Imagination Technologies Announces PowerVR Series6XT Successor to Apple's A7 Chip Graphics

Imagination Technologies yesterday announced a new Series6XT generation of its PowerVR graphics architecture, representing a successor to the Series6 graphics used in Apple's A7 chip for the iPhone 5s, iPad Air, and Retina iPad mini.

Series6XT cores achieve up to a 50% performance increase on the latest industry standard benchmarks compared to equivalent configurations of previous generation cores. And with a significant increase in raw GFLOPS, Series6XT delivers the industry’s best performance in both GFLOPS/mm2 and GFLOPS/mW.

powervr_series6xt_roadmap
Apple currently uses Imagination's quad-core G6430 graphics in the A7, and the new Series6XT architecture brings a GX6450 model as a direct successor with potential for inclusion in future Apple A-series chips. But as noted by AnandTech, typical lead times on moving from licensing announcement to consumer availability suggest that these new graphics options may not appear in shipping chips until the latter half of 2015.

Series6XT is designed to be a moderate feature upgrade and power/performance optimization pass for Series6, integrating various innovations over the past couple of years to keep Imagination’s designs performance and feature competitive. Series6XT comes 2 years after Series6 licensing was announced at CES 2012, and roughly half a year after the first SoCs implementing Series6 GPUs were released to consumers.

Apple has used versions of PowerVR graphics throughout its history of iOS device chip development, leading all the way back to the original iPhone in 2007. In line with Apple's preference for Imagination's graphics offerings, Apple has been a leading investor in the graphics company for some time, making several purchases that pushed its ownership stake in Imagination to nearly 10% by mid-2009.

Popular Stories

election results 2024 live activities

Track 2024 U.S. Election Results Live on Your iPhone Lock Screen

Tuesday November 5, 2024 5:02 am PST by
Apple News is providing Live Activities support for the 2024 U.S. presidential election, allowing iPhone and iPad users to track electoral results in real time directly from their Lock Screen. The feature is rolling out for U.S. users over the course of Election Day, November 5, providing continuous updates of the electoral count. So if you're interested, you don't need to repeatedly check...
Generic iOS 18

Everything New in iOS 18.2 Beta 2

Monday November 4, 2024 12:34 pm PST by
Apple today seeded the second betas of upcoming iOS 18.2 and iPadOS 18.2 updates to developers, and Apple is continuing to refine the Apple Intelligence capabilities. There are also a handful of smaller features that are worth knowing about. Find My Find My has a new option to Share Item Location with an "airline or trusted person" that can help you locate something that you've misplaced....
ios 18 2 chatgpt plus

iOS 18.2 Beta 2 Shows Siri ChatGPT Limit, Offers 'Plus' Upgrade Option

Monday November 4, 2024 10:54 am PST by
With the second beta of iOS 18.2 that's available for developers today, Apple has further fleshed out the ChatGPT integration that's available with Siri. In the Settings app, there's now a section that shows the ChatGPT daily limit, and offers an option to upgrade to the paid ChatGPT Plus plan. The beta includes an Advanced Capabilities section with a "Daily Limit" reading that shows up as...
iCloud General Feature

Here's What's New in Apple's Updated iCloud Terms and Conditions Taking Effect Next Week

Friday September 13, 2024 7:39 am PDT by
Apple has started notifying users about an upcoming revision to its iCloud Terms and Conditions, which takes effect on Monday, September 16. We compared the text of the upcoming iCloud Terms and Conditions with the current U.S. version from September 18, 2023 and identified four key changes: "Apple ID" references have been changed to "Apple Account" throughout. iCloud users must agree to ...
ipads early bf deals

The Best Early Black Friday iPad Deals

Tuesday November 5, 2024 7:02 am PST by
Black Friday is still a few weeks away, but you can already find great prices on numerous iPads, including the 9th generation iPad, 10th generation iPad, iPad Air, and iPad mini. Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with some of these vendors. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running. Of course, there is a chance that ...
M4 M4 Pro vs M4 Max Feature

When to Expect New M4 MacBook Air, Mac Studio, and Mac Pro Models

Monday November 4, 2024 2:36 am PST by
Apple's fall 2024 Mac announcements have included new iMac, Mac mini, and MacBook Pro models, all of which debuted with variants of Apple's M4 chip. Apple intends to update the rest of its Mac lineup with M4 series processors over the next 12 months, which will make it the first time that Apple has used the same chip generation across all of its Macs. This means we can expect new M4...
New Things Your iPhone Can Do in iOS 18

10 New Things Your iPhone Can Do in iOS 18.2

Thursday October 31, 2024 9:42 am PDT by
Apple is set to release iOS 18.2 in December, bringing the second round of Apple Intelligence features to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 models. This update brings several major advancements to Apple's AI integration, including completely new image generation tools and a range of Visual Intelligence-based enhancements. There are a handful of new non-AI related feature controls incoming as well. ...

Top Rated Comments

Twimfy Avatar
141 months ago
PowerVR, sounds like a cheap 90s live action super hero series.

PowerVR has been around since the early 90's. Maybe 90's live action super hero series sound like a graphics chip.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
chrmjenkins Avatar
141 months ago
Series 6 was a major IP shift. 6XT is comparatively much more modest. I'd compare it to SGX540, 545, 554 being added to the series 5 line after the 535 already existed. Their times to market were shorter.

554 announce to market for Apple's Ipad was 22 months. Though unlikely, I wouldn't totally rule out an Apple A8 with a 6XT graphics IP block in it.

It's important to remember that Apple is around a 10% owner in ImgTec. If anyone has early IP access, it's them.

edit: Most importantly, G6430 announce to A7 inclusion: 15 months.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Tankmaze Avatar
141 months ago
50% increase from current chip huh ? well thats gonna help power the bigger display and new screen res for the iphone 6 :D
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)