Comments Locked

23 Comments

Back to Article

  • iwod - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link

    I always wonder if buying MIPS was a bad move and if it will cost them.

    PowerVR could have been the ARM for GPU, but turns out most decide to buy the crap Mali from ARM instead. No idea what went wrong there. ( Price ? )

    I think MIPS is a losing battle, but it would be nice if something could be added to RISC-V.
  • mforce - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link

    I'm not sure why you're calling Mali crap. Not saying it's better than PoverVR but it's not a bad GPU and it's probably convenient for SOC manufacturers to buy everything from ARM.
    In the long term I don't see PoveVR doing too well since when you have ARM that has a GPU business too they have the power to take over the GPU market for ARM as well.
    Sometimes Mali may not be the best performing GPU but for most of the SOCs this isn't really an issue since they don't really need the best performing GPU ( nor do they use it ).
    Imagination already lost Intel for their PowerVR licensing and if they loose Apple too I don't see them doing particularly well. All that's left then are the Chinese SOC manufacturers which prefer low cost solutions for the GPU as Samsung always uses Mali and Qualcomm have their Adreno which kicks ass.
  • Wolfpup - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link

    Seems like Apple buying Imagination could be realistic if things got bad.

    I didn't realize Imagination had bought MIPS! So weird how this all works out.

    Does anyone but Samsung (and obviously Apple) use PowerVR? Obviously their stuff Apple uses is fantastic, but I can understand most companies just want easy, and pretty much just buy Qualcomm stuff even if it's not that great.
  • Dmcq - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link

    It does look like ARMv8 is displacing MIPS and PowerPC from their heartland in networking. I think MIPS was a good idea at the time but sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. Perhaps without it they would have concentrated on the graphics more but a bit of diversity is needed for getting over troubles, I can't see any other downsides.

    As to RISC-V I can see some attractions but I think it has come too late. For the high end you can see the multi-year effort needed by ARM and you need strong standards,you don't get that for free and by saying people can do their own extensions. At the low end IoT is rewriting the ground rules and you need to have a strong standards for security and rights management. In the middle ARM tried with extensibility for coprocessors years ago and gave it up, RISC-V might do something but really coprocessors are roll your own type things.

    Imagination have tried to develop MIPS for the IoT market and done work on security and communications. Why should someone spend money on RISC-V when they can get something from MIPS or ARM with better infrastructure support and at less overall cost? And if they spent their money on developing the infrastructure - which mostly would involve getting deals with other companies - all they'd produce is a market with a lower cost of entry for a competitor.
  • Samus - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link

    MIPS has an uphill battle just like Blackberry BBOS, Windows Phone and to some extent Firefox OS do: developers.

    This is why HP pulled the plug on WebOS so many years ago, they couldn't get developers away from Android and iOS. They made the wrong choice in most peoples opinions (including my own) because WebOS has a lot of superior UI elements, some of which finally made their way into Android and especially iOS. But without HP committing to developers, why would developers commit to them?

    I suspect this is the main issue MIPS is having. They aren't going to win developers over without commitment, which is basically required if they seek any desirable market share.

    Then there are the technical hurdles of MIPS architecture, which isn't entirely optimized for mobile applications. Most MIPS processors have seen their place in set-top boxes, routers/modems, and some enterprise appliances, not phones/tablets.
  • Alexvrb - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link

    That depends on platform. For example, if MS ported Windows 10 to MIPS, they can potentially recompile all the RunTime apps in the cloud. That doesn't help legacy programs, of course.

    A bigger obstacle is: Do any compelling MIPS SoCs exist that would make such an endeavor worthwhile? Are they substantially better and/or less expensive?
  • UrQuan3 - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link

    It does look like ImgTec MIPS is falling behind. When I got to benchmark a CI-20 (dual mips32r2), it proved to be about one-third the performance of a dual ARM A9 at about the same clockspeed. Then again, mips32r2 is *old*. It is way faster than the ARM11 which would have been top of the line when mips32r2 was new. There are several newer cores. The problem is, just like the several PowerVR cores newer than the SGX540, I can hardly find anyone that is using them.
  • gsvelto - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link

    ARM has been bundling Mali GPUs with low-end ARM cores for a while now, essentially providing the GPU part for free. This has essentially shut out competing GPUs in a wide range of SoCs.
  • colinisation - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link

    I would have guessed just looking at the marketing material from both companies that even though ARM GPUs tend to be lower down the performance pecking order. ARM have been prioritising power consumption and die area, I mean when I look at all SoC users bar Apple it seems to me they would either go Qualcomm with a bundled GPU or Mali to save die space. What I am trying to say is whilst there is only so much you can draw from marketing slides - it seems to me that Mali is simply targeting the bigger market.
  • jab701 - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link

    Don't be mistaken about MIPS, many modems/Routers/Networking stuff uses MIPS till and in particular companies are worried about an ARM monopoly. It would be bad for the mobile market (google was concerned about the ARM monopoly in particular). We would end up in a situation like Intel is in the PC market and it would be bad.

    The problem with MIPS is that many companies are using old cores and need to persuaded to use new cores (which can be licensed for more money).

