Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Discussions with Apple regarding license agreement

imgtec.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 201 posts

Re: Discussions with Apple regarding license agreement

#121

Post by mikhailt »

i336_ wrote: post #103
jordskott wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I can say with certainty that they are working on their own mobile GPU. They have been hiring a lot of graphics people and putting a team together. And another thing that most people are not really aware: Apple had a lot of saying in the architectural and design decisions of Imagination's GPUs that ended up on their iPhones. A good part of the development actually happened at Apple's offices with Imagination peop…

> Apple had a lot of saying in the architectural and design decisions of Imagination's GPUs that ended up on their iPhones. A good part of the development actually happened at Apple's offices with Imagination people flying over. So that's why Imagination is insisting Apple can't not infringe: they know Apple won't have a cleanroom implementation not using the guys who've talked to Imagination. Apple have a classic "t…

Not really, you seriously think Apple would just let ImgTech guys come in without lawyers and agreements and all of that sort? Apple has extensive experience in this area, they had ImgTech signed everything possible to protect Apple and to indemnify themselves. It is a risk that ImgTech also took by allowing Apple deeper into the development process. This isn't a one-way street here.

Apple is extremely potent in protecting its technologies. There is no way they just let random ImgTech fly in and work on stuff with them without any agreements in advance. If this happened, ImgTech is going to be an easy billionaire by the end of the lawsuits they could do.

While I have no doubt that Apple works closely with their hardware partners by flying their engineers in to work on projects, I seriously doubt it was as simple as the OP made it sound.

Re: Discussions with Apple regarding license agreement

#122

Post by ajross »

jordskott wrote: post #105
throwaway2048 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One should keep in mind, this is true of basicly any software whatsoever. It ALL infringes on patents, nearly without exception. There is always legal risk in open sourcing code. Infact there is legal risk from pretty much any action whatsoever. Good, responsible companies don't let that become a barrier to doing the right thing. If ARM really cared, GPU stuff would be open source. The fact it isn't pretty strong ind…

Open sourcing commercial products like hardware architecture and algorithms to the public is not exactly an easy thing to do. There are millions of registered patents and the chances that your clean-slate ideas were already invented and patented are really high. Open sourcing means exposing patent infringements to the public (even if you are not really aware that you are infringing anything), which means that you nee…

Why has open source been so successful on the CPU then? Branch prediction, say, is no less a patent minefield than GPU framebuffer tiling. Yet gcc and LLVM have no trouble shopping optimizers.

This is an excuse, basically. They just don't want to because they fear revenue lost to compatible implementations.

Re: Discussions with Apple regarding license agreement

#123

Post by mikhailt »

samfisher83 wrote: post #86
wycx wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMD did, however, sell Adreno to Qualcomm when money was tight after the ATI purchase.

And looking back it wasn't a smart decision. Adreno=Radeon

That may be true but unlike Adreno, you know Apple does not resell any of the patents to anyone else, so it always stay contained to Apple's products. Given how much revenue they can take, it's a very tempting business agreement.

Re: Discussions with Apple regarding license agreement

#124

Post by KSS42 »

robert_foss wrote: post #81

In the GPU space it is impossible to not infringe on the IP of other vendors. 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've gotten the reply: "No, we can't, it opens us up to IP infringement suits." Full disclosure: I used to work in the ARM GPU division…

I have heard that ARM has not been too pleased with IMG buying MIPS and competing directly with ARM.

Perhaps ARM would license their GPU patents to Apple and provide some IP protection.

Apple could also license patents from AMD. They don't compete directly.

Re: Discussions with Apple regarding license agreement

#125

Post by mikhailt »

Ultramax wrote: post #31

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

But it is Apple, one of rare "experienced" companies that can pull this off well (not perfect but enough). Apple has done two (or three?) complete CPU architecture changes and developers just had to recompile their app. Remember fat binaries from the PPC>Intel switch over?

I suspect as long as the graphics tools use Metal, it will be a quick transition.

Re: Discussions with Apple regarding license agreement

#126

Post by mikhailt »

golergka wrote: post #4

> 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. I know that designing new GPU from scratch isn't an easy task - but is it THAT hard that they don't trust that one of the richest companies in the world is capable of doing it?

There's also the possibility that Apple knows it infringes on certain patents but have done a risk assessment saying the lawsuits would be cheaper to go than to buy the company outright.

Going with the lawsuits also mean a good chance some patents could get invalidated but if not, Apple could end up paying more in the long run. Given how much money they have, they may not care because they could just buy the company outright later.

Re: Discussions with Apple regarding license agreement

#127

Post by AlphaSite »

jordskott wrote: post #74
hyperpallium wrote: post #72

> 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. 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…

I already made a comment about Apple's GPU here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14021814 Apple actually has its own mobile GPU, built from scratch. The Tile-Based Deferred Rendering GPU is an advantage from the GPU sharing the same memory with the GPU. On a normal desktop GPU you need to transfer huge amounts of data from the main CPU RAM to the Video Ram but on a mobile device, the CPU and the GPU sit both on…

Both Nvidia and AMD have already switched or are moving towards tile based rendered to reduce bandwidth (and hence energy) costs.

Re: Discussions with Apple regarding license agreement

#130

Post by WhitneyLand »

robert_foss wrote: post #81

In the GPU space it is impossible to not infringe on the IP of other vendors. 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've gotten the reply: "No, we can't, it opens us up to IP infringement suits." Full disclosure: I used to work in the ARM GPU division…

Can we ever fix this system and get a better balance of rewarding innovation vs. accepting patent abuse?

How about this for a litmus test. Present a problem to new 4 year college graduates that they haven't heard the answer before. If x% of come back with a solution, that solution is obvious enough to be consider invalidating the patent.

Or let validity be judged by independent groups of practioners who weigh the novelty and also the impediment of a patent to world progress.

As those who've written patents already know, they are not even decent scientific or technical documentation. They're mostly a bunch of jargon and phrases meant to tic off legal checkboxes. No one would ever write a document that way if the sole purpose was to explain something.

Post reply on HN