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Qualcomm does the impossible, becomes a customer of Imagination Technologies

Categories: Hottest Hardware
By: , IntoMobile
Friday, December 16th, 2011 at 4:42 AM
qualcomm

Imagination Technologies is a British company that designs graphics processors that they then license out for companies to put on their chips. Take Apple’s iPad 2 for instance. The “Apple A5″ chip inside the iPad 2 is actually made from a combination of intellectual property gathered from multiple vendors, most notably ARM, who makes the Cortex A9 application processor, and Imagination Technologies, who makes the PowerVR SGX 543MP2 graphics processor. Qualcomm is different. They do everything themselves. They license ARM’s architecture so that their chips can run code written for ARM processors, in much the same way that AMD makes chips based on the x86 architecture that Intel invented. Speaking about AMD, they sold their handset division to Qualcomm back in 2009. Qualcomm then used AMD’s intellectual property and talented engineers to design the graphics processors for their chips that today you recognize under the Adreno brand name.

So just to recap, Qualcomm does everything in house, meanwhile Imagination Technologies and ARM lets anyone with enough money use their processors. That technically means they’re competitors, which is why yesterday’s news that Qualcomm started licensing Imagination Technologies’ intellectual property came as such as shock. To be clear, Qualcomm isn’t licensing the PowerVR graphics processor that’s inside Apple’s chips, and many other companies’ chips, instead they’re using “the display IP from its PowerVR portfolio”.

We wish we could tell you what the hell that means, but everyone is pretty tight lipped at the moment. An Imagination Technologies spokesman said: “We’re delighted to have Qualcomm’s business and hope it leads to something more.” It’s far too early to speculate as to whether or not Qualcomm is having trouble keeping up with the competition in the performance department, but EE Times, the folks who broke the story, say Qualcomm needs to step up their game in time for the the first ARM based Windows 8 tablets, due to hit the market in the second half of next year.

[Via: The Verge]

About The Author

Stefan Constantinescu

Stefan Constantinescu (@WhatTheBit on Twitter) has loved technology since as far back as he can remember. It started with computers, but in the past few years his passion has turned to mobile devices. As a mobile phone enthusiast who lives and breathes devices that connect to the internet, he knows he is not alone with this radical fascination of all things wireless. He is strongly opinionated and enjoys a good debate so leave comments in his posts and he’ll get back to you! Stefan began blogging as a hobby in the fall of 2006 and joined IntoMobile in the summer of 2007. Later he got a job at Nokia in March 2008, but as of June 2009 he has rejoined the IntoMobile team. He is currently based out of Helsinki, Finland.

  • Kristian

    A small correction: Neither ARM or IT manufactures processors. What they sell is designs – the manufacturing must be done by another party (either by the buyer or third party like TSMC). 

  • Kristian

    A small correction: Neither ARM or IT manufactures processors. What they sell is designs – the manufacturing must be done by another party (either by the buyer or third party like TSMC). 

  • http://www.intomobile.com/ Stefan Constantinescu

    In my article I use the term processor as in processor design, and the word chip as in a physical system on chip that has multiple processors onboard.