News · 10 Nov 2011 · MTW Editorial Team
Samsung’s jump to ARM’s Mali GPUs didn’t last long and will surely make some people (at ARM) a wee bit disappointed. Imagination Technologies have just announced that the Korean mobile giant has licensed their PowerVR SGX MP GPU IP for integration in upcoming mobile and consumer products. As you probably already know Samsung’s latest SoC (Exynos 42XX) used in its high-end smartphones uses a Mali 400 GPU unlike its previous once (the Hummingbird for example) that packed the venerable Power VR SGX540. The MP core IP licensed today is similar to what the PlayStation Vita will have and what Apple is also using in the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S.
This move may be related to Samsung wish to be a Windows 8 SoC provider because as of right now ARM’s current crop of GPUs (Mali) aren’t DirectX 9.3 compliant and lack support for DXTC texture compression (their upcoming T604 core should fix that but its debut is still unknown). full press release after the break:
Licenses high-performance multiprocessor graphics core to Samsung Electronics
Imagination Technologies Group plc (LSE: IMG; “Imagination”), a leader in System-on-Chip Intellectual Property (“SoC IP”), has signed a license agreement with Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (“Samsung”) for IP from Imagination’s PowerVR SGX MP multiprocessor graphics family.
Samsung will deploy Imagination’s technologies in multiple SoCs targeting mobile and consumer markets.
Under the terms of its licensing arrangements, Imagination receives licence fees and royalty revenues on SoCs incorporating Imagination’s IP.
source: IMGTec
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