Our Technology division produces three IP product families: POWERVR visual IP, ENSIGMA communications IP, and META multi-threaded processor/DSP IP. By combining one or more of these in their SoCs, our customers can create semiconductor solutions for a whole world of products.
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Our POWERVR visual IP core family for graphics, video and display consists of the industry’s leading graphics accelerators for applications in the mobile, consumer electronics and computing segments. The exceptionally high performance and low power requirements of these cores enable a powerful and flexible solution for all
forms of multimedia processing, including 3D/2D/vector graphics, general purpose processing (GP-GPU)
and image processing.
"I like knowing that what I do is making a real difference and the satisfaction that comes from holding a mobile phone in your hand and knowing that it’s all your hard work drawing all those millions of triangles on the screen."
Mark, Graduate Design Engineer
POWERVR graphics IP cores have been selected by industry leaders including Apple, TI, Intel, NEC, Renesas, Samsung and NXP. As of September 2009 over 175 million devices, in more than 250 products, have shipped with POWERVR technology inside. POWERVR is already the de facto standard for mobile graphics
in phones and media players. POWERVR is now defining a new era of widespread 3D graphics and HD video from navigation to gaming, computing, STB/TV and more.
The number of broadcast and communication standards used worldwide continues to grow. Imagination’s ENSIGMA UCCP IP enables multiple analogue and digital TV, mobile TV, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and digital and analogue radio reception on a single device. Ideal for global consumer electronics companies, our IP has low power requirements, is highly programmable, and uses a silicon area so small that it rivals many of the industry’s leading single-standard solutions.
META is a revolutionary multi-threaded RISC/DSP processor core architecture capable of running many
real-time tasks simultaneously – a key requirement of modern embedded applications. The META product line includes a range of processor cores used in our customers chips and our application-specific IP cores.
We also develop our own complete Linux kernel, using the latest open-source releases and working with leading industry partners. META multi-threaded processors power the majority of digital radios in the UK together with a range of other embedded applications such as digital TVs.
Activities within the META team are very diverse and include VHDL coding of core functionality and peripherals, SoC integration, design verification, programming tools, porting operating systems such
as Linux, and much more.
Our sophisticated CODESCAPE development tools enable customers to prototype and integrate their SoC designs as quickly as possible. This world-class integrated development environment allows customers to work in one consistent toolchain environment, while developing, debugging and characterising the software working within each IP core. This unique approach substantially improves SoC software development times, whilst providing access to the full capabilities of our IP cores.
IMGworks is our internal SoC development group. It’s activities encompass the complete SoC design
cycle from customer engagement through to specification, implementation, design for test (DFT), verification, static timing analysis (STA), physical design and finally GDSII handover to a silicon foundry for manufacture. The projects are challenging and cover all the product areas addressed by our IP portfolio, ranging from single block cores to multi-million gate designs. IMGworks has developed a state of the art design flow utilising the most advanced EDA tools and targeting the latest silicon processes. This SoC design facility enables us to create both custom chip solutions for our IP customers, and also to create generic platform
SoC solutions to address key market areas such as digital TV, digital radio and multimedia processing.
The Product Management department is responsible for all aspects of delivering and supporting Imagination’s technology deliverables to a wide range of semiconductor and software partners. A key goal is to ensure that the Imagination technology gets to market as fast as possible by providing the necessary support and training to our licensees. The Quality Assurance team supports delivery of the next generation of Visual IP cores, working on our test automation framework, developing test suites and providing feedback to software developers and product management to ensure our products are meet our quality standards.
