Apple is interested in GPUs but it is interested in a lot of other things...
- on device speech recognition without significant power consumption
- on device image recognition
- etc

Given their desire for integration between HW/OS/APIs/Apps they might want closer CPU/GPU integration (requires custom GPU). While this is possible with the existing IMG relationship/IP, Apple probably doesn't/didn't want to share the fruits of it's labour(s) with anyone.



Maynard Handley (name99.delete@this.name99.org) on September 21, 2017 12:57 pm wrote:
> Duane (duane.delete@this.nomail.com) on September 21, 2017 11:19 am wrote:
> > Maynard Handley (name99.delete@this.name99.org) on September 20, 2017 7:57 pm wrote:
> > > All we know for sure is
> > > - IMG said Apple expects to be using no IMG IP in "new products" from say 2019 on.
> > > - Apple said their GPU is "Apple designed".
> > >
> > > There's a vast amount of flexibility in these two statements including, for example, Apple
> > > working with (and of course paying) IMG to build this year and next year's GPU.
> > > Remember all this stuff was decided three years ago, not six months ago when IMG made their announcement.
> > > For all we know three years ago Apple made a deal with IMG along the lines of "we want to design a GPU, are
> > > you interested in giving us a base design and help for two years?" and this year (and maybe next year) we
> > > will see the fruits of that partnership. And then, likely, we'll a new design built independently.
> > >
> > > At this stage I'd say you're likely in a better position for future conspiracy theories
> > > if you pivot from "Apple is stealing IMG IP without their permission" to "Apple stabbed
> > > IMG in the back after promising to marry them and love them forever and ever".
> >
> > For sure, Apple was working up to this point for years. And buying Imgtec's very close cooperation in
> > becoming more ambitious with Apple customizations to Imgtec's generic product. But Imgtec was definitely
> > in the dark about Apple then walking away entirely from the PVR design base and Imgtec IP.
> >
> > Imgtec always knew it was risky to have so much of its sales
> > dependent on just one customer. So it tried its
> > best to broaden its GPU market to other customers, and to expand into other IP areas like Mips cpu cores.
> > Those expansions were not enough; Apple's own hyper growth
> > made it still a critical dominant customer. Imgtec
> > was not worried about this internally -- it still seemed
> > a hypothetical problem. It seemed to us that Imgtec's
> > GPU designs would remain useful and economically attractive
> > to Apple. Our worries were about Arm and the general
> > industry. Imgtec continued to grow its GPU design and support
> > teams as fast as it could. And budgeted support
> > for other areas of the company out of the expected future growth in the GPU business.
> >
> > The day Apple revealed its ending of future contracts was a total shock to Imgtec with no lead-up.
>
> Do you have any comments or insight on my opinion that the primary reason for the split is that
> IMG was too invested in maintaining the GPU in its current form whereas Apple was interested in
> pushing way beyond that, for example to become a ray-tracing engine, or a generic throughput engine?
> And at some point there was no way to reconcile these two very different future directions.