For low power mode I would expect them to remain separate.
Synthesizing ASICs and FPGA designs from Verilog/VHDL/insertnewhighlevellanguagehere may be close to software, but I guarantee you that creating high end production chips with such strict efficiency constraints guarantees that you need to do heavy simulations, and most importantly, has massive verification (it is 10/7nm after all....) efforts.
That single line at the end of the document means that any buying or selling of Apple or Imagination shares could be considered insider trading.
Is this legal black magic to void trades that have hammered their stock price?
It's fucking bullshit. Luckily the Chinese gets this and wipes their collective arses of what is essentially a western fiction.
https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/chapter2_105.html
Prior to that, you had companies like IBM, who were famous for using their hardware patent library as a club to get competitors to sign licensing agreements.
In fact it is the major reason GPU vendors give for not having an open source driver. I have spoken to the CTO (Jem Davies) of ARM about the GPU drivers and open sourcing them more than once. And every time I've gotten the reply: "No, we can't, it opens us up to IP infringement suits."
Full disclosure: I used to work in the ARM GPU division.
There is always legal risk in open sourcing code. Infact there is legal risk from pretty much any action whatsoever. Good, responsible companies don't let that become a barrier to doing the right thing.
If ARM really cared, GPU stuff would be open source. The fact it isn't pretty strong indication they don't. Don't just accept it when lawyers say no.
After all AMD and Intel both have full open source graphics stacks, and the world hasnt exploded yet.
Should also be noted, keeping stuff closed source is not very strong protection against reverse engineering, if it was DRM would actually work, and it never really has, dispite decades of effort. So its doubtful that keeping stuff closed is much protection against patent lawsuits.
Put simply, the GPU vendors do not actually own all the rights to their own driver software. AMD had a project to improve the state of their drivers on Linux, but the approach they took was to try and rewrite and open source the code implementing the public API to the closed binary blobs inside the drivers, to make it easier to maintain the stability of the drivers across kernel versions. Open sourcing the blobs wasn't possible for AMD because the code in them just doesn't belong to AMD.
>Don't just accept it when lawyers say no.
Which lawyers though? It's not necessarily ARM lawyers that are the problem. You'd need to get agreement from the dozens of patent holders of various bits of the technology, most of whom are unknown as their identities are confidential.
Despite what Stallman would have you believe, open sourcing your own code is neither right nor wrong. It's just a choice.
There are millions of registered patents and the chances that your clean-slate ideas were already invented and patented are really high.
Open sourcing means exposing patent infringements to the public (even if you are not really aware that you are infringing anything), which means that you need to invest on a strong legal team in order to go through all possible patents and to deal with all possible litigations you might face.
In order words, open source requires much more than ideals, it also requires butt loads of money.
Easy for you to say, harder when millions to hundreds of millions are at stake.
There was another big smoking gun recently, at linaros conference in budapest. Here finally some truth was spoken at 9:40 into the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPjSm_98rgo&t=580s
Like IMG, ARM is not selling just the hardware design, it is also selling driver development services. When the driver is open source, and competitive, everyone can sell such services, and there's a lot less of those services to sell. ARM has revenue depending on this.
This is one good thing about the IMG revenue coming from Apple, it was mostly licensing costs, not services. If IMG had been selling services on top, their revenue would've been reduced by 75%+ instead of "just" ~50%.
How about this for a litmus test. Present a problem to new 4 year college graduates that they haven't heard the answer before. If x% of come back with a solution, that solution is obvious enough to be consider invalidating the patent.
Or let validity be judged by independent groups of practioners who weigh the novelty and also the impediment of a patent to world progress.
As those who've written patents already know, they are not even decent scientific or technical documentation. They're mostly a bunch of jargon and phrases meant to tic off legal checkboxes. No one would ever write a document that way if the sole purpose was to explain something.
The story from last year was that Apple's price for IMG acquisition weren't high enough, and Apple asked if they could buy ONLY the graphics portion. Which resulted in a NO from IMG.
Compared to ARM, some estimate Apple is paying $10M for the ISA and roughly $0.1 for each Ax SoC. So that is ~30M per year, ( There will be other cost for processor other then Ax, such as the Motion Processor etc ) Compared to paying roughly $80M USD for the Graphics alone, which Apple doesn't even use their design, nor their services ( Software Drivers ) they provide. So what likely happen was Apple wanted to pay far less, ( $20M? ), but their New CEO wanted them to pay for more.
