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SEGA Licenses PowerVR Series 5?
18-Mar-2004, 09:04.43 Reporter : DaveBaumann
In a press release today Imagination Technologies have announced that SEGA have entered into a licensing agreement for “the development of next generation arcade systems based on new high-end PowerVR graphics technology”. Presently the only high end graphics technology that anyone is aware of from Img Tech’s PowerVR division is “PowerVR Series 5”.

PowerVR and SEGA have a history of graphics developments, and in each case this spanned technology that was used in both SEGA Arcade/Console platforms and in the PC market: First SEGA’s Dreamcast console and N@OMI Arcade Platform used PowerVR IP that was the basis for the PC's Neon 250 graphics card, and then SEGA and PowerVR developed the N@OMI2 platform that utilised multiple Neon 250 PowerVR chips along with ELAN, a geometry co-processor.

Series 5 has been under discussion for a long period of time now and, from the comments made by Img Tech’s own John Metcalfe, appears to be late. When we last spoke to PowerVR they made it clear that they want to remain an IP company and wouldn’t be interested in effectively becoming a fabless semicon and producing the Series 5 chip themselves without a licensee. Now that SEGA is on-board this may give the green light for finalising the chip implementation.

It widely expected, from the technology demonstrations that PowerVR released for the ShaderX2 book, that PowerVR series 5 will be a DirectX9 Shader 3.0 capable part.