“British chip designer Imagination Technologies said it signed a multi-use license agreement with Ambarella Inc to deploy Imagination’s technology in consumer electronics designs,” Purwa Naveen Raman reports for Reuters.
“Semiconductor firm Ambarella licenses Imagination’s high-performance graphics processor core, used in mobile and consumer electronics,” Raman reports. “Under the terms of its licensing arrangements, Imagination gets license fees and royalty revenue on shipment of system-on-chips incorporating its intellectual property.”
Raman reports, “Intel and Apple recently built large stakes in Imagination, with Intel now holding about 16 percent and the iPhone maker having 9.5 percent.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: Hmm… interesting. According to Ambarella’s website:
Ambarella is the technology leader in low power, high definition video compression and image processing semiconductors. Our products are helping to define a new class of hybrid digital cameras that bring consumers unmatched high definition video and digital still images together in one device.
To enable this fast-growing market, we have developed a fully integrated system-on-chip (SoC) based on the latest H.264 video compression standard. Our platform integrates every critical system function and offers our customers the most cost effective solution while delivering the complete high definition experience.
More info here.
Apple’s H.264 pages start here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Interesting indeed… and further underlines one of the reasons why Apple’s been fighting against having Ogg Theora as the one and only standard for the <video> tag in HTML5. There simply isn’t anything comparable to these kinds of H.264 hardware efforts, which makes a huge difference to performance and battery life.
(Theora is also technologically inferior to H.264, from what I’ve read – and we know how Apple doesn’t like to “settle” for mediocrity or lowest-common-denominator technology when there’s something much better available.)
Does anyone remember if Apple still owns shares of Akamai?
wow, if i could record 1080p at 60fps on an iphone… wow…
The next market for Apple to dominate is the consumer camcorder and point-and-shoot market. I am in the market for a digital camcorder but I doubt they will fuse with the iPod by the September 9 event. If Apple came out with an iPod Touch that records video at 30 fps and 720p I would be in line.
I smell something brewing.
Damn – do you wish Apple had signed up M$ and their WMV system?
Standard, shmandards
Gabriel,
Right you are about Theora. A crap codec if I ever read about one.
Cubert
There you are, been worried – haven’t heard from you since your big “first” on Sunday
Starting to wonder if a Dad caught you doing that “first” and perhaps a shotgun got involved later
Especially if a dinner didn’t happen before that “first”
If ya know what I mean ? …
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Later Dude, BC
@BC Kelly
Your post about cubert’s big “first” reminds me of that flick “40 year old virgin”. Not that there were any shotguns involved
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British Mac Head
Well just one shotgun….
“if i could record 1080p at 60fps on an iphone… wow…”
That’s coming I’m sure, but keep in mind that it would take an awful lot of storage.
-jcr