THE Imagination Technologies, Apple’s longtime partner in the supply of graphics chips for mobile devices, today announced a new feature that is expected to be very beneficial to future iPhones and iPads. I’m talking about PowerVR Furian, new version of the GPU architecture that will bring an appetizing jump in the graphics capacity of iGadgets – and potentially opens up the possibility that we will soon see a iDevice with 4K screen.
As a comparison, the current Rogue architecture, which equips devices such as the iPhones 7/7 Plus, is manufactured in a 28 nanometer process and has six cores running at 900MHz (with the possibility of making a overclock if any application needs it).
The new Furian architecture, only 7 nanometers, is capable of handling more cores running at an even higher speed, providing up to 35% gain in graphics performance compared to its predecessor and the ability to handle the notorious 4K resolution, as well as a jump to renderings at 120 frames per second.
Imagination chips have been equipping iOS devices since the introduction of the A4 processor in 2010, which was present on the iPhone 4, the fourth generation iPod touch, the second generation Apple TV and the original iPad. In a way, if we have someone other than Apple itself to thank for the absurd graphic developments in our beloved mobile devices over the years – even allowing these devices to reach processing levels close to those of consoles – it is the people of Imagination. It is not for nothing that there have even been rumors of a possible acquisition of it by Apple.
In time: before someone screams that a 4K screen on a smartphone is pure egoic-numeric masturbation and would only serve to deplete the (increasingly demanding and technologically static) poor batteries even more quickly, without bringing real benefits, let me remind you- I realize that these screens of very high resolution are a key point of one of the most promising technologies in the world today: virtual reality.
That is, if Apple has any intention of joining this game at some point – and numerous rumors point to this -, it will have to, at some point in the future, increase the resolution of its iPhones. Now, at least, nothing else prevents her from that.
[via Cult of Mac]
