The iPhone's Graphics are Set to Get Even Better [IPhone]

Before your eyes glaze over with boredom at the news that Imagination Technologies has acquired Caustic Graphics, listen to this first: Imagination, as you know, makes the iPhone's GPU. Caustic is famed for brilliant 3D graphics. See the connection?

The acquisition was announced yesterday, as part of a $27 million deal for Imagination Technologies, which should see even more innovative work come out of the UK-based company, of which Apple owns a 9.5 per cent stake. Their PR Director David Harold told TechRadar 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."

Going on, he mentioned that "ray tracing is a key additional technology that traditionally has been regarded as the exclusive domain of specialised markets and non real-time applications. We will change that." Ray tracing is a technique used by Caustic in creating highly-realistic images using reflection, refraction and scattering effects.

"We would not have acquired this [Caustic] technology if we did not believe we could get it into handsets".

Imagination will also be using Caustic's graphics in the TV and game console areas, but it's definitely the cellphone potential which has got most people excited. [Reuters and TechRadar]