Imagination's Design Optimisation Kits (DOKs) deliver substantial silicon PPA gains while reducing design cycle times

First DOK co-developed with Synopsys reduces dynamic power by up to 25% and area up to 10% for PowerVR Series6 GPUs

London, UK – July 24,  2013 – Imagination Technologies (IMG.L), a leading multimedia, processor, communications and cloud technologies company, announces it is launching new Design Optimisation Kits (DOKs) to provide customers with the flexibility to optimise for power, performance and area (PPA) in its GPUs, CPUs and other IP core families. Imagination DOKs are comprised of optimised reference design flows, tuned libraries from partners, characterisation data and documentation.

The first Imagination DOK, which will be available later this year, enables customers using Imagination’s PowerVR Series6 ‘Rogue’ GPUs to significantly accelerate time-to-market and reduce power and area through a package of core IP and physical IP co-developed by Imagination and Synopsys. Using the DOK, which includes Synopsys’ new DesignWare® HPC (High Performance Core) Design Kit, customers leveraging PowerVR Series6 GPUs from Imagination can achieve up to a 25% reduction in dynamic power* and up to 10% area savings, as well as up to 30% improvement in implementation turnaround time through a tuned design flow**.

PowerVR GPU cores already offer best-in-class performance per mm2, while consuming only a fraction of the power of competitive solutions. With the new, validated DOK, customers have the flexibility to optimise the implementation even further, targeting an ideal balance of performance, power and area for their specific application.

The collaboration between Synopsys and Imagination to develop DOKs utilizing Synopsys’ HPC Design Kit focuses initially on PowerVR GPUs and MIPS CPUs, with plans to extend across other key members of Imagination’s IP portfolio including VPUs (video and vision processors) and RPUs (radio communications processors).

In today’s designs, the GPU is growing in relation to the rest of the cores on an SoC, increasingly dominating SoC real estate. This will continue, driven by trends including the industry move to ultra-HD/4K resolutions and the rise of GPU compute. SoC complexity and frequencies are also on the increase, while power budgets remain unchanged – an obvious challenge in mobile applications that can become thermally limited. To address these challenges, companies need validated solutions that provide the flexibility to optimise for power, performance and area in their GPU, CPU, and other heterogeneous processor implementations.

Says Tony King-Smith, EVP marketing, Imagination: “To achieve success in an increasingly competitive environment, customers need to create designs that are fully PPA optimised using the libraries and design flows they want, to the exact criteria they have chosen for market success. With Imagination’s DOKs, users will be able to achieve that while substantially reducing design times to achieve great results.”

Says John Koeter, vice president of marketing for IP and systems, Synopsys: “Synopsys’ new DesignWare HPC Design Kit enables the optimized implementation of a broad range of processor cores. Our close collaboration with Imagination over the years has encompassed both CPUs and GPUs and is achieving significant results. The new DOK for Imagination’s PowerVR Series6 GPU demonstrates how both companies leveraged our individual expertise to create an optimized, validated solution for our mutual customers. We look forward to building on our proven collaboration in future projects with Imagination, including DOKs for their MIPS CPU family.”

Continues King-Smith: “We are very pleased to be working closely with Synopsys to create this first DOK for PowerVR Series6 GPUs. Our strategic collaboration with Synopsys is a great example of how we are helping customers get the best possible results using our IP with their preferred flows, memories and standard cell libraries.”

Availability

The new Design Optimisation Kit for Imagination’s PowerVR Series6 IP cores, including an optimised reference flow, floorplan, and Synopsys’ DesignWare HPC Design Kit, will be available in Q3.

PowerVR Series6 ‘Rogue’ GPUs

Based on a scalable number of compute clusters, the PowerVR Series6 architecture is designed to target the requirements of a growing range of demanding markets from mobile to the highest performance embedded graphics including smartphones, tablets, PC, console, automotive and TV. Using these arrays of programmable computing elements PowerVR Series6 cores deliver class-leading GPU Compute power efficiency while minimising power and bandwidth demands.

PowerVR Series6 GPUs deliver full support for all popular and emerging GPU compute APIs including OpenCL 1.x and Renderscript Compute/Filterscript, delivering an optimal balance of performance versus power consumption for mobile and embedded devices. Members of the Series6 family are designed to support the features of the latest graphics APIs including OpenGL ES 3/2/1.1, OpenGL 3.x/4.x, and full WHQL-compliant DirectX9.3/10, with certain family members extending their capabilities to DirectX11.1 functionality.

Imagination’s PowerVR graphics technologies are the de facto standard for mobile and embedded graphics. PowerVR GPU technology is driven by one of the world’s largest engineering teams dedicated to graphics processor development. It is complemented by Imagination’s PowerVR Insider ecosystem, which provides extensive support and tools to a vibrant community of more than 35,000 developers, who have already created hundreds of thousands of apps optimised for PowerVR powered devices. PowerVR Series6 is already in silicon with multiple partners, with some already shipping. * Power results are based on static toggle rates

** Results achieved on PowerVR G6100 IP core in TSMC 28HPM process

About Imagination

Imagination Technologies - a global leader in multimedia, processor, communication and cloud technologies - creates and licenses market-leading processor solutions including graphics, video, vision, CPU and embedded processing, multi-standard communications, cross-platform V.VoIP and VoLTE, and cloud connectivity. These silicon and software intellectual property (IP) solutions for systems-on-chip (SoC) are complemented by an extensive portfolio of software, tools and ecosystems. Target markets include mobile phone, connected home consumer, mobile and tablet computing, in-car electronics, networking, telecoms, health, smart energy and connected sensors. Imagination's licensees include many of the world's leading semiconductor manufacturers, network operators and OEM/ODMs. Corporate headquarters are located in the United Kingdom, with sales and R&D offices worldwide. See: www.imgtec.com.