TI going Rogue !

Fantastic announcement today from IMG:

Imagination Technologies Group plc (LSE: IMG; "Imagination"), a leader in System-on-Chip Intellectual Property ("SoC IP"), has signed multi-use license agreements with Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) for new Imagination Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) IP cores from both the latest POWERVR Series5XT  family and the next generation POWERVR Series6 family, codenamed 'Rogue'.

TI will deploy both POWERVR Series5XT and 'Rogue' technology, which are ideal for various multi-core configurations, in future OMAP™ platform-based SoC designs.  These SoC devices will target the highly-significant smartphone market, as well as the fast-emerging mobile computing and tablet markets supporting key operating systems, including Android and Windows on ARM.

The new agreements are the latest milestone in a collaborative relationship that spans five generations of the OMAP platform and enables the broad, growing ecosystem of developers supporting POWERVR and OMAP technology with advanced graphics applications. This ecosystem will continue to move forward as a result of this extended relationship, taking advantage of new levels of performance and new features such as OpenCL GP-GPU computing.

Remi El-Ouazzane, Vice President and General Manager, OMAP Platform Business Unit, TI says:

"The complex, multimedia-rich mobile computing environment calls for a sophisticated yet low-power processing architecture that balances every nuance from high performance to intense graphic capabilities. TI is pleased to once again deploy Imagination's market-leading POWERVR cores into the next generation of OMAP platforms which will be a key driving force in shaping such future applications like augmented reality, OpenCL and, of course, gaming in mobile phone and mobile computing spaces."

Hossein Yassaie, CEO, Imagination says:

"We are delighted that our well-established relationship will continue into the new generations of POWERVR and OMAP. This will make five generations during which the combined efforts of Imagination and TI are the cornerstone of innovation in mobile and embedded graphics.

"These agreements will help Imagination continue to deliver, across several key markets, outstanding POWERVR graphics technologies to device manufacturers, developers and consumers for years to come."

Under the terms of its licensing arrangements Imagination receives licence fees and royalty revenues on shipment of chips incorporating Imagination's IP.

END

TI management have said many times they are a 'technology-led' company, meaning they go for the best in class graphics (PowerVR), best ecosystem and engineering support. The results are that OMAP continues to do great business , fighting off newcomers like Nvidia (in the shape of Tegra) as well as remaining pretty much the only stand-alone application processor supplier (others have all gone the integrated apps/baseband route).

Various analysts had spread the rumour of ARM Mali winning over TI in the past year - so much for that.

Well done all at IMG.

(Do the right thing Qualcomm, you know it makes sense !)