Imagination Teams Up With MIPS to Take on ARM

Imagination Technologies, partly owned by Apple, has allied itself with MIPS Technologies to take on ARM, according to an EETimes report.

MIPS Technologies, Inc. and Imagination Technologies Ltd. will announce at the Embedded Systems Conference a non-exclusive marketing alliance geared to support chip designers using cores from both companies. The partnership is essentially a shot across the bow to a mutual competitor, ARM Ltd., which is developing its own graphics cores.

The deal is said to help Imagination get its PowerVR graphics cores into more wired systems where MIPS is strong. No intellectual property will be exchanged between companies; however, they plan to cooperate in supporting mutual customers.


"We are making sure our bus interconnect understands what the MIPS processor is doing, but we will not develop any RTL or drivers," said Tony King-Smith, vice president of marketing for Imagination.

Such co-development "could happen in the future, but for today this is purely a marketing alliance," said Art Swift, vice president of marketing for MIPS. "Our whole goal is to speed customer's time to market," he added.

Read More [via AppleInsider]