On Tuesday Nvidia announced that it would make its GPU technology widely available to device manufacturers looking to license it, starting with the company's current Kepler architecture. This build is found in Nvidia's GeForce 600-series GPUs and now may end up in graphics cores from other manufacturers, too.
Nvidia said Kepler's improved performance and efficiency, as well as its Direct3D 11, OpenGL 4.3, and GPGPU capabilities would endear device makers to its licensees. In turn, licensees will receive designs, collateral, and support from the company.
Citing a slowing PC market, Nvidia's post suggested that it wants to take advantage of the mobile boom. “[I]t’s not practical to build silicon or systems to address every part of the expanding market. Adopting a new business approach will allow us to address the universe of devices,” the company wrote.
Licensing designs isn't a totally new tack for Nvidia—it acknowledged that Sony's PS3 used a license for an earlier GPU core, and it said it makes over $250 million annually from Intel for “visual computing patents”—but today's post did seem to suggest the company will be more aggressive in this sphere of business than it has been previously. In particular, Nvidia seemed to take pains to call out mobile devices.
“The swirling universe of new computing devices provides new opportunities to license our GPU core or visual computing portfolio,” the company wrote. With “more than 5,500 patents issued and pending” in Nvidia's name, its no small wonder that there are plenty of opportunities out there.
Interestingly, any mobile chips built using Nvidia's GPU technology would probably be competing with the company's own home-grown Tegra chips. Nvidia's next Tegra, codenamed "Logan," will also use a GPU based on the Kepler architecture.
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