Apple’s proprietary graphics technology will already break Intel’s integrated graphics

When Apple announced that it was abandoning its long-standing processor supplier Intel for proprietary ARM processors, the company also announced that they would be developing proprietary graphics components. The technology is based on the home-made graphics parts in the company’s A-processors that are found in products such as Iphone and Ipad. Several years of fine-tuning the company’s own graphics technology seem to be bearing fruit, as Apple’s solution is already said to perform better than Intel’s current integrated graphics.

The information comes from The China Times (via Macrumors) which reports on Apple’s first custom graphics part, which goes by the code name “Lifuka”. The self-built graphics part will reportedly take place in an Imac model that will be launched during the second half of 2021 and manufactured on TSMC’s 5-nanometer technology. The report states that “Lifuka” already offers better performance per watt than the integrated graphics parts from Intel used in Mac computers today.

According to relevant sources, Apple’s self-developed GPU is progressing smoothly. The research and development code is Lifuka. Like the upcoming A14X processor, it is produced using TSMC’s 5nm process. Apple has designed a series of processors for Mac personal computers. The new GPU will provide better performance per watt and higher computing performance. It has tile-based deferred rendering technology that allows application developers to write more powerful professional application software and game software.

It is worth noting that the data refers to a comparison between Apple’s graphics technology and Intel’s current integrated circuits, which during the autumn of 2020 will take the step up to the Xe architecture. It thus remains to be seen how “Lifuka” stands against Intel’s lineup in the autumn of 2021, when both companies have time to refine their respective solutions until then.

Apple’s technical solution differs from how graphics technology from Intel, AMD and Nvidia handles graphics rendering. Apple uses a variant of what is called tile-based deferred rendering (TBDR), where individual graphic elements are calculated before being sent to the graphic memory. AMD, Nvidia and Intel use something called instead Immediate Mode Rendering (IMR), where rendering of entire images is sent to the graphics memory.

The advantage of the TBDR solution Apple uses is that it makes more efficient use of the resources the graphics circuit is equipped with, which is important as the technology has so far been used in mobile devices where the capacity for heat development and technical complexity is limited. As the graphics part is integrated together with the processor part and primary memory, lower latency is also achieved compared to a conventional dedicated graphics card. However, TBDR rendering can also be used on these graphics card families.

Apple’s Metal 2 interface also allows developers to use the hardware more efficiently, in a kind of middle ground between more controlling high-level interfaces such as DirectX 11 and low-level variants such as DirectX 12 / Vulkan. Since Apple’s ARM processors, at least initially, do not support dedicated graphics cards from AMD or Nvidia, the likely scenario is that the company’s home-grown graphics technology will be introduced first in laptops and the Imac family, before eventually being introduced in more high-performance laptops and Mac Pro families.

Apple has not officially ruled out that the company’s ARM processors may support other companies’ graphics cards in the future, and AMD has delivered custom graphics parts to Apple in the past, so it remains to be seen if this collaboration will be passed on to Apple Silicon-equipped computers.

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