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Discussions with Apple regarding license agreement

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Re: Discussions with Apple regarding license agreement

#141

Post by monocasa »

Aissen wrote: post #131
coderjames wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or PowerVR texture compression, which according to Anandtech is the canonical method for iOS development: "Because Apple’s SoCs have always used GPUs from the same vendor, certain vendor-specific features like PowerVR Texture Compress (PVRTC) are widely used in iOS app development" [0] http://www.anandtech.com/show/11243/apple-developing-custom-...

They could easily force change on the app for such change. Look at what they're doing regarding Bitcode and how quickly it might become the default.

It's orders of magnitude harder to statically check for at app submission time than Bitcode vs. Native is.

Re: Discussions with Apple regarding license agreement

#142

Post by ajross »

flamedoge wrote: post #135
ajross wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Those are compilers. What open source CPU is there?

Uh... the GPU drivers we're talking about in this subthread are precisely "compilers" for the shader architecture (and configuration generators for the texture units and framebuffer layouts, etc...). In fact for architectures other than NVIDIA's the hardware-facing part of the linux driver already is open source.

The only secrets left are the bits responsible for turning OpenGL (or Vulkan now, I guess) calls into programs to run on the GPU.

Re: Discussions with Apple regarding license agreement

#143

Post by wycx »

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

Along with the other things they sold that don't seem so smart now. Like abandoning the low power x86 Geode processor in 2009. Interestingly, according to this article [1] they sold Adreno for only $65 million, less than IT is making from Apple each year in royalties.

https://www.xda-developers.com/a-look-back-at-amds-history-a...

Re: Discussions with Apple regarding license agreement

#144

Post by monocasa »

KSS42 wrote: post #124
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.

AMD sold their mobile division to Qualcomm; Adreno is just Radeon with the letters rearranged. They may not be able to get involved in mobile.

Re: Discussions with Apple regarding license agreement

#147

Post by kevindqc »

monocasa wrote: post #139
AlphaSite wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Source? That's a huge architectural change for them.

http://www.realworldtech.com/tile-based-rasterization-nvidia...

Re: Discussions with Apple regarding license agreement

#148

Post by shmolyneaux »

masklinn wrote: post #13
pavlov wrote: post #5

This is interesting: "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." Could Apple not be using someone else's IP, for example from NVidia or AMD?

AMD does not license to third parties, neither does Intel. Options (ignoring acquisition and design from scratch) are: * NVidia's Tegra graphics cores, possibly (not clear whether they block-license let alone architecture-license to third parties) * ARM's Mali, definitely licensable * Broadcom's VideoCore, possibly * Vivante, definitely licensable * Qualcomm's Adreno, formerly Imageon, unlikely Also note that at leas…

AMD does license to third parties, at least for x86:

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/227059-amd-announces-n...

Re: Discussions with Apple regarding license agreement

#149

Post by kevindqc »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #47
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.

I imagine the new GPU will support the same Metal API. As this is probably something that Apple has been working on for a while now I'd assume that Metal was designed with this new GPU architecture in mind. How much of those tools would need to be updated to a new GPU assuming the current API was specifically written for it ?

But even if the API is the same, it doesn't mean it will have the same performance? Something that was not a problem with previous GPUs could become a bottleneck and vice-versa? And since you need to support both GPUs or else you drop older iPhone support, it might get annoying.

I don't really know if that would be the case though, I don't know anything about GPUs.

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