Imagination's GPU selected by SemiDrive for automotive chip

PowerVR GPU provides driving force for the development of automotive chips with excellent performance and comprehensive support

London, England & Nanjing, China; 29^th May 2020 – Imagination Technologies announces that Nanjing SemiDrive Technology Ltd. (SemiDrive) is using Imagination’s PowerVR Series9XM GPU in its smart cockpit chip X9, which has been taped out and been brought up successfully. SemiDrive focuses on automotive grade chips and providing intelligent connected vehicles with highly reliable and high-performance automotive SoC products used in smart cockpit and core gateways.

SemiDrive is one of the few fabless semiconductor companies in China to have passed the ISO 26262 functional safety management system certification. It is also the first Chinese company receiving the ISO 26262:2018 functional safety management system certificate from TÜV Rheinland. SemiDrive’s products can meet the national automotive grade and risk control standards.

The chip has been taped out successfully in a new smart cockpit chip and is part of SemiDrive’s vehicle on chip strategy. It meets the demands of automotive electronic cockpits for computing power and multimedia performance. The next-generation chip has hardware virtualization capability for the smart cockpit. In the virtualization mode of full HD multi-screen, its hardware virtualized accelerating unit DriveBoost shows amazing performance. Meanwhile, with the powerful support provided by Imagination’s PowerVR GPU, the display efficiency of the virtual subsystem has been greatly improved, being close to the efficiency of hardware transparent invocation.

Imagination has been investing and developing in the automotive industry for over 10 years. The automotive chips developed using Imagination's GPUs have always taken a leading position in global shipments. The PowerVR 9XM GPU used by SemiDrive's smart cockpit chip is part of Imagination's PowerVR Series9 GPU family. This GPU series implements comprehensive optimisation of power, performance, and area (PPA), and its high-performance density makes it the ideal solution for automotive market. Imagination's GPUs can provide the following performance or supports for automotive chips:

• QM process and traceability for all cores enabling customers’ ISO 26262 and ASIL SoC implementations.
• Extended support for hypervisors, automotive OS and safety critical APIs.
• Documentation for ASIL and other certifications, and automotive specific documentation.
• Hardware virtualization for Quality of Service and security. ECC and BIST support for reliability and recovery.
• Long-term support including support for fixed software versions and assistance for chip companies to support OEMs.

Maggie Qiu, CEO, SemiDrive, says: “Imagination's GPUs have powerful performance. For example, its hardware virtualization can provide good isolation capability among various apps/operating systems. This could maximize the utilization of underlying GPU hardware while improving security. In addition, Imagination has rich experience in automotive industry, and has a deep understanding on the demands and challenges of automotive market with its cooperation with global leading automotive chip companies for many years. These are the reasons why we select Imagination as our partner. We look forward to cooperating with Imagination to develop more automotive grade chips, helping China's automotive chip industry to enhance the strength and to improve the layout continuously.

Ray Bingham, CEO, Imagination Technologies, says: “’Intelligentization’ is a hotspot in the development of automotive industry, and automotive chips have a self-evident importance in this aspect. SemiDrive plays an exemplary role in driving China’s independent automotive chips which urgently need to be developed today. We are pleased to work with SemiDrive to develop its smart cockpit chip and congratulate them on successful taping out and launch of the chip. Imagination has always valued the support for Chinese partners. We will continue to provide high performance products and comprehensive support services for SemiDrive and more Chinese companies, to help them develop more powerful automotive chips.”

In the future, Imagination will also collaborate with SemiDrive on more application such as AI acceleration and high-performance hybrid computing, and smart cockpit chips.

About SemiDrive Technology

Founded in June 2018, Nanjing SemiDrive Technology Ltd. is headquartered in Jiangbei New District, Nanjing. Its main products are core processor chips for autonomous driving and intelligent vehicles, which are completely self-developed and have world-class performance. The reliability and safety of these products are the guarantee for implementation of future driverless technology. SemiDrive is committed to the research and development, mass production, brand building, marketing and sales of related chips, striving to provide customers with excellent innovative products and high-quality technology and market services, and to gradually grow into a Chinese innovative chip company that achieves breakthrough development in the core chips of global automotive industry. For more information about SemiDrive, visit www.semidrive.com.

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.