by Ashraf Eassa, The Motley Fool
Jan 15th 2014 3:00PM
There is no question that Apple was one of the first mobile device vendors to really focus on graphics performance in its iOS devices. Further, Apple is well-known for pushing its Mac silicon supplier, Intel, pretty heavily on the development of high-performance integrated graphics. Apple knows that gaming is a major use case for mobile computing and as a result has typically optimized its system-on-chip products to offer great graphics performance.
The early days: using off-the-shelf Imagination IP
Imagination Technologies is well-known as a premier graphics IP vendor for many mobile system-on-chip products. Its graphics IP is very power efficient and offers rather excellent performance per unit of area. For years, Apple has employed graphics IP blocks designed by Imagination for its "A-series" system-on-chip products and, frankly, the results have been quite good.