Imagination Launches The PowerVR Series 8XE GPUs for mobile

[dark zero]

Imagination Launches The PowerVR Series 8XE GPUs; Lower Silicon Areas With Increased Fillrate

The onset of MWC in Barcelona has finally started to bring its fair share of launches and upgrades that show us how fast things evolve in the smartphone, or the tech world in general. We’ve finally gotten to take a look at Samsung’s Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge, LG’s G5 and a variety of devices from the Japanese manufacturer Sony. For mobile GPUs, Imagination Technologies has also announced its PowerVR Series 8XE Family.

This marks a shift in strategy for the company, as previously we’ve seen both the PowerVR XE and the PowerVR XT families launched together. Perhaps the company has got something very highly secretive for the XT lineup this time around or maybe things aren’t final on the lineup. So today we get to see what upgrades have been brought on the 8XE lineup.
The key essence of the 8XE lineup is to bring more flagship level features to entry and middle level devices according to the company, and to achieve this, Imagination has made some very precise changes on the GE8200 and GE8300. For starters, the 8XE series manages to achieve the same pixel fillrate with a 25% reduced silicon area, to drive down costs without affecting overall performance.

The comapny also claims that the 8XE series can double the fillrate performance offered per mm^2 when compared to some of the other offerings out there. The lineup also sees OpenGL ES 3.2 and support for Vulkan brought on board. This should open up a lot of applications and games in particular for middle-entry level users. We also see OmniShield make it on board the lineup, indicating a more serious approach towards lower cost devices.
The addition of Vulkan on the 8XE lineup will also enable manufacturers to further improve the chipset’s processor owing to reduced driver overhead. Moving towards the two GE8200 and GE8300 designs, the 8200 brings 2 pixels/clock, 8 pipelines and the 8300 coming with 16 and 4 pipelines and pixels/clock respectively. These mark subtle changes to the 8XE lineup aimed towards adding a couple of critical features to the devices that’l end up using them rather than drastic changes.


Source: http://wccftech.com/imagination-powervr-series8xe/

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Ok, is not the big player, however I can't ignore them anymore. Is interesting that an old player finally gets some relevance there. I wonder if their XT GPU will target the low tier Laptops.... it would be interesting to watch a 3rd competitor.

 

[SimianR]

Bring back the Kyro desktop cards :sneaky:

 

[ShintaiDK]

The CEO bailed without warning. I think that tells us how good the 8 series will really be.

 

[NTMBK]

The CEO bailed without warning. I think that tells us how good the 8 series will really be.

That may have more to do with Apple working on their own internally designed GPU.

 

[Arachnotronic]

That may have more to do with Apple working on their own internally designed GPU.

I think it has more to do with the fact that ARMH is mercilessly beating the pulp out of ImgTec. Outside of Apple, what major SoC uses PowerVR these days? It's all Mali if it's not a QCOM chip.

Also, ImgTec's financial struggles probably makes it all the more important that Apple do its own GPU arch. Don't want your future tied to the "AMD" of mobile GPU IP when you are a company like Apple.

 

[NTMBK]

I think it has more to do with the fact that ARMH is mercilessly beating the pulp out of ImgTec. Outside of Apple, what flagship SoC uses PowerVR these days? It's all Mali.

Also, ImgTec's financial struggles probably makes it all the more important that Apple do its own GPU arch. Don't want your mast tied to the "AMD" of mobile GPU IP.

Yup, kind of hard to beat the "bundle deal" from ARM. Their MIPS designs don't seem to be going anywhere either.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Yup, kind of hard to beat the "bundle deal" from ARM. Their MIPS designs don't seem to be going anywhere either.

From the comments section of EETimes (via Beyond3D):

I was an employee of MIPS and lived through the aquisition by Imagination. We (MIPS) employees were excited by the aquisition since it seemed like a perfect fit between a CPU and graphics IP company. By that time MIPS was down to the bare minimum, experiencing tremendous competition from ARM. We looked forward to the resources and capabilities Imagination could bring.

To our shock Imagination was a disorganized mess of a company and proceeded to replace modern businesss processes MIPS had with their paper or wildly out of date software systems. The MIPS finance system was replaced with Quickbooks! IMG was only traded on the London exchange and as such had almost no analyst coverage. Any purchase over $5,000 had to be signed off by the CEO, it would take weeks/months/never for decidions to be made. Although the CEO seemed to be a genuinly honest person the "vision" he brought was not much more that one might read from IEEE Spectrum or by attending a GSA meeting.