My guess is that in the end Img will relent and license whatever Apple wanted for a price. If not, I am not sure how Apple will deal with old games that wont work with their new GPU which does support PVRTC.
Perhaps ARM would license their GPU patents to Apple and provide some IP protection.
Apple could also license patents from AMD. They don't compete directly.
It's high time to reform the corrupted and broken patent system. Yes, I know, like having non-corrupted politicians, this is not going to happen.
Check out what the share price did: https://www.google.com.au/search?q=LSE%3A+IMG (down 60% - looks even more dramatic in the 5-day view)
It seems their closed source drivers are full of bugs and incomplete functionality
> Imagination believes that it would be extremely challenging to design a brand new GPU architecture from basics without infringing its intellectual property rights.
Well Apple has a ~$75m per year incentive to do just that, so I Imagination better hope they've really got a stranglehold on all the necessary IP.
Can't believe they would try to use this as an argument in their own favour. It's either (yet another) proof that the patent system is broken, or that their patent are as invalid as can be.
Why did you assume the patents would be invalid? It is possible that they hold patents fundamental to the field so every other GPU make has to (cross-)license the tech. There is also no obligation for FRAND licensing on GPUs, to my knowledge.
However, it sounds like ImgTec is considering going full-on troll, so they won't need access to the other patents any more and can just sit under their bridge extorting tolls.
In the same report, they mention "There are no parties with whom the Group has contractual or other arrangements which are essential to the business of the Group except the contract with Apple Inc." All your eggs in one basket...
What's funny is in their financial risk assessment they focus on bullshit like investment shifts and outside IP threats, but gloss over the whole "what if that huge contract our company depends on happens to fall apart?"
The discussion between Apple and these guys must've really gone south for a nasty and desperate press release like this
That's what I found most intriguing. Why go public with this? (Especially with ongoing litigation)
Perhaps thats why they've refocused on IP, projects that are actually profitable.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-imagntn-tchnlgs-apple-idUS...
I don't know the reason, but I suppose it is the same reason why they decided to build their own gpu independently. Apple also already own(s/ed?) a part of Imagination Technologies.
I know that designing new GPU from scratch isn't an easy task - but is it THAT hard that they don't trust that one of the richest companies in the world is capable of doing it?
Now I guess Apple have judged they no longer need Imagination and patents or more likely they are able to navigate the legal consequences successfully and the likely fines are less than the savings made (or worth it for the control Apple gains).
This announcement has been a long time coming and isn't particularly surprising.
"Imagination believes that it would be extremely challenging to design a brand new GPU architecture from basics without infringing its intellectual property rights, accordingly Imagination does not accept Apple’s assertions."
Could Apple not be using someone else's IP, for example from NVidia or AMD?
Sounds like IMG has some fundamemtal IP that nVidia and AMD already license? They certainly have tied up their Tile-Based Deferred Rendering method, which never sounded that efficient to me (yet, Apple beats others graphically, so I probably don't appreciate it - maybe to do with cache efficiency?).
Apple, having understood this technique very well, might have thought of something even better.
They certainly would have to be pretty sure about their tech before sending this notification. Let's hope this... betrayal doesn't have the same fallout for customers as ~~google~~ maps did.
Apple actually has its own mobile GPU, built from scratch.
The Tile-Based Deferred Rendering GPU is an advantage from the GPU sharing the same memory with the GPU. On a normal desktop GPU you need to transfer huge amounts of data from the main CPU RAM to the Video Ram but on a mobile device, the CPU and the GPU sit both on the same memory system. This allows you to architecture your GPU in a different way.
Both ARM's Mali and Qualcomm's Adreno use Tile-Based Deferred Rendering.
Right now I have IT graphics tools to optimize 3D models for mobile devices (for example).
For us developers, it means optimizing to a different standard, while worrying about backward 'optimization compatibility'.
Plus we'll need new software tools for development on the new GPU.
I don't really know if that would be the case though, I don't know anything about GPUs.
I suspect as long as the graphics tools use Metal, it will be a quick transition.
The most logical reason would be that Apple has all it needs when it started building its own custom GPU many years ago and ImgTech has no patents it needs, which is entirely possible despite what ImgTech has said.
