Imagination Technologies Share Discussion Threads

[mister md] 19/4/2017 10:01

Perhaps. It probably wouldnt do the shareprice any favours - looking weak again.

[orkney] 19/4/2017 09:12

Hence, why don't they just get rid of their now paltry holding. If anything, it would signify their 'divorce' from IMG; rather like Intel did a couple of years back.

[mister md] 19/4/2017 07:24

Orkney, with Apple making quarterly profits of 8 billion dollars I'm not sure they are too concerned about their 20m stake in IMG...

[orkney] 18/4/2017 15:54

I wonder when Apple will sell their 8% img holding!?

[rbalakrishnan] 18/4/2017 11:20

The dreaded question - is there a real possibility that the anniversary Iphone 8 may not include PowerVR?

[rob_evans] 17/4/2017 12:15

borromini1 > "Sounds like good timing for IMG to go all out for the Android market."

A couple of facts:

1. IMG's current income depends heavily on Apple - a 'collapse' in iPhone sales in China would be bad news for IMG, on top of the recent very bad news for IMG.

2. In case you hadn't noticed, most Android phones and tablets use Mali GPUs. So for IMG to make any significant headway they will have to persuade companies to switch from ARM to IMG, which would seem a big ask when IMG have just lost their biggest customer and questions are being raised about their long term future.

[borromini1] 17/4/2017 08:25

Apple iPhone sales collapse in China according to Kanter Worldpanel sales survey for February 2017. Apple iPhone sales in the largest smart phone market in the world collapsed by 41% to 13.2% market share in the 3 months ending Feb 2017 from 22% in Feb 2016. Sounds like good timing for IMG to go all out for the Android market.

[borromini1] 16/4/2017 11:16

Pottsey - Workstations are high value but low volume, so AMD could benefit more from defending their position against Nvidia than IMG will benefit by way of royalty revenue, the value to IMG is as a proving ground for IMG Ray Tracing (RT) within the workstations that game developers and all varieties of designers who have to think in 3D, and already work with software based ray tracing, work with day in day out. Workstations have the advantage of relatively unlimited power budget and area so RT can be scaled to demonstrate it's maximum capability and benefit.

Quote from my post 6/3/17 26805 concerning last AGM 6/9/16 "RT going into workstations first. When (explicitly) asked are we going to be competing against AMD and Nvidia AH (CEO Andrew Heath) stated we will only be competing with one of them (sic). In later conversation DH (VP Marketing Comms David Harold) confirmed this as the first time this had been publicly stated" Interpretation of this to mean AMD will likely licence RT seems logical. As to when and whether it turns into fact our only option is to wait and keep asking questions.

You are correct in that no further confirmation of RT licencing or royalty volumes seems to have surfaced.

Pottsey you also correctly predicted that AMD CTO Mark Papermaster would not use the IMG Tech Summit keynote to announce an RT licence, has anyone got a transcript of his talk and Q&A and does it even broach the subject of RT?

Given the Apple problem, it would be very much appreciated if we could have a detailed update on RT from IMG at their earliest convenience, though they are no doubt very busy at the moment.

It would be nice to know that the Furian version of RT is on the horizon.

[pottsey] 16/4/2017 09:29

“Pottsey - Ray Tracing (RT) guidance from last AGM, first licences due Q4 2017 or Q1 2018, royalties start from Q4 2019. Refer to my post 6/3/17 26805. First targets are workstations and games consoles........R21;

The problem is workstations are low volume and would require AMD or NVidia to take a licence which is extremely unlikely. RT has failed to get wins in all the major games consoles that have worthwhile volume. The next major consoles that RT can get into are not due to well after 2020 going by current cycle timelines. I can see RT getting in some VR headsets but those are tiny volume. I just don’t see RT having the impact it was meant to within the timeframe it was meant to.

There is always the small hope Apple fail on there own GPU like Samsung did and stick with us.

[borromini1] 16/4/2017 00:24

Pottsey - Ray Tracing (RT) guidance from last AGM, first licences due Q4 2017 or Q1 2018, royalties start from Q4 2019. Refer to my post 6/3/17 26805. First targets are workstations and games consoles. Rob's preference for consoles has the added advantage of being the vendor's decision whereas optional extras on graphics cards could be more down to the individual end user's purchasing decision, not that pull through can't be a considerable influence on vendors especially if early adopters' enthusiasm spreads like wildfire and RT becomes a must have feature for everyone else.

Confirming Rob's view is the following from IMG H1 Results 6/12/16 ...
"The Group’s ray tracing technology is under evaluation by tier 1 players in the gaming market and Imagination is continuing to develop its ecosystem with notable games publishers and middleware/engine providers."

Apple may well cherry pick and choose to licence and pay royalties for RT even if they don't use their Furian licence in new products. The IMG 3 April RNS stated "Apple asserted that it has been working on a separate, independent graphics design in order to control its products and will be reducing (sic) its future reliance on Imagination’s technology" Reducing is not the same as eliminating.

