There is apparently more evidence that Apple is prepared to dare the likes of Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo and vie for the gaming pie. The warrior is iPhone 5 and the arsenal include the A5 processor with a dual-core graphics core and the most powerful mobile graphics processing architecture built to date.

New rumors that float around suggest the iPhone will have strong gaming capabilities supported by multi-core A5 processor and Imagination Technologies’ PowerVR Series6 mobile graphics processing architecture. These are not confirmed, but highly probable.

Earlier in April, it was reported that Apple allowed select developers play around with an iPhone 4 which is implanted with an A5 chip rather than the A4 in order that they can bring out the full gaming prowess on the upcoming iPhone 5. Apple gave developers from gaming bigwigs a pre-taste of the gaming prowess of the iPhone 5, with a view to incorporating smashing gaming capabilities in the next generation iPhone.

Now, according to media reports, Apple could be one of the companies that will get Imagination Technologies’ PowerVR Series6 mobile graphics processing architecture. It was reported by nextiphonenews that Imagination Technologies is going to license its latest Rogue processor to six important partners. While it is confirmed that among the six are ST-Ericsson, Texas Instruments and MediaTek, the guess is that Apple is among the list as well.

Reasons? Apple is an important investor in Imagination Technologies. In a surprise move on Wednesday, Apple reportedly hiked its stake in Imagination to 9.5 percent with the purchase of 8.2m shares at 39p per share.

“The acquisition of the stake appears to confirm rumours that Apple was the ‘international electronics systems company’ mentioned in Imagination’s 4 September announcement about a multi-year, multi-use licensing agreement for use of Imagination’s current and future POWERVR graphics and video intellectual property cores,” Distorted-Loop reported.

A version of PowerVR MBX graphics processor core is already in use in iPhone. However, Imagination’s next generation graphics core, the PowerVR SGX, is much more advanced. It features OpenGL ES 2.0 support, along with a Universal Scalable Shader Engine that provides mobile devices with highly efficient, shader-based 3D graphics, the report says.

Imagination brings to the table the most potent gaming powerhouse. According to newxtiphonenews, its processing architecture is the creation of the world’s biggest team of graphics engineers and hundreds of thousands of apps created by third-party developers have been powered by its chips.

Apple had unleashed stunning gaming prowess on iPad 2 through the A5 processor that integrated power of PowerVR’s dual-core SGX543MP2 graphics processor. This increased the iPad 2’s graphics processing speed by 9 times compared to the capabilities offered by the A4 processor.

Apple realises that gaming will have a big part to play in the future of its devices. Gamers are indeed warming up to iPhone and there is a plethora of gaming apps in the App Store.

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