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Apple and PowerVR - what could it mean for the OSX86 community


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Just a rant...

 

Everyone knows that PowerVR mobile solutions are the best thing available if you want low consumption mobile 3D graphics.

But what about the desktop solutions?

 

6-7 years ago, there was a great PowerVR designed (and STM manufactured) GPU called Kyro... I was lucky enough to own Kyro II based graphic adapter (it was called Hercules 3D Prophet 4500) and in some games (for example UT) it ran better than 2 times more expensive nVidia GF 2 Ultra. Power consumption was great, and it could easily run without active cooling.

 

Now... fast forward to present times... Apple has bought a share in PowerVR mainly because guys from Cupertino need their mobile solutions... but i think that they are developing a desktop solution behind closed doors.

Just think about it... what would happen if PowerVR would develop a desktop GPU for Apple:

 

1. Apple would get an energy efficient chip that doesn't heat up in their laptops, mac minis and imacs... And because of nature of tile based rendering, they scale pretty well (much better than nVidia or ATI solutions in SLI or crossfire)... so they could just use multiple SGX cores (i've read that four cores would roughly be the equivalent of ATI 4850)

2. After some development, they would make a pretty powerful, OpenCL compliant chip that could be used in Mac Pros

3. Those GPUs would be Apple branded, and exclusive to Apple

4. OSX would support only Apple/PowerVR GPUs

5. OSX86 community would cease to exist, because no other chip (ATI or nVidia) would be supported

 

What do you think?

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