As regards Ray Tracing in mobiles this is possible but, as quote from our four legged friend's post below indicates, it requires an allocation from a tightly constrained power budget or increased power efficiency probably via node size reduction to the point that surplus power budget becomes available or RT moves sufficiently up the priority list without other compelling features interceding. When I explicitly asked at the last AGM if RT would initially go into the iPad or iPad Pro the answer was no.

Should be interesting to see what happens with 10nm FinFET, no doubt temperature statistics are part of the paid for commercial benchmarking services.

Sheep_Herder 17/8/16 25852 quote ...
"I think you guys should forget any hope of RT in mobiles any time soon. Have a think - what happens to the phones when the review sites run the latest benchmark on them? In terms of heat that is. That should tell you all you need to know about RT in mobile.

In consoles, that's different. Or in any form factor that has a higher power budget. Or the film industry I guess but then you don't need the hybrid approach for that I doubt."

Not sure about the last sentence in the quote, I would subscribe to the vision that we all need RT it's just a matter of when can we get it?

[borromini1] 15/4/2017 23:19

Is Imagination running out of money ? Update 1.

Thanks to Bukko for link to IMG blog by Ben Har-Even, quote below from just before the conclusion ...
Within the smart TV market, we estimate that PowerVR Series8XE licensees comprise around 70 per cent of current designs and we can expect to see products with this GPU architecture appearing throughout 2018.

So how big is the global smart TV market going to be in 2018 and 2019?
2018 240m
2019 260m. Ref. www.statista.com
So royalty bearing sales will start from the beginning of 2018.
This might rise to 50% to 70% or 130m to 182m units for 2019.
Assuming an average royalty rate of 3 to 7 cents.
Royalty revenue per annum = 3.9m to 12.7m dollars = 3.1m to 10.2m GBP at FX rate 1.25 USD to 1 GBP
(Anyone with more accurate figures?)

PowerVR 8XE was first announced in February 2016 as having already been licensed by multiple lead customers for mobile/tablets, 4K TVs, OTT set-top boxes, automotive and wearables.

To have secured 70% of the smart TV market within 12 to 15 months of a new IP product launch seems very impressive indeed, lets hope this scale of success is a taste of things to come.

Edited 16/4/17

[orkney] 15/4/2017 20:01

Perhaps they will play hardball on pricing. However, if img do go under then the same hardballer's will end up paying much higher licence & royalty fees to the likes of Arm. This is Softbank's policy, overwhelm the opposition & then raise charges to increase profits.
The likes of Samsung, Mediatek, etc.. must surely recognise this probable scenario; hence a takeover bid is more likely to materialise as a result of this mess.

[rob_evans] 15/4/2017 19:25

My view has been, and remains, that RT is best suited for consoles. The advantages of RT are best suited for games developers, and the memory, power, and cost of RT could be best accommodated by a console.

The problem is new console designs are few and far between, so IMG may have to stagger on for some time before any console win.

The question is whether they will be able to do so, post Apple. Any potential licensee for Furian will play hardball on pricing if they have any sense whatsoever, now they know that IMG will be desperate for new design wins.

[pottsey] 14/4/2017 19:44

Thanks. I am more hopeful for Furian then Rogue and expect/hope Furian will win back some of the higher volume mid range we lost. What worries me more is how RT is looking. Being a closed system Apple was always the best bet for that. The only other area I could see RT fitting in is VR/AR but those are too low volume to be worth while.

[rob_evans] 14/4/2017 13:07

Pottsey > "The problem was Rogue under delivered as both Rob and myself tried to warn you all it would. Just look at the amount of company's that dropped Rogue for Mali even the ones who didn't use ARM CPU's."

Yes, Rogue was a massive disappointment compared to what we hoped for.

Have you seen this article Pottsey -

It discusses a number of improvements Furian has over Rogue. Reading between the lines gives some indication of why Rogue didn't perform as well as IMG hoped it would.

[netcurtains] 14/4/2017 10:30

sorry - old figures. I have no idea about this stock. Apologies.

[andyr42] 14/4/2017 09:19

This will go back up. Technology like IMG's just doesn't disappear overnight. Someone will buy it I am sure.

[rob_evans] 13/4/2017 12:17

csmwssk12hu > "Anyone thought SoftBank paid 24bn for Arm, 500m on this is a bargain?"

Have you considered that ARM has been a tremendously successful company with a great future, whereas IMG has been a disastrously bad one that is facing collapse?

[csmwssk12hu] 13/4/2017 11:45

Anyone thought SoftBank paid 24bn for Arm, 500m on this is a bargain? IMHO dyor

[bukko] 13/4/2017 09:48

Perhaps the following might inform the discussion:

[jamesrowe] 13/4/2017 09:35

Thank you md