Multimedia and connectivity technologies transforming much wider markets than just smartphones, says Imagination

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15 November 2011

Smart technologies powering smart devices is key

Tokyo, Japan: Imagination Technologies, a leadingmultimedia and communications technologies company, says that it believes threekey trends will transform the consumer electronics industry and also drive manynew vital emerging markets in the next few years. These trends are:

1.     Parallel software revolution: high performance,ultra-low power GPUs (graphics processing units) that are best known for poweringthe user interfaces and games in smartphones today will become the ‘heavylifting’ processors of tomorrows SoCs. GPUs will become vastly more powerfulthanks to their scalable parallel processing capabilities, triggering a massmarket parallel software revolution.

2.     Connected products have just begun: connectivity tothe internet will become a ’must-have’ feature for not only every consumerproduct, but an emerging array of broader products from healthcare equipment tohome automation systems, resulting in billions of new connected products.

3.     On-chip RPUs: highly programmable communications capabilities,built using RPUs (radio processing unit) that support a broad range of majorglobal connectivity and broadcast receiver standards, will be essential for thenext wave of integration. RPUs will become fully integrated on-chip, just asImagination predicted would happen for GPUs more than ten years ago, to achievethe high performance, low cost, low power consumption characteristics that consumerand emerging markets will expect as standard.

Say Tony King-Smith, VP marketing, Imagination: “Imagination’s business hasalways been focused on enabling new markets as well as taking full advantage ofdiscontinuities in the evolution of more established and familiar productcategories. Our PowerVR GPU and VPU (video processor) technologies continue toenable profound transformations in user experiences in an ever broader array ofconsumer and mobile products, resulting in consumers now expecting these sameuser experiences on every device they use.

“Given our experience in these markets, and our strategic relationshipswith many of the world’s leading semiconductor, end product, content, applicationsand internet technology companies, we are increasingly confident that our EnsigmaRPU communications IP cores, complemented by our Meta connected processors and Flowconnectivity technologies, are destined to power many of the next wave of ubiquitouscloud-connected smart devices and systems throughout the home, car, office andfactory, as well as enabling innovative new mobile and embedded products thattouch everyone’s lives.”

GPUs are transforming the futureof processing as well as graphics

Imagination made its name as a leader in development of underlyingmultimedia and communications technologies now found in many of today’s mostinnovative products. More than ten years ago key engineers in Imagination sawthe emerging trend to integrate high performance graphics and video on-chipalongside CPU, memory and other key functions to enable SoCs (systems on chip).As a result of that vision, its PowerVR GPU technology for OpenGL, OpenGL ES,OpenCL, DirectX and other APIs is the de facto standard in embedded and mobilewith over 500m devices shipped and 70% market share, while its video decodersand encoders are at the heart of more than 200m devices.

Having seen the revolution in user experiences in mobile thanks to theprocessing power of GPUs, consumers now expect that same experience everywhere– from TVs and hi-fi equipment to any device they interact with.

However, the GPU revolution has barely started. Over the next few years,the rise in available GPU processing power will transform much more than theuser interfaces and gaming experiences of hundreds of millions of phones andtablets. The emergence of general-purpose GPU computing (GPGPU) will result insophisticated algorithms, previously considered to be the sole domain of highend computers, starting to find their way into consumer products – running onthe same GPUs already used for these rich GPU-based user experiences. Since aGPU is a truly parallel processor, performance scales efficiently with advancesin silicon processes, and becomes significantly more powerful the more executionunits are added. This means that at last the parallel software revolution canbegin, thanks to the enormous installed base of suitable GPUs that are nowstarting to proliferate in the market, combined with the emergence of industrystandards such as Khronos Group’s OpenCL and Google’s Renderscript Compute toprogram them.

Imagination’s next generation PowerVR Series6 graphics architecture,codenamed ‘Rogue’, has already been adopted by many of the world’s leading players,and will spearhead this transformation across many markets by delivering exceptionalperformance per mm2 and per mW. These next generation PowerVR GPUs will bringsupercomputer class parallel processing to the mobile and consumer world, aswell as stunning next generation graphics. PowerVR Series6 GPUs have alreadybeen selected by eight partners, with more engagements in the pipeline.

Connecting Processors andProducts to the Cloud drives ‘The Internet of Everything’

The rise of Cloud technologies iscreating exciting new markets and discontinuities in existing ones as alldevices evolve to take advantage of connectivity. New applications inhealthcare, home automation, security, smart energy and elsewhere will allincreasingly follow the trend of computing and smart phones, and begin takingadvantage of significantly enhanced functionality enabled by Cloud connectivity.And as consumers continue to embrace their world in the Cloud, so everythingfrom cars to toasters will need to become connected.

However, deploying Cloudconnectivity is far more complex than simply having a Wi-Fi port on a device.The services and infrastructure needed to ensure any connected products delivereverything expected by today’s smartphone-equipped consumer are complex andbroad. Bringing together everything needed to make these products ‘just work’is a challenge for all but the biggest engineering teams.

Imagination is unique in deliveringmany of the underlying technologies needed to make these connected smartsystems happen. From its Ensigma communications RPU (radio processor) IP toenable ubiquitous connectivity, to its Meta connected processors, Flowtechnologies and FlowWorld portal, Imagination is creating a comprehensive technologyinfrastructure from the device to the Cloud for anyone contemplating creating aCloud-connected product. By delivering this unique ‘shrink-wrapped’connectivity technology portfolio, together with a growing ecosystem of Cloudservices providers, Imagination will enable engineering teams to create a broadrange of tomorrow’s connected solutions for a global market. The Ensigma RPU’s implementationsof more than 20 standards, with more to come, including every major HD and SDTV as well as radio broadcast receiver standard, together with 802.11a/b/g/nWi-Fi and Bluetooth v3.0 connectivity standard today, will enable truly global nextgeneration connected smart devices.

Imagination's platform solutions also include the highly integrated MetaProfamily of connected processor reference platforms, being demonstrated for thefirst time publicly in Japan this week. Based on SoCs built from Imagination’sMeta processor IP and Ensigma RPU communications IP families, these completesystems, incorporating Flow technologies, enable systems designers to developthe next generation of connected products and solutions, with the backing ofour growing portfolio of Cloud-based services from both Imagination and itspartners.

SoC Integration of highperformance GPUs and RPUs is Unstoppable

More than ten years ago, Imagination forecast that on-chip GPUsalongside CPUs would become the norm. Today, that forecast has become reality. However, therelentless demand for lower cost and power while increasing performance andfunctionality means that the next logical step is to integrate not only thegraphics and video on-chip, but the communications too. SoCs must be sold inhigh volume to be commercially viable, which has historically meant thatcommunications has remained off-chip due to the proliferation of regionalstandards.

However, thanks to multi-standard, multi-streamsolutions such as Imagination’s Ensigma Series3 RPU, SoC designers can nowintegrate all the communications functionality they need, and configure it toany target market by software. In the same way that integrating GPUs and VPUs(video processors) on-chip is enabling multimedia everywhere, so the next waveof integration is now arriving thanks to the RPU.

Imagination has been designing SoC solutions for itspartners for many years, enabling it to help its partners create total SoCsolutions a growing set of target markets. The Toumaz TZ1090 ‘Xenif’ SoC usedon the MetaPro ‘Minimorph’ reference platform is a recent example of what ispossible. 

Other technologies disruptingmarkets from Imagination

Imagination will also be demonstrating technologies that will be drivingother key industry trends including:

·      Ray-tracingtechnologies for cinematic-quality interactive graphics. Thanks to itsinnovative new ray tracing technologies, Imagination and its professionalgraphics group Caustic Professional will be bringing a series of innovative newproducts to market throughout 2012, initially targeting professional CAD marketsas well as advanced game asset development and the creative media industries.Imagination will ultimately bring these technologies to the mobile and embeddeddevice market as part of future generations of its PowerVR GPU IP cores

·      VoLTE (voiceover LTE) and V.VoIP (video and voice over IP) technologies that will transformhow voice and video calls are made as IP replaces circuit-switched calltechnologies. Imagination and its telecoms technology group HelloSoft V.VoIP continueto expand its unique portfolio of VoLTE and V.VoIP voice and video SDKs,delivering a consistent cross-platform carrier-grade experience across everymajor mobile and consumer platform

See Imagination

Imagination’s technology is shipped in devices from many of the world’sleading brands, with over half a billion products incorporating Imagination’stechnologies shipped (as of May 2011). Imagination’s licensees include many of theworld’s leading semiconductor and OEM companies.

Imagination will be demonstrating its latest IP technologies for mobilephone multimedia and communications, handheld multimedia, home consumer, mobilecomputing and in-car electronics at leading industry events world-wide in 2011and 2012, including:

EmbeddedTechnology 2011, Yokohama, Japan, November 16-18 2011

AutodeskUniversity 2011, Los Angeles, USA, December 29-30 2011

CES 2012, Las Vegas, USA, January 10-13 2012

MWC 2012, Barcelona, Spain, February 27-March 1 2012

GDC 2012, San Francisco, USA, March 7-9 2012

ESCSilicon Valley 2012, San Jose, USA, March 27-29 2012

FutureWorld Symposium 2012, London, UK, April 24-25 2012

Eurographics 2012, Sardinia, Italy, UK, May 13-18 2012

Siggraph 2012, Los Angeles, USA, August 7-9 2012 

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With Imagination: http://withimagination.imgtec.com
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About Imagination Technologies

ImaginationTechnologies Group plc (LSE:IMG) – a global leader in multimedia andcommunication technologies – creates and licenses market-leading multimedia IPcores for graphics, video, and display processing, multi-threaded embeddedprocessing/DSP cores and multi-standard communications and connectivityprocessors. These silicon intellectual property (IP) solutions forsystems-on-chip (SoC) are complemented by platform level IP and services, astrong array of software tools and drivers and extensive developer andmiddleware ecosystems. Target markets include mobile phone, handheldmultimedia, home consumer entertainment, mobile and low-power computing, andin-car electronics. Its licensees include many of the leading semiconductor andconsumer electronics companies. Imagination has corporate headquarters in theUnited Kingdom and US headquarters in Sunnyvale, California, with sales andR&D offices worldwide. See:www.imgtec.com

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