imagination News - CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

February 25, 2025February 25, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Imagination DXTP GPU promises 20% higher power efficiency compared to DXT GPU for mobile devices and laptops

Imagination has announced the DXTP GPU for mobile and power-constrained devices with up to 20% greater power efficiency than its predecessor, the D-Series DXT GPU for longer battery life for AI applications or complex games. The company says the GPU is suitable for gaming, user interfaces, graphics-rich applications, computer vision, generative AI, and other AI applications designed to run on smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktops, or non-safety automotive products. Imagination DXTP highlights: Two off-the-shelf configurations: DXTP-48-1536 48 GPixel/s 1.5 TFLOPS FP32 (1536 FLOPs/Clock) 3 TFLOPS FP16 6 TOPS INT8 48 ppc Bilinear 3D Textured Up to 96 ppc 2D Dual Rate Mode DXTP-64-2048 64 GPixel/s 2 TFLOPS FP32 (2048 FLOPs/Clock) 4 TFLOPS FP16 8 TOPS INT8 64 ppc Bilinear 3D Textured Up to 128 ppc 2D Dual Rate Mode Bus Interface – AXI, ACE-Lite Compression PVRIC5 Lossless and Lossy Framebuffer Compression ETC and ASTC LDR and HDR Support Microarchitecture improvement – […]

January 16, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Imagination exits the RISC-V CPU market

Imagination Technologies has decided to exit the RISC-V CPU market to redirect its resources to the development of its GPU and AI products. This was reported by eeNews Europe following an interview with the company: Imagination exited its standalone line of CPUs to increase our investment in graphics, AI and compute at the edge which we believe is transformational for our business […] We remain committed to the RISC-V ecosystem and believe this change to our business allows us to partner more easily with the wider ecosystem as providers of the GPU of choice for RISC-V The company announced its entry into RISC-V IP core in 2021 with the introduction of the Catapult 32-bit and 64-bit RISC-V CPU cores, followed by the 32-bit RTXM-2200 real-time core in 2022, and the cost-optimized APXM-6200 RISC-V core was introduced last year. But all those RISC-V CPU cores are gone and won’t be found […]

April 10, 2024April 10, 2024 by Tomisin Olujinmi - No Comments

Imagination launches the APXM-6200 RISC-V “Catapult” CPU for cost-sensitive consumer and industrial applications

Imagination has expanded its Catapult product portfolio to include a new RISC-V core, the Imagination APXM-6200 CPU. The APXM-6200 is a 64-bit, in-order application processor with an 11-stage, dual-issue pipeline. There isn’t much information on the new Imagination RISC-V core on the product page but we know it offers “best-in-class” performance density, a minimal silicon footprint, and industry-standard security features. The CPU is targeted at intelligent consumer and industrial applications and delivers a 2.5x improvement in performance density and a 65% improvement in normalized performance over comparable Arm Cortex-A53 and other cores on the market. It’s also faster than the Cortex-A510 Armv9 core in SpecINT2k6. Imagination claims that combining the APXM-6200 CPU with their GPUs will ensure a 2x increase in bus utilization and a 2x reduction in memory traffic. It also comes with RISC-V vector extensions, and AI compute libraries and supports fast data coupling with AI accelerators for […]

May 24, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Imagination IMG CXM is a small GPU with HDR support for TV boxes, wearables, and Smart Home appliances

Imagination IMG CXM is a power-efficient embedded GPU family with HDR support user interfaces, thus enabling OEMs to provide users the enriching visual experience they have come to expect but at a lower cost and with more design flexibility. The new CXM GPUs also deliver close to 50% performance density improvement over IMG BXM consumer GPUs, offer support for 10-bit RGBA/YUV to deliver a HDR graphical user interface with less visible banding, and integrate well with Imagination RISC-V CPUs. Three CXM GPUs are available: The CXM-2-64 with 2 pixels per clock (PPC) and 64 FLOPS per clock is the smallest GPU with native support for HDR The CXM-4-64 with 4 pixels per clock (PPC) and 64 FLOPS per clock targets mainstream products The CXM-4-128 with 4 pixels per clock (PPC) and 128 FLOPS per clock targets is better suited to “premium DTV solutions” All share the following features: 10-bit RGBA/YUV […]

