PowerVR Guns for AMD, Nvidia

Are there any signs Apple might put A-Series SoCs in its Macbooks or desktops?

The main issue are good and fast drivers for windows/iOS games. 

Imagination is an IP seller and its basic drivers are crap. No i don't see a future in Apple serious machines for these GPUs, sure not in the next few years. Anyway all depends on a brand new in house Apple cpu for these segments, because Intel has its own IP and drivers. Actual A serie is incredibly slow for a desktop or a laptop and available drivers are horrible in a modern game.

We'll see in a not so near future :)

Anyone else having trouble with PowerVR drivers?

Apple has been developing its own high performance 'Metal' drivers for PowerVR. I guess this is what they'll want to use where possible in the future.

Only if it decides to use an ARM CPU, too. Otherwise, I doubt it. These GPUs are too weak for Macbook Pros, and in the Macbook Air, Apple is not going to pay twice for both Intel's integrated GPU and Imagination's dedicated GPU, which would have roughly the same performance (which has been Intel's anti-competitive plan all along).

@RichardW53: Hmmmm,  could it be that Metal, Apple's low-elevel graphics API, is indeed the clue that it is planning to upshift the PowerVR cores it uses in iPads and iPhones into Macs?

"The high-end configuration targets notebook and console graphics, as well as servers running general-purpose GPU programs, typically under OpenCL."

With no servers using PowerVR, I guess those scientific & big data OpenCL apps will be offloading their floating point computations to a sea of phones & tablets.

The rumour mill has indeed been speculating on an ARM powered MacBook Air, in which case the PowerVR would be the logical GPU to use. Both PVR6 (current generation) and PVR 7 (just announced) are capable of scaling to higher levels of performance than currently implemented.

Well, they have to develop and announce the capability before people can start to take advantage of it...anyhow I don't think wifi would be fast enough!

Rick,  PowerVR may be "gunning" for AMD and Nvidia, but all they really have is a glorified pea shooter as a weapon.

No way is Apple going to be using a mobile phone GPU in their Macbook Air or desktop Macs.

Yes, the power VR works well in mobile  phone, but its far too weak for use in a high end laptop or desktop system.

Both Intel and AMD have powerful integrated graphic chips, that eliminate the need for a discrete GPU in all but the most demanding gaming or workstation systems.

The MAC OS is built to run on X86 architecture.

The MAC line would be cripled if it tried to run on the much weaker ARM based processors Apple  uses in their iOS systems.

The question you should be asking is,  could AMD's  new K12 chips, built  on the same 14nm FinFet process node as Intel, combined  with far superior graphics than Intel, replace Intel in the MAC line in 2016?

AMD is willing to accept far lower margins than Intel,  and Apple is desperate for the best graphics available.

So, a new CPU core from  ex Apple guru Jim Keller and his team at AMD,  combined with a 2013 committment of $10 Billion from  Abu Dhabi into Global Foundries to build 14nm=  the potential for something HUGE in 2016.

There was a famous car designer - Colin Chapman of Lotus - whose mantra was 'simplify and add lightness.' I believe Apple is on the same mission with its MacBook line, and would not be surprised to see an ARM powered MacBook Air launched within the next 12 months. I agree that the mobile phone version of PowerVR graphics would be too weak - but if you check it out PowerVR will scale WAY beyond mobile phones into notebook territory and beyond. It all depends how much power you decide to use, and with the best power consumption/performance profile in the industry, PowerVR will give Apple a great opportunity to launch a really cool (in more senses than one) device. Low power consumption is going to become the new paradigm for all devices as it already is for mobiles. You can throw power at any system to improve performance and heat the room at the same time, but at some point this becomes not only counter-productive but crude.