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For most a decade, Apple and Imagination Technologies have been joined at the hip. Every iPhone from the original 2007 model has used a version of a PowerVR graphics core, every bit has the iPad. Apple'south business has been a huge boon for Imagination Technologies, just the visitor'due south efforts to diversify outside of graphics by buying the MIPS compages and developing real-fourth dimension raytracing hardware have met with very limited success. Recently Imagination announced that it would lay off 350 staff and restructure its business. At present, reports suggest that Apple may be negotiating to buy the company outright.

As reported past Ars Technica, this wouldn't be a dramatic shift for Apple, who already owns 8.four% of the company and designs its ain custom CPUs. Information technology would, withal, be a meaning modify for the rest of Imagination Technology'south current licensees, who depend on the visitor for IP. Intel has made utilize of Imagination Applied science in multiple products, as has Samsung. ARM develops its own graphics core, dubbed Mali, merely enough of ARM-based SoC manufacturers still choose to pair with a dissimilar graphics core. Imagination Technologies lost money in both 2014 and 2015 as its efforts to abound its MIPS, raytracing, and IoT businesses came to piddling while the marketplace for smartphones and tablets that use its IP shrank. Still, the visitor has decades of experience in graphics, particularly power-efficient GPUs. The PowerVR2 powered the Sega Dreamcast, while Series 3 collection the short-lived merely well-received Kyro GPU family unit.

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Imagination Technologies has powered every iPhone, including the iPhone 6S/6S Plus. Image by Chipworks

It'due south not clear if Apple will proceed to support Imagination Technologies piece of work on the Vulkan API if information technology acquires the visitor. To date, Apple tree has shown little interest in Vulkan, preferring to focus instead on its own API, Metal. Imagination, in contrast, has talked upward its efforts for both Vulkan and existent-time ray tracing. Buying Imagination Technologies would also give Apple theoretical access to MIPS also every bit its ARM licenses, though the Cupertino company could likewise choose to go on just the GPU partitioning of Imagination and sell the rest of the company off.

A major shake-up in IP licensing could give ARM some boosted room to breathe or let smaller competitors like Vivante to snap upwardly some business as well. Apple could go on to operate the business firm as an IP licensing sectionalization, but it'due south more probable that it will have time to come designs private and build iPhone-specific capabilities. Short-term, we don't expect Apple's hardware to alter much (bold the deal goes through): Apple tree bought PA Semi in 2008 and launched their start CPU compages (equally opposed to an optimized SoC design) in 2012. It might not take that long to do a custom GPU architecture, but it would still take 12-18 months to curlicue a fundamentally new approach to graphics for future iDevices.