerVR Furian, its next-generation mobile graphics processing architecture likely to be a key part of future iPhones, and also the first new GPU architecture since 2010.
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Mike Wuerthele
Daniel Eran Dilger
Neil Hughes
