Imagination Technologies: PowerVR graphics driving mass market smartphone graphics adoption

Imagination partners delivering solutions for ubiquitous mobile from entry level to the world’s most advanced GPU powered mobile platforms at MWC 2012

February 28, 2012 -- MWC, Barcelona, Spain:  Imagination Technologies Group plc (LSE: IMG, “Imagination”, “the Group”), a leading multimedia and communications technologies company, announces that the first two cores of its new PowerVR Series6 ‘Rogue’ family, G6200 and G6400, are now available and deliver the highest performance for all markets.

Single and multiprocessor PowerVR Series5 SGX GPU solutions empower the most important devices in the latest generation of mobile SoCs being shown at MWC 2012 in Barcelona (IMG’;s stand is at Hall 1, stand 1D45).

Hossein Yassaie, CEO, Imagination says: “As smartphones become the highest volume segment in the phone market, we are driving mobile and embedded graphics performance to reach across the full range of smart mobile consumer devices, from mass market to high end in an era of ubiquitous mobile multimedia.

“Last year at MWC we said that ‘clock for clock PowerVR SGX, which has been shipping in significant volume for several years, outperforms competitive solutions, many of which have yet to ship in any volume.’ That statement remains unchanged a year later. Indeed as SGX MP opens up a wider performance gap in today’s devices PowerVR Series6 is already set to widen that gap even further to unrivalled GFLOPS per mm2 and per mW for all APIs.

“PowerVR has established itself as the developer’s de facto standard across smartphones, tablets, mobile computing and games consoles, attracting an extensive community of adopters and powering iconic and much-loved products. Our partners are now delivering the most comprehensive range of solutions, from low end to high end, that truly can enable any phone or tablet device to have PowerVR, the leading GPU technology.”

Key PowerVR enabled SoC (system on chip) devices at the show include:

• Intel Medfield Z2460 incorporating PowerVR SGX GPU and PowerVR VXE and VXD VPU technology.
• MediaTek MT6575 incorporating PowerVR SGX GPU technology
• Renesas Mobile MP5232 LTE Triple-Mode Platform incorporating PowerVR SGX544 GPU technology
• ST-Ericsson LU8540, U8540 and A9540 incorporating PowerVR™ SGX544 GPU technology
• Texas Instruments Incorporated’s OMAP™ 5 platform, which incorporates dual SGX 544MP GPUs  (Hall 8, #8A84)

Numerous phones and tablets containing Imagination’s technologies are on display across the show.

Says Jeffrey Ju, General Manager of the Smartphone Business Unit at MediaTek: "Following the ongoing success of MT6573, which has opened up exciting opportunities for mass market, high volume smartphone GPU adoption, we are thrilled to have PowerVR graphics acceleration in the new MT6575, and to working with Imagination as a strategic partner going forward."

Says Shinichi Yoshioka, chief operating officer at Renesas Mobile: “Renesas Mobile’s long term partnership with Imagination has led to many firsts in mobile graphics. This year’s MWC will see us both showcasing the ultra-fast and exciting graphics performance of Renesas Mobile triple mode platforms featuring advanced single and multiprocessor PowerVR GPUs. This powerful combination allows us to stay ahead of the pack to deliver compelling use cases and console-like graphics to the emerging worldwide LTE market.”

Teppo Hemia, head of smartphone and tablet platform business and architecture group at ST-Ericsson says: “By using the powerful Imagination PowerVR GPU in our new NovaThor L8450 platform, we will be able to deliver amazing graphics performance at low power consumption. For the NovaThor L8450, we selected the Imagination PowerVR GPU since it delivers the performance we need to meet our customers’ requirements for next generation mobile devices.”

Remi El-Ouazzane, vice president and general manager, OMAP platform business unit, TI says: “TI has been a long-standing partner of Imagination Technologies, yielding a relationship we take very seriously as we collaborate on future mobile processor-driven graphic applications. The company has developed a highly-differentiated GPU architecture that’s gaining incredible momentum within the applications ecosystem. The PowerVR cores leverage unified shading, deferred rendering and more—setting these GPUs ahead of the pack. Inside the OMAP 5 platform, TI is pushing the powerful dual core SGX544MP to its limits. We’re pairing it with our smart multicore architecture to establish a new graphic-driven experience guaranteed to make everyone sit up and take notice.”

Eight of Imagination’s partners, including ST-Ericsson, Texas Instruments, Renesas Electronics and MediaTek are also already committed to developing SoCs utilizing Imagination’s PowerVR Series6 Rogue architecture, the first cores of which, PowerVR G6200 and G6400 are now announced.

Inside PowerVR

Imagination’s PowerVR utilizes a unique and extensively patented Tile-Based Deferred Rendering (TBDR) architecture for graphics, together with advanced architectural techniques such as hardware multi-threading. This, combined with 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.

PowerVR GPU technology is driven by one of the world’s largest engineering teams dedicated to graphics processor development, complemented by the industry’s most mature and extensive ecosystem of dedicated third party developers, who have already created hundreds of thousands of apps optimised for PowerVR enabled devices to date.

Imagination’s PowerVR graphics technologies are the de facto standard for mobile and embedded graphics, with over 125 devices shipping or in advanced design by leading semiconductor companies, and have shipped in more than 600m devices to date.

About Imagination Technologies

Imagination Technologies Group plc (LSE:IMG) – a global leader in multimedia and communication technologies – creates and licenses market-leading multimedia IP cores for graphics, video, and display processing, multi-threaded embedded processing/DSP cores and multi-standard communications and connectivity processors. These silicon intellectual property (IP) solutions for systems-on-chip (SoC) are complemented by platform level IP and services, a strong array of software tools and drivers and extensive developer and middleware ecosystems. Target markets include mobile phone, handheld multimedia, home consumer entertainment, mobile and low-power computing, and in-car electronics. Its licensees include many of the leading semiconductor and consumer electronics companies. Imagination has corporate headquarters in the United Kingdom, with sales and R&D offices worldwide. See: www.imgtec.com.