Imagination Technologies Share Discussion Threads

[richardc77] 26/10/2016 15:18

Slightly off topic, but my personal opinion is it will be a long long time before the driverless car market is big volume. The practicalities/legalities and mass demand from consumers are barriers.

[nearlythere] 26/10/2016 15:18

This rumour keeps coming back

[hammerd2] 26/10/2016 13:44

And while it's still IMG IP, Apple customisation seems to be able to get extra performance too. It's the same basic scenario. Apple don't seem to be developing their own CPU IP and don't seem to be doing it with GPU IP either, they are simply using what they need to use and nothing else. Apple are trimming out the bits they don't need from the basic IP IMG put out to meet the requirements of the whole market. That makes it more efficient. Apple can also change the layout of the normal IP blocks to better meet their specific requirements for each individual use scenario for their SoCs.

If Apple are now doing more of this themselves to better enable themselves to hit their internal targets then that's not a massive problem and if anything makes it easier for IMG to compete harder for other business with other customers, as much as there are still other potential customers out there.

We will not know more without a whistleblower until our 2017 accounts come out if there have been any major financial implications.

[nearlythere] 26/10/2016 12:27

H2
We just do not know. I would have assumed that img management would have allocated as many engineering resources as required to customise the apples GPu core, there may be parts of the shader providing flexibility not required by apple metal.
I think the apple cpu in good indication of just how much apple can optimise. While it is still arms CPu ip, apple customisation seem to able to get extra performance.

[hammerd2] 26/10/2016 12:13

Having a big engineering team doesn't = developing own IP.

I am not for one moment suggesting Apple wouldn't or couldn't do it as they are something of a behemoth but it is as, if not more, likely that another more logical conclusion can be reached.

Vis, Apple wanted to take more of the physical implementation side of the chip (not IP) design inhouse allowing them to more fully customise not only the different parts of the IP blocks, but also, for example, the numbers of shaders, (IIRC the GPU in the iPhone 6 never existed anywhere else as it was a 76xx ?? and wasn't ever listed as an available IP from IMG).

This has the advantage for Apple that they can work t otheir own schedules, requirements, etc and more heavily tweak any IP they buy from IMG, can move the blocks about, can customise the interconnects to match more fully than off the shelf IP the connections to the rest of the SoC, etc.

For IMG this scenario would mean there would probably be a fair bit of engineering talent spare. I am absolutely certain there were more than 25 engineers working full time on only Apple contracts. Those 25 could easily have been lost to Apple without noticing if the engineering work they were on was solely for Apple, plus any extra spare resource would now be available for other jobs. If they can find anything to work on - there don't seem to be too many other major customers at the moment, although MediaTek claimed a few years ago they went with MALI as ARM were more able to supply the full support they wanted so you never know.

We will not really know anything more til our next FY results are out so I think I'm done thinking on it til next year.

[hammerd2] 26/10/2016 11:21

"It would be more concerning if apples GPu team were able to replace the shader themselves without img design team". I don't think there's much proof the shader has been anything more than modified/heavily modified. Apple seem to have modified, and integrated the modified, shader cores rather than design from scratch shaders that are IMG IP compatible.

It raises the question of how on earth they would be able to use 'their own' shader cores that wouldn't infringe IMG IP ! The shader core is a pretty major part of the block diagram. How can it be separated and the GPU still work ? It's a fundamental part surely.

Who does the engineering is another matter - connected of course - Apple using their own teams has all the advantages the article notes but doesn't imply using their own IP.

We are an IP licensing company remember :-)

[nearlythere] 26/10/2016 10:04

While apple version of img GPu ip has always been customised for their needs, the question is who actual did these changes. As apple is img biggest customer it is possible that img modified or replaced the shaders for apple and that most of apples involvement was on the driver to hardware interface,

It would be more concerning if apples GPu team were able to replace the shader themselves without img design team, which to me would be far more than tinkering and show that apple is putting together a very able inhouse gpu team.

[colsmith] 26/10/2016 09:29

I would hve thought the fiscal issue for APPLE is the market for smart phones - seems it is generally falling (industry overall). Not surprsing as the innovation for real useful features seems to have flattended. Doing there own GPU should I guess be seen in terms of what facilties such a beast would give them over the competition; I would have thought such an initiative would be noise against the need for innovation unless they are pursuing a completely different market - such as self drive vehicles, which I think they are doing something with - that is big market and would need GPU support; and maybe some tweaking with the GPU is neeeded for that market.

[hammerd2] 26/10/2016 09:20

That's certainly what was understood and generally accepted James and would allow Apple to do the customisation they have done with the IP without necessarily having 'designed' their own GPU parts from scratch. It would also explain why income levels haven't dropped despite the increased engineering activity Apple have been undertaking themselves.

