Fruit themed tech cult Apple has bought more than 3.6 percent of the U.K.-based Imagination Technologies Group. Imagination is know for its graphics technology blueprints that served, for example, as the foundation for Intel graphics chips in the past.

Last year, Apple secured a "multi-year, multi-use license" of Imagination's SGX/VXD graphics and video IP cores. The current iPhone and iPod touch generation use Imagination's fourth-generation PowerVR MBX Lite 3D accelerator.  While this was just an improved second-generation chip that ran inside Sega's Dreamcast gaming console it had a tile-based rendering system to enable gaming.

It is now looking like Apple wants Imagination's more powerful PowerVR SGX/VXD cores for future iPhones. If it does that, it will get OpenGL ES 2.0 compatibility and the Universal Scalable Shader Engine for hardware-accelerated, shader-based 3D graphics. It can also manage HD video on a mobile device with a power consumption comparable to the existing audio playback chips.