X-bit labs

Intel Licenses Graphics Cores from Imagination Technologies.

Category: Video

by Anton Shilov

[ 10/04/2006 | 05:55 AM ]

Intel Corp. and Imagination Technologies Group have announced that they had signed yet another licensing agreement under which Intel Corp. will extends the licensing and deployment of Imagination Technologies’ graphics and video IP (intellectual property) cores for use with Intel’s platforms designed for certain segments. Additionally, Intel’s venture capital arm Intel Capital will invest into the technology developer.

Under the terms of its licensing arrangements Imagination receives license fees and royalty revenues on system-on-chip incorporating Imagination’s IP shipped by partners. Previously Intel licensed Imagination’s PowerVR MBX graphics core for integration into its chips for handhelds.

This time Intel and Imagination Technologies claim that Intel licenses PowerVR SGX family of cores that support 2D and 3D acceleration, OpenGL 2.0 as well as Microsoft DirectX Shader Mode 3.0. Additionally, PowerVR SGX can perform video/image decode and encode processing for a wide-range of standards, including MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264, WMV, and VC-1 for single and multiple streams from SD to HDTV formats.

The companies said that Intel “extends the licensing and deployment of its graphics and video IP cores” for use with Intel’s personal computers (PCs), “mobile computing and consumer architectures in certain segments”.

Intel’s most-recent Intel G965 chipsets integrate Intel X3000-series graphics cores that presumably feature unified shader architecture and can even theoretically comply with DirectX 10, according to alleged presentations from Intel itself. Given that Intel already owns a Shader Model 3.0-capable graphics core, it is unknown where it plans to use PowerVR SGX and whether it plans to use it fully, or just “borrow” certain technology from the core.

Imagination also announced an investment of £5.28 million ($9.93 million) in Imagination, subscribing for 6 000 000 new ordinary shares of Imagination’s share capital (representing 2.9% of issued share capital prior to such issue) at a price of 88 pence per share, being the closing price on the London Stock Exchange on Friday 29 September 2006.