Imagination reveals next step in PowerVR automotive strategy

15-year automotive veteran’s product package to accelerate growing market

London, UK and Tokyo, Japan – 13^th November 2018 – Imagination Technologies announces PowerVR Automotive, a complete product package to enable growth and acceleration of the automotive semiconductor industry. Combining five essential elements – hardware IP, software, tools, documentation and long-term support – PowerVR Automotive enables existing customers and new entrants in the market to meet the safety standards and performance requirements of the industry as it moves towards fully autonomous driving.

Imagination is introducing the PowerVR Series8XT-A GPU core to complement its existing IP already used extensively in infotainment, digital cockpit and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). PowerVR Series8XT-A has enhanced recovery and reliability features to make it easier for System-on-Chip (SoC) designers to obtain automotive safety certification for their SoCs aimed at digital human-machine interfaces (HMIs) and autonomous vehicles (AVs).

Why PowerVR Automotive?

Automotive applications have specific requirements that impact all aspects of system design and which standard consumer IP is not able to meet. To solve this, PowerVR Automotive provides customers with a complete package of support documentation, automotive safety and traceability information that’s designed to ensure customers’ SoCs can achieve the ASIL-levels of functional safety, meeting industry standards such as ISO 26262 and IEC 61506 at the system level. Based on Imagination’s extensive knowledge of the automotive market, the company offers proven long-term support (LTS) packages for ten years and beyond, to give customers confidence and assurance for the life-time of their products.

To ensure suitability for the demanding automotive market, the entire package was conceived, designed and tested under Imagination’s mature quality management processes, led by a dedicated and independent safety team.

PowerVR IP has been a key enabler for leading-edge automotive products since 2006. Its GPUs have been licensed by multiple leading automotive applications processor vendors, including DENSO, Renesas, Socionext, Texas Instruments (TI) and others. To date these companies have shipped tens-of-millions of devices, giving Imagination a market share by volume of over 50% for automotive application processors.

Leo Li, CEO, Imagination Technologies, says: “The automotive industry is rapidly transitioning to assisted driving and fully autonomous vehicles. PowerVR has extensive experience in the automotive semiconductor market and as the requirements for power and performance continue to evolve, PowerVR is committed to remaining ahead of the curve. Imagination is excited to deliver this package that allows the growing group of automotive players to address the complex requirements of this market.”

Delivering the PowerVR Automotive package

The PowerVR Automotive package reduces the barrier to entry for new players to the market, while easing the burden of meeting safety requirement for established companies.

The comprehensive automotive package extends the application of PowerVR’s quality-managed IP to automotive solutions. Customers have a wide choice of IP with access to the extended safety package to meet automotive industry certification. This comprises of hardware IP, software and tools, automotive operating systems and hypervisor support, documentation and analysis, and development traceability.

Dominique Bonte, vice president, vertical markets, ABI Research; says: “The speed of progress in automotive is finally approaching that of Imagination’s traditional markets, such as mobile. Imagination’s dedicated PowerVR Automotive suite will allow automotive semiconductor vendors to accelerate time to market in terms of supporting automotive requirements like functional safety, virtualization, and power optimization through a turnkey solution.”

Introducing PowerVR Series8XT-A GPU

Based on the PowerVR Furian architecture, the Series8XT-A is a new member of the Series8XT family of GPUs targeted at cluster, HUD, infotainment and the digital cockpit, as well as ADAS functions. The Series8XT-A provides class-leading power, performance and area (PPA) metrics and enables new features in hardware and software for fault detection and recovery of the GPU. Other new features include Error-Correcting Code (ECC), Logic Built-in Self-test (LBIST), as well as industry-leading verification strategies.

Featuring unique built-in hardware virtualization, Series8XT-A enables automotive OEMs to keep multiple applications and services running securely in isolated containers, with guaranteed quality of service (QoS) for each.

PowerVR Neural Network Accelerators (NNA) for Automotive

Neural networks are becoming a fundamental element in the development of automotive; from the occupant’s experience, through to ADAS and autonomous driving.

The multi award-winning PowerVR Series2NX NNA is showcased through ADAS applications such as driver monitoring, driver gaze tracking, seat occupancy, road-sign detection, drivable path analysis, road user detection and driver recognition. Thanks to its performance density for embedded environments, PowerVR’s NNA technology will play a key role in enabling the industry to move from Level 3 to Level 5 autonomous driving.

Imagination’s ability to combine leading-edge GPU and NNA technology provides the industry with significant flexibility for creating automotive solutions, while at the same time as reducing risk, by future-proofing for industry evolution over the life of a product.

Availability

PowerVR Series8XT-A GPU is available for licensing now. The next generation of PowerVR GPUs and NNAs for automotive will be available during 2019. For further information, please contact info@imgtec.com.