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Apple’s iPad tablet and the Google-backed Google TV project are both powered by the same graphics processing unit created by a fables UK-based chip designer called Imagination. Manufactured by Logitech and Sony, Google TVs run an Intel-manufactured system-on-a-chip that contains Imagination’s PowerVR graphics core, Fortune reported. The commonly shared graphics architecture allows both Google and Intel to progress their respective platforms, Fortune explained:
If Apple wants to compete with GoogleTV/Intel/Sony/Logitech on its AppleTV, it can certainly use its new A4 SoC architecture to do so. Similarly, if Intel wants to create portable Android video devices on this platform, it can certainly be done.
As you know, the 1GHz A4 chip that Apple designed and commissioned Samsung to manufacture also features the PowerVR SGX535 GPU core also found on the iPhone 3GS and third-generation iPod touch. In addition, Apple’s chip packs in ARM’s Cortex-A8 CPU core, the I/O, the memory controller, and 512MB RAM. The same chip is rumored to power the upcoming iPhone HD, the notion corroborated by a recent chip teardown analysis.
What’s especially interesting here is the fact that both Apple and Intel hold a stake in Imagination. Apple, also a licensee of Imagination’s technology, currently holds a 9.5 percent interest stake in the British chip designer versus an Intel-controlled 16.02 percent of total issued voting rights. The Californian firm originally secured a 3.6 percent stake in Imagination in December 2008, the move that industry watchers viewed at the time as an elegant way to secure graphics technology for iPhones. Intel countered Apple’s move just 48 hours later, buying a 3.04 percent stake in Imagination.
