PowerVR is not all of Imagination, N tricks to get rid of Apple's influence

Recently, Apple announced that it will stop using Imagination's PowerVR series GPUs within two years. The possible loss of this major customer, which accounts for about 50% of Imagination's revenue, has caused media and analysts to worry about the future of this British IP licensing company. Is this really a disaster?

As an IP licensor, Imagination's revenue mainly comes from licensing and copyright income. From the perspective of product lines, it is mainly divided into three series, namely Power VR, MIPS and Ensigma. From the current point of view, these three will bring new growth momentum to Imagination in the future emerging application markets such as the Internet of Things, VR/AR, autonomous driving, Internet of Vehicles and artificial intelligence.

Imagination's three major product lines

PowerVR: Furian architecture brings new power to GPUs

After years of development, Imagination's PowerVR series GPU has become one of the industry's masterpieces, especially the earlier Rouge architecture, which has become the choice of many mobile SoCs with its high-quality performance. In March of this year, they launched the next-generation Furian architecture, bringing new power to mobile SoCs.

PowerVR product line

Compared to the previous generation architecture Rougue, Furian's GFLOPS performance is increased by 35%, gaming performance is increased by 70-90%, and fill rate is increased by 80%. By improving performance scalability in multiple ways, Furian can reduce the power budget of mobile devices and provide high-resolution, immersive graphics content and data computing capabilities for a long time.

Power VR Furian architecture

Recently, Imagination unveiled the first core of its Furian architecture, the GT8525. According to Chris Longstaff, senior director of Power VR marketing, the new core has two GPU clusters, which can balance efficiency and performance well, and has a new ALUT and computing subsystem to improve computing performance and density. With support for OpenCL2.0, Open VX, OpenGLES and Vulkan, GT8525 will become a new choice for many applications. Chris Longstaff said that this new core can provide high-quality solutions for high-end mobile, mid-range infotainment and gaming STB/DTV.

Comparison between GT8525 and GT7200

As a series of mature products, PowerVR has different solutions for different markets. This is the moat for Imagination and the basis for them to gain customer recognition.

PowerVR's product lines for different application markets

MIPS: The choice for automotive electronics

In the field of IP licensing, MIPS is definitely an architecture worth noting. This reduced instruction set, which was launched more than 30 years ago, has shipped more than 7 billion pieces worldwide so far, and more than 700 million pieces are shipped each year. In 2012, Imagination acquired this company and expanded its other product line.

MIPS Product Line

Steven Evans, vice president of business operations at MIPS, said that as a mature and efficient 32-bit and 64-bit architecture, MIPS architecture can provide more options for the Internet of Things, networks and automobiles. He said that thanks to its high-quality architecture, MIPS can be applied to mobile phones, mobile computing, consumer multimedia, automobiles, networks and enterprises, wearable devices and the Internet of Things, among which the application in ADAS is the most representative. Now MIPS has become the support of leading ADAS suppliers. In March this year, Intel spent $15.3 billion to acquire Mobileye, an Israeli autonomous driving vision processing company, to strengthen its driverless business, and the acquired company Mobileye's flagship product EyeQ series uses the MIPS architecture.

Elchanan Rushinek, senior vice president of engineering at Mobileye, once said that with the help of Imagination's multi-threaded MIPS CPU, the performance of each generation of EyeQ® SoC has increased by more than 6 times. Now, with the launch of EyeQ5®, we expect the performance to continue to increase by 8 times. The recognition from customers is the most fair evaluation of MIPS products. The core of EyeQ5 is MIPS's Warrior I-level I6500.

MIPS i6500 Architecture

According to Steven Evans, this new core is developed for heterogeneous computing applications that are increasingly dependent on AI/ML application development. The chip IP can combine CPU clusters with other hardware accelerator clusters in a very efficient, low-latency and flexible way. Its internal and external heterogeneity can be consistently optimized according to system requirements. It is suitable for revenue-generating applications such as ADAS and self-driving cars, networks, drones, industrial automation, security and video analysis.

In addition, customers such as Denso have also chosen to cooperate with Imagination MIPS in autonomous driving technology.

In addition, in terms of the Internet of Things, Imagination uses its own security technologies such as OmniShield, combined with MIPS's low power consumption and other characteristics, which makes their products very suitable for the future Internet of Things market.

Ensigma: The Rise of IP for Communications Connections

In addition to the PowerVR and MIPS product lines, Ensigma is also an important part of Imagination. In the past 2016, the shipments of chips using Ensigma IP increased by 59%, and IP royalty income also increased by 25%. I believe that in the era of the Internet of Everything, this IP dedicated to communication connections can provide Imagination with new blood.

According to reports, Ensigama provides RPU series product lines for WiFI and Bluetooth connections, which can provide solid connection support for the growing broadcasts and connections. In addition, Imagination also provides Ensigma Whisper, a SoC solution that integrates low-power sensing and cloud connectivity for the Internet of Things, wearables and other low-power, low-cost devices.

This is another step Imagination is taking to prepare for the Internet of Things.

Future business prospects

As mentioned at the beginning of the article, Imagination is now in a troubled time. When asked about Apple's discontinuation of GPUs in two years, Imagination Vice President and General Manager of China Mr. Liu Guojun said that from their perspective, it is unlikely that Apple will be able to independently develop its own GPU in the next two years. As for how they will continue to cooperate with Apple in the future, this is still under discussion.

"But we will continue to strengthen our cooperation with China in the future, push more Imagination IP to Chinese developers, help them shorten product launch time, reduce risks, create the most attractive solutions, and help China's semiconductor industry take off," Liu Guojun told a reporter from Semiconductor Industry Observer. (Text/Li Shoupeng)

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