Discussions with Apple regarding license agreement

In the GPU space it is impossible to not infringe on the IP of other vendors.<p>In fact it is the major reason GPU vendors give for not having an open source driver. I have spoken to the CTO (Jem Davies) of ARM about the GPU drivers and open sourcing them more than once. And every time I&#x27;ve gotten the reply: &quot;No, we can&#x27;t, it opens us up to IP infringement suits.&quot;<p>Full disclosure: I used to work in the ARM GPU division.

This is worded like this because ImgTech had a duty to disclose the notice they received from Apple.<p>Check out what the share price did: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com.au&#x2F;search?q=LSE%3A+IMG" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com.au&#x2F;search?q=LSE%3A+IMG</a> (down 60% - looks even more dramatic in the 5-day view)

I love how passive aggressive this is – it shifts from &quot;it&#x27;s a shame Apple is leaving&quot; to &quot;we could sue them over it&quot; pretty quickly towards the end. They imply it&#x27;s difficult to do, but also that it&#x27;s basically already complete... bizarre post to make public.

Time for ImgTech to go Linux&#x2F;Mesa friendly maybe? With an open source graphic stack they could become a great choice for projects like Raspberry Pi and other hw manifacturers: imagine a Vulkan-ready linux laptop that combines a rpi Compute module with the graphic potential from their GPUs... Hope they would be this brave.

&gt; Apple license fees and royalties, as disclosed in Imagination’s Annual Report, represented revenue of £60.7 million for the year ended 30 April 2016 and are expected to be approximately £65 million for the year ending 30 April 2017<p>&gt; Imagination believes that it would be extremely challenging to design a brand new GPU architecture from basics without infringing its intellectual property rights.<p>Well Apple has a ~$75m per year incentive to do just that, so I Imagination better hope they&#x27;ve really got a stranglehold on all the necessary IP.

That was a rather oddly worded press release. Much more defensive than I would have expected and quite arrogant towards the end. They make it sound as if no other company on earth could do what they do which as we know does not usually work out well for those who claim such a thing.

Judging by the tone used in that press release, they are in deep trouble. It does not even matter that £60.7 million is a small portion of their business. It could be the opposite of what happened to ARM when Apple decided to put their chips into Newton.

In my opinion, IT reaction is not wise. No matter if this comes after acquisition negotiation, or not, who is going to engage with IT in another long term partnership with such level of reaction? (not sure if it could be qualified as bullying or not)

This really isn&#x27;t news, it&#x27;s been known for years. A GPU team is based in Austin (knowing Apple, they likely have multiple).

This doesn&#x27;t come very surprising to me, as Apple has been in talks to acquire Imagination Technologies but has decided not to: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arstechnica.com&#x2F;apple&#x2F;2016&#x2F;03&#x2F;apple-acquire-imagination-powervr-gpu&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arstechnica.com&#x2F;apple&#x2F;2016&#x2F;03&#x2F;apple-acquire-imaginat...</a><p>I don&#x27;t know the reason, but I suppose it is the same reason why they decided to build their own gpu independently. Apple also already own(s&#x2F;ed?) a part of Imagination Technologies.

If Apple takes advantage of the depressed stock price to turn around and buy them, it would not be the first time.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;P.A._Semi" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;P.A._Semi</a>

iOS has always exposed patented imgtec texture formats to app developers. For backwards compatibility Apple will have to license the formats. At least until the relevant patents expire.

This is death throes of imgtec.. and as a side effect, put a fork in MIPS, it&#x27;s done.

&gt; Further, Imagination believes that it would be extremely challenging to design a brand new GPU architecture from basics without infringing its intellectual property rights, accordingly Imagination does not accept Apple’s assertions.<p>I know that designing new GPU from scratch isn&#x27;t an easy task - but is it THAT hard that they don&#x27;t trust that one of the richest companies in the world is capable of doing it?

This is interesting:<p><i>&quot;Imagination believes that it would be extremely challenging to design a brand new GPU architecture from basics without infringing its intellectual property rights, accordingly Imagination does not accept Apple’s assertions.&quot;</i><p>Could Apple not be using someone else&#x27;s IP, for example from NVidia or AMD?

&gt; Apple has not presented any evidence to substantiate its assertion that it will no longer require Imagination’s technology, without violating Imagination’s patents, intellectual property and confidential information.<p>Sounds like IMG has some fundamemtal IP that nVidia and AMD already license? They certainly have tied up their Tile-Based Deferred Rendering method, which never sounded that efficient to me (yet, Apple beats others graphically, so I probably don&#x27;t appreciate it - maybe to do with cache efficiency?).<p>Apple, having understood this technique very well, might have thought of something even better.<p>They certainly would have to be pretty sure about their tech before sending this notification. Let&#x27;s hope this... betrayal doesn&#x27;t have the same fallout for customers as ~~google~~ maps did.

Looks like Apple was nearly half their business&#x2F;revenue. The company&#x27;s market cap (after this morning&#x27;s crash) is only $275M, which is less than 5 years worth of royalties...

Keep in mind this is not just hardware but software related.<p>Right now I have IT graphics tools to optimize 3D models for mobile devices (for example).<p>For us developers, it means optimizing to a different standard, while worrying about backward &#x27;optimization compatibility&#x27;.<p>Plus we&#x27;ll need new software tools for development on the new GPU.

Looking the trend of doing everything in-house, it is not a surprising or unexpected move from Apple&#x27;s part.

Apple certainly has the resources to devote themselves to doing this right, if they really want to...

Silly question, why can&#x27;t Apple just buy the company outright.

I wonder how likely it is for Apple to support Vulkan on its hardware.

You know, for this news to come out along side the news from Imagination Technologies Group, you know they have to have something impressive already.

So when is apple going to merge cpu and gpu? Less than 5 years or more.

Does this mean cheaper iPhones?! (huehuehue)

Finally a software company makes a GPU.

&quot;This announcement contains inside information.&quot;<p>That single line at the end of the document means that any buying or selling of Apple or Imagination shares could be considered insider trading.<p>Is this legal black magic to void trades that have hammered their stock price?

I blame Microsoft for Busines&#x27; current infatuation with Imaginary Property. Human civilization was built on the sharing of ideas and the ability to run with your neighbor&#x27;s smart plan. Now you get sued for patent infringement and the neighbor expects to take rent for the rest of his natural life, and that of his undead estate, for what is almost always, at some level the synthesis of prior human endeavor and ingenuity.<p>It&#x27;s fucking bullshit. Luckily the Chinese gets this and wipes their collective arses of what is essentially a western fiction.