By deciding to license the Nvidia Kepler GPU architecture to third party manufacturers, the company has gone ahead and taken one more stride towards the booming smartphone and tablet. Its ARM-based Tegra SoC might be available on select products as of now, but this new announcement means further headway into the Android market for Nvidia.
Ready to spread its wings beyond PC, Nvidia Kepler will be accompanied by a number of other visual computing patents that the graphics giant has planned to make available to others. The said technology is currently used on GeForce, Quadro and Tesla GPUs, apart from the Tegra mobile processor of course. All those hoping to integrate it into their devices will be getting all the necessary designs, collateral and support needed to do so, the company has revealed.
Said to be one of the world most advanced GPU architectures, it features DX11, OpenGL 4.3 and GPGPU capabilities. This spells great news for all the mobile devices which will come equipped with it. The shift in strategies from the Santa Clara-headquartered tech giant has come mainly due to the recent decline in PC sales owing to the influx of advanced smartphones and tablets, explained the company through a blog post.
It also revealed that this aspect provides an opening for it to expand its business model. Third party licensing has been done by the manufacturer in the past, when the Sony PS3 was granted an earlier GPU core. However, the gaming console industry seems to have completely shied away from adopting its technologies this time around, with neither the Xbox One nor the PS4 – not even the Wii U – having gone for its architectures.
The impact of the company having decided to license its Kepler GPU technology to third party manufacturers is still to be seen, but the move has definitely given some food for thought to makers of Android devices.