It is also entirely possible that Apple knows it has a few patents it is infringing and because on its last several years of experience, it would be cheaper to go through a lawsuit than to license. The reason? By going with the lawsuit, you're likely to get some of the patents invalided and royalties drop. It is possible it could go the other way, Apple paying more but it is extremely difficult to provide willful infringement when Apple can provide evidence of its own custom work that started before ImgTech was used in a clean room environment. But that's also easy to mitigate if ImgTech shows Apple hired the key personnel that worked on the same technology as the personnel should've known it was patented.
They won't want devs to miss out on hardware features because the Vulkan abstraction (by its nature, cross platform) is missing a feature.
So it may happen but I'd imagine only after a strong native toolkit exists already
This could make the company a pretty attractive acquisition target for a competitor?
When Apple started designing their unibody Macbooks, they needed to put a hole in the aluminium for the power LED. There was only one company in the world with the equipment to make those (multiple-of-nanometers-wide) holes.
Simple solution: Apple just bought the whole company. Voila, now Apple can cost-effectively produce those holes with one less renewable contract.
This one might get interesting...
---
EDIT: With the above being said, note this nearby comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14022436
Shortly after I joined the bosses decided that we were giving away too much money to the provider, so began talks for an acquisition. The provider was willing, but were asking for much more than we were offering, so the talks fell apart. As such we ended up building our own SMS gateway and switched all our traffic to that - exactly replicating their API, bugs and all, in less than a year.
As we were their main customer they ended up losing 70%+ of their revenue overnight when we switched. A couple of years later we bought them, for much less than we originally offered. Both companies at the time were private companies, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if the same happens here.
Apple just announced to the whole world that they are no longer interested in Imagnation Technologies' IP.
Announcing to the world that they were interested in Imagination Technologies after all (by acquiring them) would not only have made the prior announcement deceptive, but also (almost certainly) be considered market manipulation, given that the announcement caused a 60% drop in the stock's price.
"Because Apple’s SoCs have always used GPUs from the same vendor, certain vendor-specific features like PowerVR Texture Compress (PVRTC) are widely used in iOS app development"
[0] http://www.anandtech.com/show/11243/apple-developing-custom-...
Going with the lawsuits also mean a good chance some patents could get invalidated but if not, Apple could end up paying more in the long run. Given how much money they have, they may not care because they could just buy the company outright later.
* NVidia's Tegra graphics cores, possibly (not clear whether they block-license let alone architecture-license to third parties)
* ARM's Mali, definitely licensable
* Broadcom's VideoCore, possibly
* Vivante, definitely licensable
* Qualcomm's Adreno, formerly Imageon, unlikely
Also note that at least two dozen Imagination employees left for Apple between 2015 and 2016 http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/10/13/apple-poaching-gpu...
If the money was right, they would. Apple is not a random third party. Heck, it could buy AMD with a year's spare change.
I found an article claiming Intel is licensing AMD GPU technology [1]. If that's the case, would it be surprising to see Apple do the same?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_4
[1] https://seekingalpha.com/article/4042977-new-details-intels-...
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/227059-amd-announces-n...
* NVidia Tegra - possible
* ARM Mali - possible, but would not allow for much differentiation
* Qualcomm - has never sold its GPU IP seperatelyThey have been hiring a lot of graphics people and putting a team together.
And another thing that most people are not really aware: Apple had a lot of saying in the architectural and design decisions of Imagination's GPUs that ended up on their iPhones. A good part of the development actually happened at Apple's offices with Imagination people flying over.
So they know what they are doing, they are very well familiar with Imagination's GPU and they are more than capable of developing their own thing from scratch.
So that's why Imagination is insisting Apple can't not infringe: they know Apple won't have a cleanroom implementation not using the guys who've talked to Imagination.
Apple have a classic "they saw the copyrighted sourcecode" problem on their hands.
Long story short, nVidia lost. (https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/07/nvidia_and_samsung_...)
Samsung initially asked Qualcomm to deal with it since nVidia was really going after Qualcomm's Adreno GPU used in Samsung's smartphones in the US. Qualcomm instead decided to sit back and twiddle their thumbs as nVidia filed lawsuits against Samsung (and Qualcomm). Many predicted Samsung would end up like Apple vs Samsung considering Qualcomm's political clout and jury bias in the US, but the USITC quickly put an end to Qualcomm's misadventure. Samsung countersued and won, and Obama couldn't be bothered to reverse USITC's opinion, impending import ban, against Qualcomm.
