Imagination partners drive mobile and embedded graphics to new level

Series5XT SGX543MP and SGX544MP powered SoCs debuting; first device announced with next generation POWERVR™ Series6 graphics

MWC, Barcelona, Spain, February 15th 2011: Imagination Technologies, a leading multimedia and communications technologies company, is enabling mobile and embedded graphics performance to reach new levels with high performance single and multiprocessor POWERVR SGX solutions now appearing in the latest generation of SoCs. Next-generation POWERVR technology, codenamed ‘Rogue’, is in advanced development and is already licensed by multiple tier one lead partners.

Imagination CEO Hossein Yassaie says: “Having evaluated the options the overall mobile and embedded market is increasingly committing to POWERVR as the de facto graphics standard, a fact reflected by the growing commitment of the primary players to our roadmap. POWERVR has established itself across smartphones, tablets, mobile computing and games consoles, attracting an extensive community of POWERVR developers and powering iconic and much-loved products.”

POWERVR delivers not only a clear technology advantage and exceptional roadmap, driven by one of the largest teams of graphics engineers in the world, but also an extensive ecosystem of third party developers which has created hundreds of thousands of apps optimised for POWERVR enabled devices to date.

Chips based on Imagination’s POWERVR Series5XT MP (multi-processor) graphics cores will be demonstrated at MWC 2011 by Renesas and have been announced by Sony as part of the forthcoming NGP handheld games console and Texas Instruments as part of the recently announced OMAP5 family of devices.

Says Jon Peddie, Jon Peddie Research: “Imagination is at the top of their game. The company has been expanding through acquisitions, capturing new customers, and developing new technology. And significantly, what is good for Imagination is good for the industry as a whole, pushing devices to new levels of graphics and multimedia capability and allowing applications, tools and cross-platform consistency to thrive and innovate.”

POWERVR Series5XT arrives in products

More than 10 SoCs utilizing Imagination’s latest multi-processor POWERVR SGX MP cores are currently in design or in silicon.

Texas Instruments’ OMAP5430 and OMAP5432 use multi-core POWERVR SGX544MP graphics accelerators to drive 3D gaming and 3D user interfaces.

Renesas SH-Mobile APE5R features Imagination Technologies’ POWERVR SGX543MP graphics.

Sony Computer Entertainment’s next generation portable entertainment system (codename: NGP) features SGX543MP4 graphics acceleration.

Clock for clock POWERVRVR SGX, which has been shipping in significant volume for several years, outperforms competitive solutions, many of which have yet to ship in any volume. SGX MP opens up a wider performance gap reinforcing POWERVR as the market leader for performance per mm2 and performance per mW.

Imagination’s unique and extensively patented Tile-Based Deferred Rendering (TBDR) architecture for graphics, together with use of advanced architectural techniques such as hardware multi-threading and substantial investment in production-ready drivers across all mobile and embedded operating systems has resulted in Imagination leading the market for performance per mm2 and performance per mW for all of its on-chip multimedia and communications solutions.

Next-generation in advanced development

Imagination’s next generation POWERVR Series6 architecture, codenamed ‘Rogue’, has now being licensed by multiple lead partners. ‘Rogue’ delivers unrivalled GFLOPS per mm2 and per mW for all APIs.

ST-Ericsson has announced that its new Nova application processors will include Imagination’s next-generation POWERVR Series6 ‘Rogue’ architecture.

Series6 GPUs will be fully compatible with Series5 and Series5XT GPUs, ensuring a smooth migration path for developers upgrading applications optimized for Series5 to the new architecture.

POWERVR Series5XT GPU IP cores are available for licensing for all partners now; POWERVR Series6 is being licensed to lead partners at this time.

Multiple other strategic partners have also licensed POWERVR Series5XT and Series6 cores and will be disclosed when they are ready to do so.