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> The Apple official Metal Feature set document, All Apple A Series SoC including the latest A14 supports PVRTC, which stands for PowerVR Texture Compression.

> The Apple official Metal Feature set document, All Apple A Series SoC including the latest A14 supports PVRTC, which stands for PowerVR Texture Compression. I'm a little confused about why Apple can't support PVRTC after they stopped using PowerVR GPUs in their devices? PVRTC is a texture format. Its latest incarnation (PVRTC2) was introduced in 2013. Being able to load and render the texture format (whether efficiently or not) doesn't appear to require a licence. I used to use PVRTC assets when developing for the original iPod touch. I can imagine Apple retaining support for the format on new hardware for backwards compatibility reasons, such as being able to load and run apps with PVRTC resources It could very well be the case that PVRTC resources are no longer rendered using the same tech on modern Apple GPUs, and general performance improvements since 2013 make it a non-issue I don't think support for the PVRTC format implies that a PowerVR GPU design is in use or that "plenty of PowerVR tech" is present in modern Apple GPUs

monocasa 6y ago
Yeah, one of the issues here seems to be the lack of clarity as to how IMG is defining their IP. We could be at the point where the PVRTC patents are still valid, and Apple is paying those royalties, but there's no IMG RTL left in the GPU. We could also be at the place where Apple somehow got a perpetual license to IMG's RTL, and the bones of the Apple GPUs are still very very clearly IMG GPUs, but they feel like they can essientially write the company off.
- phire 6y ago
  Apple had to keep PVRTC support. Apps were shipping with PVRTC compressed textures and no fallbacks. What I find interesting is that PVRTC is the very last proprietary IMG format that Apple GPUs support. IMG introduced an improved PVRTC2 texture compression format in 2012. Yet no Apple device has ever exposed support for it. It looks like Apple was already thinking ahead back then and wanting to avoid supporting features that would require extra royalties.

monocasa 6y ago

Yeah, one of the issues here seems to be the lack of clarity as to how IMG is defining their IP. We could be at the point where the PVRTC patents are still valid, and Apple is paying those royalties, but there's no IMG RTL left in the GPU. We could also be at the place where Apple somehow got a perpetual license to IMG's RTL, and the bones of the Apple GPUs are still very very clearly IMG GPUs, but they feel like they can essientially write the company off.

phire 6y ago
Apple had to keep PVRTC support. Apps were shipping with PVRTC compressed textures and no fallbacks. What I find interesting is that PVRTC is the very last proprietary IMG format that Apple GPUs support. IMG introduced an improved PVRTC2 texture compression format in 2012. Yet no Apple device has ever exposed support for it. It looks like Apple was already thinking ahead back then and wanting to avoid supporting features that would require extra royalties.