If "in certain cases, the performance profile can be annoyingly different" is the outcome of a tectonic shift in the underlying hardware, it would be a significant and praise-worthy achievement.
"Apple currently holds more than 8 percent of the company."
http://www.theverge.com/2017/4/3/15158982/apple-iphone-gpu-i...
Also there were rumors about buyout talks last year, Apple commented that they "had some discussions with Imagination, but [did] not plan to make an offer for the company".
https://imagination-technologies-cloudfront-assets.s3.amazon...
There is no way in the foreseeable future that Nvidia will license their GPU designs to anybody.
The only way you'll see Nvidia IP on an Apple box is if Nvidia-made chips are in there, but Nvidia will require buy in on the rest of their software stack. But Apple won't want to cede that much control of their platform to Nvidia.
Nvidia already had tremendous reach, they don't need Apple.
Apple is extremely potent in protecting its technologies. There is no way they just let random ImgTech fly in and work on stuff with them without any agreements in advance. If this happened, ImgTech is going to be an easy billionaire by the end of the lawsuits they could do.
While I have no doubt that Apple works closely with their hardware partners by flying their engineers in to work on projects, I seriously doubt it was as simple as the OP made it sound.
That was the main reason why Apple went for Imagination instead of ARM or Qualcomm when it comes to mobile GPUs.
Imagination market cap has been falling hard in the latest years, so hard to the point that their only customer until now was Apple. They were desperate and they signed very risky deals in order to keep Apple as a customer.
And Apple is a complete control freak when it comes to their products, the idea of not being able to control the stuff they put on their products is unthinkable to them.
So Imagination signed a bunch of architectural deals (instead of purely implementation deals) because that was the real product Apple was looking for.
Don't let yourself be mistaken, this whole situation is far from a surprise to Imagination. They knew this day would come, they were just trying to cling on to the little market they could find until they found another deal in order to stay afloat.
What I meant by OP is that it is not as simple as flying their partners in and they start working together and then leave. Apple doesn't just do that without ensuring everything that happens stays in Apple only. So, flying ImgTech guys in and out does not mean ImgTech owns the patents to what they did at Apple want or the other way around, Apple can ensure they have the exclusive rights to it.
https://www.xda-developers.com/a-look-back-at-amds-history-a...
Patent violation doesn't have a mens rea component - either you violate the patent by doing exactly what is described in it, or you don't. If you change even one aspect, you're no longer violating the patent. I'm sure the people who wrote the original patented algorithms can easily think of ways to accomplish the same thing that don't violate it.
> UK regulations on stock markets are quite tough, publicly listed companies must share information that could impact the company as soon as they can.
[0] https://fail0verflow.com/blog/2016/console-hacking-2016-post...
Yes, same for the Xbox One, they both use APU customised by AMD.
This is an excuse, basically. They just don't want to because they fear revenue lost to compatible implementations.
The only secrets left are the bits responsible for turning OpenGL (or Vulkan now, I guess) calls into programs to run on the GPU.
But on a GPU, the whole interaction between the GPU and the application is abstracted by APIs like OpenGL and Vulkan and you own the driver, you own the compiler, you own the implementation and you own the architecture. So companies tend to protect their "secrets" since they own the whole product.
If you are asking me why is it different... Ask these patent trolls instead:
- https://techcrunch.com/2014/09/04/nvidia-sues-samsung-and-qu...
- http://www.anandtech.com/show/11101/amd-files-patent-complai...
It's not an excuse, it's the sad reality.
Just as on a GPU, the whole interaction between the CPU and the application is abstracted by APIs[1] like C and Python.
[1] Yeah, we don't call them APIs. But then we don't call GLSL a "API" either. They're all languages.
Especially when this crap is at the root of why virtually every embedded linux product has serious security flaws that never get fixed. You cant update the kernel if you cant update the drivers.
If you want to blame someone, starting by blaming the OEM.
Hyperbole much? 7 billion people on the planet, and "more than hundreds of millions" of them are waiting with bated breath for the "de-crappification of the embedded ARM driver ecosystem"?!?
I can think of AMD adopting and then ditching VLIW for one.