In an announcement made today, Apple is believed to have struck a multi-year deal with Imagination Technologies to secure access to graphics and video cores.
The issued statement reveals that an “international electronics systems company” has signed a “multi-year, multi-use license” to allow an ‘unnamed’ company permission to utilize its current and future PowerVR graphics and video IP cores. While the mysterious “electronic system company” has been seen as both a “new partner” and not a chip maker themselves, speculation has pointed at Apple as being the company involved.
The agreement is claimed to be an extension of a deal that had been struck in July of 2007, at which time Imagination stated “the SoCs to be developed under this license agreement will be produced for this new partner by Imagination’s existing semiconductor partners and/or new chip manufacturing partners.” iPhones along with numerous other devices are currently using a version of Imagination’s PowerVR MBX graphics processor which provides support for certain features of OpenGL ES 1.1.
EETimes has connected this with apparent rumors that Apple has additionally inked a licensing deal with ARM, which also powers the iPhone. If speculations are correct, Apple could be leveraging themselves to introduce custom chipsets in the future based on current iPhone technologies.
[via MacRumors]
