The new iPhone 3G S achieves its OpenGL ES 2.0 support using the PowerVR SGX graphics processor core, according to sources familiar with the new iPhone’s graphics processor design, as some blogs (including us) first anticipated in a report in April that broke news of a secret deal struck between Imagination Technologies, Samsung, and Apple.

The report detailed an unusual manufacturing license agreement Imagination made with Samsung to integrate new PowerVR SGX graphics cores into multiple core, System on a Chip (SoC) devices built by Samsung.

While Samsung had a design license for Imagination’s earlier MBX graphics cores, it only obtained the capacity to manufacture the new SGX technology. The design rights to SGX were retained by another party in a deal shrouded in secrecy.

In July 2007, Imagination had reported in a press release that its next generation graphics and video IP cores had been licensed “to an international electronics systems company under a multi-use licensing agreement.” Imagination also reported that “the SoCs to be developed under this license agreement will be produced for this new partner by Imagination’s existing semiconductor partners and/or new chip manufacturing partners.”

Some blogs reported that, however, that “the fact that this ‘electronics system company’ was both a ‘new partner’ and not itself a chip manufacturer strongly suggests that the international electronics mystery company was in fact, Apple, Inc., which stands among very few other companies as new to mobile graphics core licensing yet dependent upon third party manufacturers who are already Imagination partners.”