Imagination Blog

Many students of computer architecture study it at the theoretical level of data paths, control structures, and memory systems. But how these all fit together is often left to the imagination. The MIPSfpga course changes that. The MIPSfpga is the first unobfuscated, commercial softcore CPU that has been made available to all academics. With MIPSfpga, users can explore computer architecture … Continued

I don’t think many would disagree that the key technology trend of the 21st century so far has been the advent of mobile. However today I think we are on the verge of a huge shift towards another driving paradigm – smartness. Mobile has had huge social benefits – from connecting us to help and community, to enabling access to … Continued

As is well known, one of the pillars on which the success of the IoT rests is its requirement for a multitude of devices to be connected to the rest of the world via the internet. As such, it’s safe to assume that wireless communication will be the backbone that underpins this. The question is which technology is most suitable? … Continued

We’ve all come to rely on using GPS to track and direct us when we’re outside in our cars and bikes, but when we get inside a large indoor location, such as an airport, or a conference hall, we’re still, on the whole, having to rely on paper maps. To move us all on, the Wi-Fi Alliance has announced an … Continued

The other day one of my colleagues at Imagination pulled from her pocket an old, battered, but clearly much cherished, music player. I couldn’t help but comment on its age, but she was proud to still be using it and that the music contained on it was six years old! Retro, is the new cutting edge – you heard it … Continued

Smart home gateways reinvented for the IoT generation Monday, 12th June 1837 is a significant date in the telecommunications industry. On that day William Fothergill Cooke, along with Charles Wheatstone, a professor at King’s College London, were granted a patent for an invention that would ultimately become the basis for all digital wired communications. They invented the electric telegraph. Following … Continued

The future: it’s not what it was. When I was young in the 1980s, the technology depicted in TV shows and movies seemed fantastically futuristic. What’s remarkable, and arguably slightly disconcerting, is how much of it is becoming a reality. No, we can’t yet beam-up anywhere, but Star Trek’s communicator has long since become an everyday object to billions of … Continued

Linux has become the general purpose operating system of choice for embedded systems and is almost always supported for high-end SoCs developed by the semiconductor vendors. Most vendors use the open source Linux distribution, then build a custom distribution representing the device tree supported for the specific SoC, and include the necessary drivers for the peripherals on the SoC, as … Continued

This blog post introduces GRLAA (GRadient Line Anti-Aliasing), a relatively simple and efficient method designed to cope with aliased lines, which can often crop up in automotive navigation applications. In the discipline of signal processing, there is a specific sampling frequency called the Nyquist frequency. When sampling a signal at a frequency lower than the Nyquist frequency, the signal reconstructed … Continued

The automotive market is one of the most exciting sectors in the technology ecosystem, and as a result the industry is constantly fluctuating and evolving in order to keep at the forefront of new technology. This means the underlying hardware which powers the system must not only deliver great performance but must also be versatile. The automotive industry is a … Continued

Imagination is known for its chip IP for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets and has has a strong reputation as a market leader with regards to performance, power and area. Complementing this, Imagination also has IP related to ray tracing, a technique considered to be the ‘holy grail’ for computer graphics enabling the development of ultra-realistic lighting in … Continued

Having recently returned from another exciting Embedded Vision Summit show we’d like to share our thoughts in a blog post. This year’s event once again impressed, with compelling conversations and discussions about vision and surrounding technologies setting the event apart from other less focused conferences. After the show we came away with the feeling that machine learning was surely at … Continued

How MIPS virtualization for gateways brings business benefits to operators. The “Internet of Things” promises to make everyone’s lives simpler and easier. However, the abundance of IoT devices now being introduced to our homes is already beginning to become unmanageable. IoT devices are often accompanied by an IoT hub – essentially a small gateway, whose sole purpose is to act … Continued

The Internet of Things remains one of the hot topics of the day as it starts to come good on its promise to transform businesses and homes, with more and more devices gaining connectivity. Earlier this year, Gartner estimated that this year up to 8.4 billion ‘things’ will be connected with total spending reaching almost $2 trillion in 2017. By … Continued

It’s been six months or so since our last PowerVR Tools and SDK update but the latest version has arrived, bringing with it a number of enhancements. Tools In terms of our tools, we’ve carried out a number of improvements thanks to your feedback regarding the 2016 R2 release. First, let’s talk about PVRGeoPOD. The standalone version now features an … Continued