Linux Asahi GPU work finds similarities from Apple's GPU to PowerVR

And this is surprising why ?

Copying/pasting of information/code etc is unfortunately rampant across all industries nowadays, not that that makes it right, but just saying :D...
 
Apple (Imagination Technologies signed a new multi-year, multi-lease agreement under which Apple has access to a wider range of Imagination’s intellectual property in exchange for license fees on January 2, 2020.[1] The re-kindling of the partnership between the two companies comes as Apple's licences to Imagination graphics IP expire at the end of 2019.[2])
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerVR
 
Given the on-again/off-again partnership there, this isn't surprising. IIRC, they settled in a way that Apple has access to that tech... but I didn't follow the story that closely.
 
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And this is surprising why ?

Copying/pasting of information/code etc is unfortunately rampant across all industries nowadays, not that that makes it right, but just saying :D...
This is surprising to a lot of Apple Silicon fans. Of course this shouldn't be surprising to the rest of us.
 
And a solid 15 years of product launches they need to keep varying degrees of compatibility with.
Yeah, earlier on the Asahi devs were talking about how similar the M1 chips were to the iphone chips, iirc. They also remarked on how the various iphone iterations were more or less compatible, at least at the lower levels.
 
And this is surprising why ?

Copying/pasting of information/code etc is unfortunately rampant across all industries nowadays, not that that makes it right, but just saying :D...


exactly, real world tech found the exact same thing when they did a deep-dive on the layout

https://www.realworldtech.com/apple-custom-gpu/

and they continued to pay imagination licensing fees after a court case:

https://www.theregister.com/2020/01/02/imagination_apple_ip_deal/

sounds like copy-and-paste to me; really, the only thing they invented from-scratch was tthe cpu in the a6!
 
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In other news: water is wet.

No kidding there are similarities; as folks have explained, Apple started out using PowerVR tech and has been expanding/iterating on it for a long time. If you're an Apple Silicon "fan," as Duke put it, you're well aware of this.

Besides, what exactly is the problem here? This isn't a dirty secret; it doesn't have any practical implications for users. All that matters is the functional performance, and in that respect Apple is doing just fine with M1 and M2.
 
In other news: water is wet.

No kidding there are similarities; as folks have explained, Apple started out using PowerVR tech and has been expanding/iterating on it for a long time. If you're an Apple Silicon "fan," as Duke put it, you're well aware of this.

Besides, what exactly is the problem here? This isn't a dirty secret; it doesn't have any practical implications for users. All that matters is the functional performance, and in that respect Apple is doing just fine with M1 and M2.
I'm surprised the Asahi crew seems to have just realized this.
 
I'm surprised the Asahi crew seems to have just realized this.
I doubt that's the case. They brought up the M2 branch from nothing to "mostly functional" in 12 hrs according to the blog post, so I'm certain they knew it was at least a possibility. Someone probably said "they have Imagination IP and have used it in the past, lets try banging on these registers and see if it reacts the same".
 
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