Imagination launches IMG B-Series: Doing more with multi-core

New multi-core options deliver the best GPU IP for all markets

London, England – 13th October 2020 – Imagination Technologies announces IMG B-Series, a new expanded range of GPU IP. With its advanced multi-core architecture, B-series enables Imagination customers to reduce power while reaching higher levels of performance than any other GPU IP on the market. It delivers up to 6 TFLOPS of compute, with an up to 30% reduction in power and 25% area reduction over previous generations and up to 2.5x higher fill rate than competing IP cores.

With IMG A-Series Imagination made an exceptional leap over previous generations, resulting in an industry-leading position for performance and power characteristics. B-Series is a further evolution delivering the highest performance per mm2 for GPU IP and offering new configurations for lower power and up to 35% lower bandwidth for a given performance target, making it a compelling solution for top-tier designs.

B-Series offers a wide range of configurations to expand the options available for our customers. With scalability at the heart, it is the ultimate solution for multiple markets such as mobile (premium to entry-level), consumer, IoT, microcontrollers, DTV and automotive. The new multi-core offerings also enable IMG BXT to reach data centre levels of performance, a unique capability for GPU IP.

B-Series also contains the first ISO 26262-capable cores with IMG BXS providing a wide range of options for automotive; from small, safety-fallback cores, to multiple teraflops of compute for advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and high-performance autonomy.

Chris Porthouse, Chief Product Officer, Imagination Technologies, says; “We've taken our sweet spot high-performance, power-optimised cores and incorporated an innovative decentralised approach to multi-core to deliver high-efficiency scaling and compatibility with industry trends such as chiplet architectures. This allows us to offer a range of performance levels and configurations not previously possible in GPU IP.”

Simon Beresford-Wylie, CEO, Imagination Technologies, says; “IMG B-Series gives our customers more choice. It builds on the massive investment and technology advantage we gained with A-Series and adds multi-core technology to expand Imagination’s GPU offerings with a staggering total of 33 new configurations. With B-Series, we believe we have the best GPU offering for everyone, whatever their requirements.”

IMG B-Series is available today and already has lead licensees for every product family.

Advanced multi-core architecture

The new multi-core architecture has been optimised for each of the product families with BXT and BXM cores featuring multi-primary full-core scaling, combining the power of all of the cores to deliver maximum single-app performance or optionally enabling the cores to run independent applications

BXE cores offer primary-secondary scaling, an area-optimised solution that presents a single high-performance GPU, while making use of our HyperLane technology for multitasking.

BXS Automotive cores also feature multi-core with a multi-primary design enabling performance scaling as well as safety checks to be performed across cores to confirm correct execution.

The best image compression technology

IMG B-Series also includes IMGIC, the most advanced image compression technology in the market to provide new bandwidth saving options for our customers. It offers up to four levels of compression, from pixel-perfect lossless modes to an extreme bandwidth-saving mode, which offers a guaranteed 4:1 or better compression rate. This gives more flexibility for SoC designers to optimise either for performance or to reduce system cost while maintaining a great user experience. IMGIC is compatible with every core across the B-Series range, bringing the benefits of Imagination’s industry-leading image compression to even the smallest cores.

The IMG B-Series cores

IMG B-Series is available in four product families that offer specialised cores for specific market needs:

• IMG BXE: Driving beautiful high-resolution displays – From 1 up to 16 pixels per clock (PPC) BXE scales from 720p to 8K with a range of GPUs specifically designed for UI rendering and entry-level gaming. BXE offers up to 25% area saving compared to previous generation cores and up to 2.5x the fill rate density compared to the competition.
• IMG BXM: Incredible graphics experiences – A range of high-efficiency performance cores providing an optimal balance of fill rate and compute in a compact silicon area for mid-range mobile gaming and complex UI solutions for DTV and other markets.
• IMG BXT: Unprecedented performance – Offering incredibly high performance for real-world applications, scaling from the device in your hand to the data centre. The flagship B-Series GPU is a four-core part generating 6.0 TFLOPs of performance, 192 Gigapixels per second and 24 TOPS for AI, delivering the industry’s highest performance per mm2.
• IMG BXS: The future of automotive GPUs – The BXS family are ISO 26262-capable GPUs, making them the most advanced automotive GPU IP cores ever created. Available as a complete range from entry to premium, delivering solutions for next-generation HMI, UI display, infotainment, digital cockpit, surround view, through to multi-teraflop compute-focused configurations for autonomy and ADAS.

About Imagination Technologies

Imagination is a UK-based company that creates silicon and software intellectual property (IP) designed to give its customers an edge in a competitive global technology market. Its graphics, compute, vision & AI and connectivity technologies enable outstanding power, performance and area (PPA), robust security, fast time-to-market and lower total cost of ownership. Products based on Imagination IP are used by billions of people across the globe in their phones, cars, homes, and workplaces. Imagination Technologies was acquired in 2017 by Canyon Bridge, a global private equity investment fund. See www.imgtec.com.