
Imagination in Apple Licensing dispute selling businesses - ChuckMcM
https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/4/15542606/imagination-apple-licensing-dispute-selling-businesses
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ChuckMcM
I have been looking for signals of the 'great graphics unbundling' associated
with the expiration of the boatloads of patents that were issued in the late
90's with regard to graphics processing units.

There have been little things, like the ST Micro "ChromART" DMA unit that
implements what used to be a patented BitBlt operation[1], but wholesale
implementation of some of the things 3Dfx and nVidia were doing in the 90's
has yet to come to market. (those patents started expiring in 2015 and will
dump a huge amount of IP on the market by 2020.)

I'm hoping Apple is successful and that eventually all GPUs are open and
easily programmable without proprietary bits.

[1]
[https://www.google.com/patents/US4845656](https://www.google.com/patents/US4845656)

