Wednesday, June 19th 2013
NVIDIA to License its GPU IP à la ARM and PowerVR
Although NVIDIA's Tegra line of SoCs are among the best performing there are on the market; the high-end SoC market is dominated by Qualcomm and Samsung. These chips are built from scratch by the companies, but the underlying CPU and GPU architectures are licensed from ARM, and the likes of Imagination Technologies, respectively. Imagination's PowerVR graphics cores make up over 80 percent of the embedded GPU market-share. There's a big change of plans at NVIDIA. The company is beginning to think that its expertise in GPU is better proliferated in the mobile SoC space not by waiting for Tegra to gain a foothold, but by licencing its GPU IP (intellectual property) to whoever is willing pay up, much in the same way ARM and Imagination do.
NVIDIA spokesperson David Shannon, in a recent blog post, wrote: "our next step is to license our GPU cores and visual computing patent portfolio to device manufacturers to serve the needs of a large piece of the market... We'll start by licensing the GPU core based on the NVIDIA Kepler architecture, the world's most advanced, most efficient GPU. Its DX11, OpenGL 4.3, and GPGPU capabilities, along with vastly superior performance and efficiency, create a new class of licensable GPU cores. Through our efforts designing Tegra into mobile devices, we've gained valuable experience designing for the smallest power envelopes. As a result, Kepler can operate in a half-watt power envelope, making it scalable from smartphones to supercomputers."
NVIDIA spokesperson David Shannon, in a recent blog post, wrote: "our next step is to license our GPU cores and visual computing patent portfolio to device manufacturers to serve the needs of a large piece of the market... We'll start by licensing the GPU core based on the NVIDIA Kepler architecture, the world's most advanced, most efficient GPU. Its DX11, OpenGL 4.3, and GPGPU capabilities, along with vastly superior performance and efficiency, create a new class of licensable GPU cores. Through our efforts designing Tegra into mobile devices, we've gained valuable experience designing for the smallest power envelopes. As a result, Kepler can operate in a half-watt power envelope, making it scalable from smartphones to supercomputers."
17 Comments on NVIDIA to License its GPU IP à la ARM and PowerVR
Personally I believe this is mostly about pushing CUDA in virtually every segment of the market, though. Time will tell. :)
They might be going this route because Qualcomm took most of the old Tegra 3 customers and Nvidia shot themselves in the foot by being late to the game with Wayne & Grey.
Tegra division has been hemorrhaging for Nvidia the last few quaters. Re-coupe as much money as you can by selling off GPU IP.
Q4 down 14.6%
Q1 down 51%
And because its not going well, they decided to license their tech to other companys in a better position to them.. the ones that sells millions of products to "gays, nazis and pedophiles" users...
Soo.. in the end, your Beloved Nvidia company its doing whatever they can to to grab a piece of the "gays, nazis and pedophiles" community WICH BTW i can guarantee your mom/dad/sister and at least 98% of your family/relatives/friends belongs.. why?!?! they have an android smartphone :laugh:
oh !! btw, Android = linux wich is pretty much almost everything mobile this days :rolleyes:
and you?!?! what smartphone do you have?!?!
Someones been hit in the head one too many times
Under "About Nvidia" "Investors"
You can listen in to Financial webcast or download there PDFs for more info. The graph is from "First Quarter 2014 Results Presentation" page 7 of 11.
Someone been hit in the nuts too many times since you trying to show how bad Nvidia is doing.
Although I don't see how that pertains to this story. Nvidia by Licencing out GPU IP is just competing against itself in its current form or sees an unsustainable form in Tegra. Intel already uses Nvidia IP in its processors. In mobile phones Qualcomm has the old ATi IP it bought from AMD and its doing extremely well in the market most flagship mobile phones from vendors will be carring a Snapdragon 400-800. The Snapdragon 800 can go into a smartphone or tablet and do 4k video. Its gonna take a while for someone to catch up to Qualcomm.
Imagination Technologies will be Nvidia main competitor in mobile so its going to be all about pricing IP. You also have to wonder if they are selling the IP then will companies not purchase Tegra 4 Wayne or Grey chips and opt for the IP instead so it hurts them aswell.
Apple and Microsoft joined because they are doing bad. Extremely bad... NOT.
I'm asking this, because that graph is just about the worst thing you could use to back up your claims. :roll:
Lets not be ignorant that the bar next to it is GPU division and that's only moved downward no more then 6% for 2 quarters straight. Comparing 6% to 14% and 51%. Really ?
Guess its hard to see the graph next to it. :rolleyes: