High performance, high security: Imagination DXS GPUs reshape in-vehicle computing

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At a recent press conference (September 11, 2024), Imagination Technologies launched its latest GPU IP products, highlighting major breakthroughs in functional safety and computing performance. Mr. Zhang Zheng, Director of Imagination's Automotive GPU Products, introduced the company's latest automotive GPU product, the DXS GPU, to the industry. He said that the product is designed for the automotive market to meet the growing demand for autonomous driving and smart cockpits . This new generation of GPU will bring smarter driving experience, faster human-computer interaction and richer entertainment functions to the automotive market, while reducing energy consumption.


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Mr. Zhang Zheng said that the automotive market is growing rapidly at an annual rate of 8% to 10%, especially in the fields of ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance System) and in-vehicle human-machine interface (HMI). With the advancement of electrification, more and more new players are entering the market, and OEM and ODM manufacturers are also starting to independently develop chips to meet the demand for high-performance computing.


Chip manufacturers in the traditional mobile device field have also entered the automotive market, and competition is becoming increasingly fierce. In traditional automotive architectures, distributed ECUs (electronic control units) are generally used to control various modules, which have problems such as difficult upgrades, complex wiring, and high costs. With the development of electrification, automotive architecture is gradually shifting towards central computing and virtualization. Through virtualization technology, multiple ECU functions can be integrated into one computing unit, and functions can be continuously updated through remote upgrades (OTA) to improve user experience.


In the context of the current automotive market, Zhang Zheng further said that Imagination, as an IP company with a 39-year history, has been committed to the research and development of graphics processor technology. In particular, Imagination has been deeply involved in the automotive industry for more than 20 years. Since launching its first automotive product in cooperation with Renesas in 2004, its GPU product shipments have reached 13 billion, of which 395 million devices have been installed in vehicles.


Years of technological accumulation have enabled Imagination to provide a smartphone-like visual experience in digital cockpits, safety dashboards, and rear-seat entertainment, while providing traditional and emerging car manufacturers with an excellent user experience in terms of functional safety and multi-tasking. Imagination's GPU architecture is popular in the automotive field because it can meet the dual needs of vehicle cockpit display and autonomous driving computing. PowerVR GPU natively supports up to 8 virtual machines, which can complete all tasks on the vehicle while providing efficient rendering and high-performance computing capabilities. Not only that, Imagination and its partners have long invested in the field of functional safety and launched the XS product line for automotive needs. This product line continues to launch new features to meet functional safety requirements in a more flexible way and improve efficiency and safety. The research and development process follows a strict V-shaped process to ensure product quality.


After reviewing Imagination’s technology accumulation and the development of the automotive market, Zhang Zheng introduced the new product of this offline meeting, Imagination DXS GPU. Zhang Zheng said that the new generation of automotive GPU products will bring smarter driving, faster interaction, richer entertainment and lower power consumption to car consumers.


The DXS GPU represents Imagination’s latest achievement in the field of automotive GPUs. It is not only a high-performance graphics processor that can support the entertainment and interaction needs of all screens in the car, but also has a 50% improvement in hardware performance over the previous generation. The launch of the DXS GPU marks that Imagination’s improvement in AI performance has far exceeded 50%.


The design concept of DXS GPU perfectly matches the current trend of automotive architecture shifting from distributed to central computing. It not only provides computing performance that exceeds CPU, but also far exceeds NPU and accelerator SoC in programming flexibility, making DXS GPU an ideal choice for high-performance central computing.


One of the most eye-catching innovations of DXS GPU is its new functional safety solution - Distributed Safety Mechanism (DSM). This mechanism almost completely eliminates the performance and chip area losses of traditional functional safety solutions, setting a new standard for the safety performance of automotive GPUs. Functional safety is critical in automotive applications. It ensures that the vehicle's electronic systems can operate stably under various conditions, thereby ensuring the safety of drivers, passengers and pedestrians. Through its innovative distributed safety mechanism, DXS GPU not only improves the performance of the GPU, but also ensures functional safety, which is of great significance to the development of autonomous driving and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS).


Speaking of safety, as autonomous driving technology moves from the laboratory to reality, functional safety has become a focus of the automotive industry. Zhang Zheng said that in a laboratory environment, autonomous driving systems often lack the complexity and risk factors in real scenarios, such as pedestrians and obstacles. However, when autonomous vehicles hit the streets, functional safety becomes critical, as it is directly related to human safety and vehicle reliability.


The core goal of functional safety is to ensure that the autonomous driving system can execute according to the predetermined safety strategy when facing potential risks to avoid accidents. Any deviation in the execution of the autonomous driving system may lead to unpredictable consequences, which is an unbearable loss for enterprises, families and individuals. Therefore, functional safety has become an indispensable and important trend in the automotive field.


Functional safety is not a one-size-fits-all standard, but is divided according to different safety risk levels. For example, the in-vehicle entertainment system may not require strict functional safety assurance, while functions directly related to safety, such as body status display and pedestrian recognition, need to meet high-level functional safety requirements. In order to meet these diverse needs, Imagination provides corresponding solutions, such as using virtualization technology to decouple tasks of different safety levels, ensuring that key safety functions are not affected by other non-safety tasks, thereby achieving a safe and efficient autonomous driving experience.


After discussing functional safety, Zhang Zheng began to introduce the performance of the newly released DXS GPU.


He said that the DXS GPU introduced a new SPU unit in its design, which improved its hardware performance by 50%. The DXS GPU uses a 5nm process node, has a higher operating frequency, supports multi-core configuration, and can reach a main frequency of 1.5GHz in a quad-core configuration, providing 9 TFLOOS FP32 performance and 32 TOPS int 8 performance, while processing 288G pixels per second. The design of the DXS GPU also takes into account the yield of high-end process large chips, and uses multi-chiplet packaging technology to improve yield and design flexibility. The DXS GPU supports combining two chiplets into one GPU or using them separately as two independent GPUs, and achieves even distribution of workloads through flexible bus design.


In terms of SPU, DXS GPU has made a number of optimizations, including 2D double-speed texture processing technology, to cope with the growing demand for texture processing and improve performance. In addition, in response to the frequent switching of small and medium tasks in games such as Vulkan, DXS GPU has improved the pipeline data master control, reduced performance loss during task switching, and updated the firmware processor to improve task scheduling efficiency.


DXS GPU introduces new features such as variable resolution rendering and ASTC HDR support, which significantly improves game performance and efficiency. Compared with traditional graphics processing, DXS GPU has four times higher hardware performance than competing products, twice the performance per unit area in rendering tasks, and 28% higher performance per unit area in computing-centric graphics processing tasks.


In terms of safety, the distributed functional safety mechanism of DXS GPU doubles the performance of functional safety-related applications. DXS GPU has also been improved in software and AI, supporting FP16 half-precision floating point calculations and int 8 precision calculations, providing powerful AI computing capabilities. The ecosystem of DXS GPU is based on open standards such as OpenCL, Vulkan and one API, which is conducive to reducing R&D costs and market promotion.


The flexibility of DXS GPU enables the harmonious coexistence of different tasks, such as automatic parking and ADAS functions, through virtualization technology. In terms of safety, DXS GPU is committed to providing highly reliable ADAS computing results and ensuring functional safety at runtime.


Faced with the bandwidth and process node bottlenecks of semiconductor technology, DXS GPU improves the performance of AI workloads through architectural innovations such as FP16 functionality and dual-rate FP16 units. DXS GPU also reduces the bandwidth requirements of system products and reduces the limitations of ADAS implementation by increasing on-chip storage.

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Reference address:High performance, high security: Imagination DXS GPUs reshape in-vehicle computing

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