June 22, 2022June 22, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Imagination unveils IMG RTXM-2200 32-bit RISC-V real-time “Catapult” CPU

Imagination IMG RTXM-2200 32-bit RISC-V real-time CPU core is the first member of the company’s Catapult family comprised of four distinct RISC-V families for dynamic microcontrollers, real-time embedded CPUs, high-performance application CPUs, and functionally safe automotive CPUs. The company says it’s a highly scalable real-time, deterministic, 32-bit embedded CPU, that is feature-rich and flexible in design for mainstream devices, but, excuse the pun, leaves most of the details to your imagination… The new core will mostly be used as a helper core (aka co-processor) in more complex SoCs for 5G modems, cellular base stations, networking solutions for data transfer, packet management, and storage controllers, but may also find its way into smart meters. In all fairness, we do have some limited technical details with L1 cache sizes up to 128KB, I/D TCM sizes up to 128KB, and PMA regions. The real-time core will also include optional features such as single-point […]

March 24, 2022March 24, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Imagination open sources PowerVR Series 1 GPU drivers

Saying that Imagination Technologies is not exactly popular in the open-source community would be an understatement, but the company has just open-sourced the driver source for Power Series 1 GPUs namely Midas Arcade, PCX1, and PCX2. If those names do not ring a bell, it might be because some of you may not have been born when PowerVR GPUs were first unveiled in 1995, and launched in products in 1996/1997. Developed jointly by VideoLogic and NEC, PowerVR was touted as the “future of high-quality 3D graphics for the next generation of interactive entertainment”, “whether you are developing 3D systems for console, PC, or arcade systems”. VideoLogic was renamed Imagination Technologies in 1999. The PowerVR PCX1/PCX2 GPUs were notably used in the Apocalypse 3D/3Dx and Matrox M3D graphics cards with support for Direct3D and playing games such as Tomb Raider or Wipeout XL on Windows PCs. I can remember playing those […]

December 7, 2021June 22, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 14 Comments

Imagination introduces Catapult RISC-V CPU cores

As expected, Imagination Technologies is giving another try to the CPU IP market with the Catapult RISC-V CPU cores following their previous unsuccessful attempt with the MIPS architecture, notably the Aptiv family. Catapult RISC-V CPUs are/will be available in four distinct families for dynamic microcontrollers, real-time embedded CPUs, high-performance application CPUs, and functionally safe automotive CPUs. The new 32-/64-bit RISC-V cores will be scalable to up to eight asymmetric coherent cores-per cluster, offer a “plethora of customer configurable options”, and support optional custom accelerators. What you won’t see today are block diagrams and detailed technical information about the cores because apparently, all that information is confidential even though some Catapult RISC-V cores are already shipping “in high-performance Imagination automotive GPUs”. The only way to get more details today is to sign an NDA. Having said that we have some more information about the target markets and development tools. Imagination Capapult […]

August 27, 2021October 6, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 14 Comments

Imagination Technologies to design RISC-V cores

Now better known for its PowerVR embedded GPUs, Imagination Technologies tried to enter the CPU market by purchasing MIPS Technologies and introducing microAptiv, interAptiv, and proAptiv cores in 2012. It did not end up well, as the company had to sell its MIPS technology a few years later, and the MIPS architecture is now barely supported. But Imagination is now working on getting back into the CPU space by designing RISC-V cores. At least that’s what the company revealed in a press release also announcing overall revenues increased by 55% to $76m in H1 2021, with $70m in cash, and no external third-party debt. This year Imagination is re-entering the CPU market with designs based around the RISC-V open ISA. Imagination’s heritage in CPU enables it to provide innovative and patent protected technologies for the discrete CPU market as well as addressing demand for heterogeneous solutions that combine GPU, CPU […]