Imagination shows possible next-gen iPhone GPU

Imagination on the heels of the iPhone 4 launch has unveiled what should be the graphics for future smartphones, possibly including Apple's. The SGX544 is intended as the most powerful graphics possible for very low-power devices and is fast enough to handle non-mobile video: it can hardware-accelerate all DirectX 9 and OpenGL 2.1 features on the desktop, such as high dynamic range, in addition to OpenGL ES 2.0 for mobile.

OpenCL gets native support as well and will provide aid to normally strained mobile processors by offloading some tasks. The part by itself has four graphics processing pipelines but can be combined in multi-core configurations up to as many as 16 cores, or 64 pipelines.

Ship dates aren't available for the SGX544, as it's dependent on when the manufacturers of phones, computers and tablets ship their products. Apple isn't likely to use it in the near term as it already uses the recent SGX535 in the iPad and likely the iPhone 4, but could implement the hardware as a future upgrade. It will also likely reach many other platforms; Imagination officially supports Android, Bada, MeeGo, webOS and other major platforms.

By Electronista Staff