We typically don\u2019t write about what hardware vendors aren\u2019t going to be doing, but then most things hardware vendors don\u2019t do are internal and…<\/b>
We typically don\u2019t write about what hardware vendors aren\u2019t going to be doing, but then most things hardware vendors don\u2019t do are internal and never make it to the public eye. However when those things do make it to the public eye, then they are often a big deal, and today\u2019s press release from Imagination is especially so.
In a bombshell of a press release issued this morning , Imagination has announced that Apple has informed their long-time GPU partner that they will be winding down their use of Imagination\u2019s IP. Specifically, Apple expects that they will no longer be using Imagination\u2019s IP in 15 to 24 months. Furthermore the GPU design that replaces Imagination\u2019s designs will be, according to Imagination, \u201ca separate, independent graphics design.\u201d In other words, Apple is developing their own GPU, and when that is ready, they will be dropping Imagination\u2019s GPU designs entirely.
This alone would be big news, however the story doesn\u2019t stop there. As Apple\u2019s long-time GPU partner and the provider for the basis of all of Apple\u2019s SoCs going back to the very first iPhone, Imagination is also making a case to investors (and the public) that while Apple may be dropping Imagination\u2019s GPU designs for a custom design, that Apple can\u2019t develop a new GPU in isolation \u2013 that any GPU developed by the company would still infringe on some of Imagination\u2019s IP. As a result the company is continuing to sit down with Apple and discuss alternative licensing arrangements, with the intent of defending their IP rights. Put another way, while any Apple-developed GPU will contain a whole lot less of Imagination\u2019s IP than the current designs, Imagination believes that they will still have elements based on Imagination\u2019s IP, and as a result Apple would need to make lesser royalty payments to Imagination for devices using the new GPU.
From a consumer\/enthusiast perspective, the big change here is of course that Apple is going their own way in developing GPUs. It\u2019s no secret that the company has been stocking up on GPU engineers, and from a cost perspective money may as well be no object for the most valuable company in the world. However this is the first confirmation that Apple has been putting their significant resources towards the development of a new GPU. Previous to this, what little we knew of Apple\u2019s development process was that they were taking a sort of hybrid approach in GPU development, designing GPUs based on Imagination\u2019s core architecture, but increasingly divergent\/customized from Imagination\u2019s own designs. The resulting GPUs weren\u2019t just stock Imagination designs \u2013 and this is why we\u2019ve stopped naming them as such \u2013 but to the best of our knowledge, they also weren\u2019t new designs built from the ground up.
What\u2019s interesting about this, besides confirming something I\u2019ve long suspected (what else are you going to do with that many GPU engineers?), is that Apple\u2019s trajectory on the GPU side very closely follows their trajectory on the CPU side. In the case of Apple\u2019s CPUs, they first used more-or-less stock ARM CPU cores, started tweaking the layout with the A-series SoCs, began developing their own CPU core with Swift (A6), and then dropped the hammer with Cyclone (A7). On the GPU side the path is much the same; after tweaking Imagination\u2019s designs, Apple is now to the Swift portion of the program, developing their own GPU.
What this could amount to for Apple and their products could be immense, or it could be little more than a footnote in the history of Apple\u2019s SoC designs. Will Apple develop a conventional GPU design? Will they try for something more radical? Will they build bigger discrete GPUs for their Mac products? On all of this, only time will tell.
Apple A10 SoC Die Shot ( Courtesy TechInsights )
However, and these are words I may end up eating in 2018\/2019, I would be very surprised if an Apple-developed GPU has the same market-shattering impact that their Cyclone CPU did. In the GPU space some designs are stronger than others, but there is A) no \u201ccommon\u201d GPU design like there was with ARM Cortex CPUs, and B) there isn\u2019t an immediate and obvious problem with current GPUs that needs to be solved. What spurred the development of Cyclone and other Apple high-performance CPUs was that no one was making what Apple really wanted: an Intel Core-like CPU design for SoCs. Apple needed something bigger and more powerful than anyone else could offer, and they wanted to go in a direction that ARM was not by pursuing deep out-of-order execution and a wide issue width.
On the GPU side, however, GPUs are far more scalable. If Apple needs a more powerful GPU, Imagination\u2019s IP can scale from a single cluster up to 16, and the forthcoming Furian can go even higher. And to be clear, unlike CPUs, adding more cores\/clusters does help across the board, which is why NVIDIA is able to put the Pascal architecture in everything from a 250-watt card to an SoC. So whatever is driving Apple\u2019s decision, it\u2019s not just about raw performance.
What is still left on the table is efficiency \u2013 both area and power \u2013 and cost. Apple may be going this route because they believe they can develop a more efficient GPU internally than they can following Imagination\u2019s GPU architectures, which would be interesting to see as, to date, Imagination\u2019s Rogue designs have done very well inside of Apple\u2019s SoCs. Alternatively, Apple may just be tired of paying Imagination $75M+ a year in royalties, and wants to bring that spending in-house. But no matter what, all eyes will be on how Apple promotes their GPUs and their performance later this year.
Speaking of which, the timetable Imagination offers is quite interesting. According to Imaginations press release, they have told the company that they will no longer be using Imagination\u2019s IP in 15 to 24 months. As Imagination is an IP company, this is a critical distinction: this doesn\u2019t mean that Apple is going to launch their new GPU in 15 to 24 months, it\u2019s that they\u2019re going to be done using Imagination\u2019s IP within the next 2 years. Unfortunately this is where contract nuance matters; we don\u2019t know just how Apple pays Imagination. But presuming this is per-chip or per-device royalties, this would imply that Apple will be done making and\/or selling devices based on Imagination\u2019s GPU IP within 24 months.
And that, in turn, means that Apple\u2019s new GPU could be launching sooner rather than later. I hesitate to read too much into this because there are so many other variables at play, but the obvious question is what this means for the (presumed) A11 SoC in this fall\u2019s iPhone. Apple has tended to sell most of their SoCs for a few years \u2013 trickling down from iPhone and high-end iPad to their entry-level equivalents \u2013 so it could be that Apple needs to launch their new GPU in A11 in order to phase-out Imagination\u2019s GPUs in that 15 to 24 month window. On the other hand, Apple could go with Imagination in A11, and then just avoid doing trickle-down, using new SoC designs for entry-level devices instead. The only thing that\u2019s safe to say right now is that with this revelation, an Imagination GPU design is no longer a lock on A11 \u2013 anything is going to be possible.
But no matter what, this does make it very clear that Apple has passed on Imagination\u2019s next-generation Furian GPU architecture. Furian won\u2019t be ready in time for A11, and anything after that is guaranteed to be part of Apple\u2019s GPU transition. So Rogue will be the final Imagination GPU architecture that Apple uses.<\/p>\n