“If there’s one thing that’s consistent about Apple’s smartphones and tablets, it’s that the Cupertino giant has always been obsessed with providing the best performance that it can,” Ashraf Eassa writes for Seeking Alpha. “This is why the company has steadily bolstered its chip design teams over the years, releasing successively more impressive chips with each iOS device. Over the last six years, Apple has built a world-class semiconductor operation and its efforts here are likely to continue to impress.”
“Thanks to a move to TSMC 20nm, an updated SoC micro-architecture, improved IP blocks all-around, and a large budget by virtue of the high margins and importance of the iPhone to Apple’s business, the iPhone 6 will be a performance monster, particularly in graphics,” Eassa writes. “Longer term, Apple will probably want greater control of the graphics IP in its SoCs and will either roll its own GPUs or it will push Imagination harder and – by virtue of being one of Imagination’s largest shareholders – could be granted some level of early access to the latest IPs. Indeed, it’s no surprise that Imagination has been touting an accelerated IP roadmap at its various investor conferences, and it was the first to ship a commercial implementation of PowerVR Series 6.”
Read more in the full article here.
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