Imagination would aquire companies and then let them atrify to a few otherwise un-employable or hopelessly optimistic employees, Nethra, Caustic, MIPS and so on. There were the very odd relationships they had with startups where Imagination exec's would be on the board of a startup that Imagination was investing in and recieve non GAAP comp arrangements (to be fair this might be considered normal in England). There was the Pure Digital division that was running a multi-hundred person group using spreadsheets. There was the "Flow" division doing who knows what which eventually was morphed into something IoT. There was the HelloSoft division that was pumping money into a sub-division in India doing development on VOIP software that nobody wanted. They built a palacial office park (usually mean death for any company) in the UK with an interior design well suited for a department store but horrible for a intellectual property company where engineers need to sit un-distracted for long periods of time doing RTL or software.

The CEO ran Imagination like a little boy with a pocket full of cash, that cash was the license fees from their last big customer, Apple. Sadly both Imagination and MIPS have some really great employees who work very hard and will never be properly rewarded for their many years of dedication. Bonfire of the vanities.

Shame on the board for taking soooo long to do something, perhaps too little too late!

http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1328932

 

[NTMBK]

From the comments section of EETimes (via Beyond3D):



http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1328932

Oh, yikes. Surprised it took this long for them to lose their grip on the mobile graphics market, if things are really that bad. No wonder ARM thought it was worth taking a run at them.

 

[Exophase]

I think it has more to do with the fact that ARMH is mercilessly beating the pulp out of ImgTec. Outside of Apple, what major SoC uses PowerVR these days? It's all Mali if it's not a QCOM chip.

Guess it depends on what you call major, these are the SoCs makers I can find information on:

- MediaTek currently uses Mali and PowerVR about equally, although I have no idea what the volume or revenue divide is like
- Allwinner and Rockchip use both but PowerVR less than Mali
- Samsung used PowerVR a couple of times in the past but shows no signs of ever switching to it and currently use Mali everywhere
- Actions Semiconductor uses PowerVR exclusively now, but they're mainly limited to cheap low end set-tops and the like
- Amlogic, HiSilicon, Spreadtrum and Leadcore are pure Mali
- Ingenic's last SoC had PowerVR but that was like 2012 and they had an uncompetitive MIPS solution so they probably don't amount to anything now

IMG has surely been hurt by TI shedding their mobile SoC division which used to use them exclusively. And Intel which hasn't really been selling Atoms with PowerVR anywhere for a while. They also lost on those ST-Ericsson NovaThor SoCs that never materialized.

The one I really don't get is Vivante. I see places like SemiAccurate playing them up like they're doing well but none of the SoC makers I've listed have used them after 2013. The only one I'm aware of that's using them is Marvell and mainly just in their TV/set-top chips and maybe some ancient apps processors that no one uses.

 

[William Gaatjes]

Bring back the Kyro desktop cards :sneaky:

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY !

I still have one laying around. KYRO ST4500 from Hercules. (Designed by Imagine Technologies, fabbed by ST) if i remember correctly.

Was fun playing unreal tournament and half life on it.

 

[William Gaatjes]

From the comments section of EETimes (via Beyond3D):

I was an employee of MIPS and lived through the aquisition by Imagination. We (MIPS) employees were excited by the aquisition since it seemed like a perfect fit between a CPU and graphics IP company. By that time MIPS was down to the bare minimum, experiencing tremendous competition from ARM. We looked forward to the resources and capabilities Imagination could bring.

To our shock Imagination was a disorganized mess of a company and proceeded to replace modern businesss processes MIPS had with their paper or wildly out of date software systems. The MIPS finance system was replaced with Quickbooks! IMG was only traded on the London exchange and as such had almost no analyst coverage. Any purchase over $5,000 had to be signed off by the CEO, it would take weeks/months/never for decidions to be made. Although the CEO seemed to be a genuinly honest person the "vision" he brought was not much more that one might read from IEEE Spectrum or by attending a GSA meeting.

Imagination would aquire companies and then let them atrify to a few otherwise un-employable or hopelessly optimistic employees, Nethra, Caustic, MIPS and so on. There were the very odd relationships they had with startups where Imagination exec's would be on the board of a startup that Imagination was investing in and recieve non GAAP comp arrangements (to be fair this might be considered normal in England). There was the Pure Digital division that was running a multi-hundred person group using spreadsheets. There was the "Flow" division doing who knows what which eventually was morphed into something IoT. There was the HelloSoft division that was pumping money into a sub-division in India doing development on VOIP software that nobody wanted. They built a palacial office park (usually mean death for any company) in the UK with an interior design well suited for a department store but horrible for a intellectual property company where engineers need to sit un-distracted for long periods of time doing RTL or software.

The CEO ran Imagination like a little boy with a pocket full of cash, that cash was the license fees from their last big customer, Apple. Sadly both Imagination and MIPS have some really great employees who work very hard and will never be properly rewarded for their many years of dedication. Bonfire of the vanities.

Shame on the board for taking soooo long to do something, perhaps too little too late!

http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1328932

So sad story to read.