Next iPhone’s Graphics To Get Even More Realistic Thanks To Imagination’s Caustic Acquisition

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The iPhone’s impressive GPU is supplied by Imagination Technologies, and it’s already powerful enough to run advanced 3D graphics engines like the Unreal 3 Engine. Unbelievably, though, it’s slated to get a lot better, after it was announced that Imagination has just acquired Caustic Graphics, a company with even more impressive 3D graphics technology to boast of.

Announced yesterday, the deal is worth $27 million. Apple’s PR Director David Harold says that “”this acquisition opens up the potential for highly photorealistic imagery to reach new real-time applications and markets, including consumer, not possible previously, via its integration with POWERVR, which is the de facto standard for mobile and embedded graphics.”

How? Ray tracing. Caustic Graphics is known for their ray tracing tech, which allows them to use ultra-real images using reflection, refraction and scattering. And Imagination means to bring ray tracing to the next iPhone.

“We would not have acquired this [Caustic] technology if we did not believe we could get it into handsets,” Harold said.

[via Gizmodo]

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