Conclusions are therefore either that the article is simply wrong or they've gone back too far with their conclusions and the Apple designed bits are more recent and the financial effects have yet to flow through to our results.

If it's the latter then there should be a markedly lower number for Apple revenue this FY - unless the allegedly Apple designed parts are still yet to surface of course. If Apple revenues stay pretty steady then the article would appear to just be wrong. How on earth we'll be able to work it out with the FX rate all over the shop heaven only knows ! Anything less than £65-70m from Apple would, I guess, suggest the article is right or at least pointing in the right direction.

[jamesrowe] 26/10/2016 08:43

I thought that Apple paid IMG a more or less constant amount per year for an architectural licence covering any graphics IP that they want to use?? A bit vague but I am sure that this has been discussed on here before.

[hammerd2] 25/10/2016 22:03

Decent results from Apple tonight with the promise of year on year growth coming in the next quarter. Always good to read for us dual holders.

[hammerd2] 25/10/2016 21:45

"Not mentioned in the article is the major impact this move must already make to the royalties Apple pay to IMG. If they have replaced IMG's programmable shader cores with their own design, then it follows the resulting royalties paid to IMG will be correspondingly less then if the entire design was IMG's."

You would certainly think so, but the article talks about this being the case for the iPhones - and presumably iPads too - released since September 2014 (from iPhone 6) so if true and accurate then at least some part of that lowering should be evident.

However last year (2016 accounts), despite lower iPhone and iPad sales than in the previous year Apple revenue was £60.7m (pre-BREXIT Sterling slump) which is up on 2015 accounts figure of £59.7m which included the far higher sales volumes from iPhone 6 launch sales and you'd assume licensing would also be lower if fewer parts of the IP were being selected (bought) so something isn't quite squaring the circle. It seems that Apple are still paying for the whole shebang, and actually then some on top !

Health warning - the layout of the article wasn't to my liking so I may easily have misread some of it. Luckily someone will rapidly point out any errors I may have made I am sure.

[taffy100] 25/10/2016 20:58

prpl Foundation creates IoT Trust Continuum chaired by Intercede

[rob_evans] 25/10/2016 17:30

Thanks for that link primitive.

From the article:

"However based on a variety of public evidence, it is clear that Apple has replaced the programmable shader cores with their own more efficient and higher performance design. To take advantage of the custom shader cores, Apple also developed their own driver and compiler to emit code for its architecture. The overall result is that while Apple’s GPU shares some heritage with PowerVR, it is a unique and proprietary design"

and

"Apple’s custom GPU creates an implicit alternative to licensing IP from Imagination in the future. The company has already built a GPU design team and a driver team that together implemented a large portion of the A8, A9 and A10 GPUs. If Imagination Technologies was acquired, or fell behind technically, Apple could simply design its own fixed-function hardware to replace the remaining PowerVR IP"

and

"On the other hand, Apple could continue to customize more and more of their GPU – eventually designing out Imagination Technologies. Hiring 25 employees away from Imagination suggests that Apple may be leaning towards the third option. Ultimately Apple will have to decide whether they can do a better job on their own, but so far the company seems to be excellent at developing world-class expertise in new areas."


Not mentioned in the article is the major impact this move must already make to the royalties Apple pay to IMG. If they have replaced IMG's programmable shader cores with their own design, then it follows the resulting royalties paid to IMG will be correspondingly less then if the entire design was IMG's.

[hammerd2] 24/10/2016 17:23

I'll have a glass or two of what that Fool's been drinking !

[theyak] 24/10/2016 16:05

Hoping there won't be another pointless divi debate!
THEYAK

[hammerd2] 24/10/2016 15:15

Maybe it was a coincidence but Blackrock added a whole 110k shares to their short on 19th Oct. By the close of play on 20th Oct we were 29p lower. Good timing. One has to hope their move (0.04% of shares) didn't cause the drop on its own or we're really in the doo doo.

OT - if you have almost 3 hours free of an evening watch Hyper Normalisation on iPlayer. Yikes. If The Big Short didn't get you thinking about what is happening, how little control we really have over decisions and life-events and how corrupted systems are, this will.

[cotswoldsparky] 22/10/2016 10:49

"In a relatively short time we've taken a system built to resist destruction by nuclear weapons and made it vulnerable to toasters"

I hope IMG start promoting Omnishield big-time after this...

CS

[hammerd2] 22/10/2016 09:54

Quite some chatter about the sales volumes of the iPhone 7 could be behind it, after all talk of lower sales of the 6S resulted in a slide at the time.

Or it could be that someone's pored over the entrails again.

Or the hammerd2 factor has kicked in. For once :-)

Tuesday is of some importance to anyone interested in actual business fundamentals given Apple are still, and will be for the foreseeable, our most important customer

[sweenoid] 22/10/2016 08:26

Some of those engineers probably got fed up at the Apple and migrated back to KL ;-)
S