    This is happening but it takes around 12-24 months to develop a new core (dependent if based on a previous design or from scratch) and then it takes 1-2 years before you see it shipping in designs to consumers.

    As for PowerVR it is a really nice design, the reason Mali is getting in product is that ARM were offering it for free if a company took a SoftIP CPU core at the same time. Not all companies were happy about this and the PowerVR stuff is designed to work with ARM, both companies sit on the HSA committees etc.

    We will just have to wait and see what is in the pipeline :)
  • jjj - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link

    If Synaptics gets sold to China, they should get Rick Bergman as CEO.
    He did a great job at Synaptics , he knows GPUs. he knows the mobile industry.
  • Speedfriend - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link

    What is most notable from the statement is the fact that a major customer (read Apple) saw lower than expected shipments last quarter and is expected to be the same this quarter. Having just been looking for a 6S for my girlfriend, and being able to get a 128gb one at a £150 discount, leads me to wonder just how much excess stock is out there.
  • jjj - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link

    JDI (display maker from Japan) just reported Q4 at 304,975 mil yen,mobile being 88.6% of the rev
    Q1 outlook is 190,160 mil yen so down some 37.6% sequentially and they blame it on Apple plus weakness in China and elsewhere. Apple really overordered parts in Q4.
    Apple actually reports channel inventory and in Q4 they increased it by 3.3million units so the total was about 21.7 million units as they exited Q4. Chances are they'll increase further to make results look better in Q1.
  • name99 - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link

    Do a Google search for "apple channel inventory". You'll see people making these claims for every quarter of the past five years. And yet none of these previous inventory excesses have ever led to the collapse in price that people seem to imagine they portend (probably because Apple is not a company of idiots and they know better than the tea-leaf readers what their expansion plans are, what large sales deals they've recently added with new carriers, etc etc).
  • Speedfriend - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link

    Except this statement is not an apple channel rumour, it is a confirmed fact in the financial statements of a sole source Apple supplier.

    And in case you haven't noticed, Apple's share price is down almost 40% from its highs, and has significantly under-performed Google and Microsoft over the past 12 months.
  • jjj - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link

    I never said the inventory will lead to lower prices.
    However, poor sales do lead to that and even to new products in Tim Cook's era.
    Apple has a lot more price cuts now than under Jobs, they almost never had any just a few years ago. Look at the ipad in the last few years or the Apple Watch this holiday season.The iphone 5c was a reaction to poor sales.
    As for Apple knowing better, apparently they don't. Reports from every major supplier showed that apple over-ordered in Q4 and , if you would be spending more time on acquiring information and less on insults, you would know that too.
  • name99 - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link

    Uhh, Apple had their best quarter ever last quarter, including record sales of iPhone...

    If you think Apple are giving iPhones away, might I politely suggest that you're severely deluded.
    I suspect what you are calling a "discount" is some carriers way of locking you into a contract; either way that discount does NOT come from Apple. Did you buy the phone at an Apple Store at that price...?
  • Speedfriend - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - link

    Apple only had their best quarter ever because of a 4m odd build in iPhone inventory, i.e. phones sold to carriers or retailers that were unable to be sold on to customers, the very reason why retailers are now discounting them to clear stocks. And the problem has continued into this quarter. Apple's reported sales are NOT sales to customers, except those through Apple stores.

    It was not a carrier discount, but a discount on a number of 6S models from a online phone retailer. Apple almost never discounts directly at an Apple store, but clearly offers incentives to other retailers to discount products which can be seen in the same discount appearing at the same time across stores.
  • webdoctors - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link

    Imagination named global slowdown in the semiconductor sector as well as global uncertainty about future trading prospects with China as the reasons for its financial problems.

    I hope I can blame all my failures on China and vague global slowdown fears. Intel just had an excellent quarter. China's growth is slowing down but its not negative. These guys are such jokers, why don't they blame Mexico or the exchange rate next quarter...
  • lmcd - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link

    Unlike Intel, a lot of ImgTec's sales scale off of the Chinese market. Many cheap SoCs use PowerVR graphics.
  • ABR - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link

    If they aren't rolling over in cash from iPhones something is wrong with their business model, or the market just isn't worth being in and they should refocus elsewhere.
  • RaduR - Thursday, February 11, 2016 - link

    It is so bad seeing this company go down ....

    They bought MIPS . They can make a competitive SOC. They may start with an awesome Mediplayer chipset or something like RPI but with great video performance or something.

    Donot forget their main client for MIPS is Qualcomm (!!) Atheros chipset present in many wifi routers use MIPS. This is great do not forget OpenWrt . There are developers for MIPS.

    BTW : Mediatek Helio X10 is using PowerVR. And yes their main client is Apple , just hope they are not losing it too.

    There was a time one could buy MIPS Android tablets (did not get much traction due to poor performance). Pair it with PowerVR great video and you have ARM alternative.
  • KK1028 - Sunday, February 14, 2016 - link

    I believe loosing Apple is just a matter of time. Apple may develop technology on their own. Also...for MIPS, their cost and Linux readyness are two big issue at ASIA. For middle and low-end segment, there is another competitor called "Andes Technology". Their CPU cores are doing very well in these two segment.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now