2.5D Multi-Core Raster & Vector Graphics Processor for low-power SoCs with Microcontroller

Overview

NEMA^®| pico VG brings high-quality vector and raster graphics to user interfaces in the silicon area and power-constrained microcontroller market (MCU). This GPU superstar is the perfect candidate to support entry-level IoT platforms, battery-driven wearables, and embedded devices.
SoCs for those applications, with a 32-bit MCU (ARM® M class, ARC® EM5D, RISC-V) are resource constrained and need a powerful yet efficient vector GPU to provide high-quality graphics and stay within the power budget.
A vast SDK with powerful software tools is helping developers to create performant and compelling graphical user interfaces (GUI) in a fraction of time and stay within the power budget by utilizing less than 5% of the CPU performance.

Key Features

HARDWARE COMPONENTS
- Programmable Shader engine with a VLIW instruction set
- Command list based DMAs to minimize CPU overhead
- Primitive Rasterizer
- Texture Mapping Unit
- Blending Unit
- Display Controller (Optional)
DRAWING PRIMITIVES
- Pixel / Line / HLine / Vline drawing
- Filled rectangles
- Triangles (Gouraud Shaded)
- Quadrilateral
- Cubic Bezier (Cubic/SCubic)
- Quadratic Bezier (Quad/SQuad)
- Arcs
- Polygon
- Polyline
SHAPES
- Circular ring with round caps
- Ellipse
- Circle
- Rectangle
- Line
PAINT
- Solid Color
- Textures (e.g. RGBA8888, RGB565, Palette based (LUT), TSC™4, TSC™ 6, TSC™ 6A etc)
- Linear Gradient with multiple stops
- Radial Gradient with multiple stops
- Conical Gradient with multiple stops
STROKING
- Variable stroke-width
- Bevel join style
IMAGE TRANSFORMATION
- Texture mapping
- Point sampling
- Bilinear filtering
- Blit support
- Rotation any angle
- Mirroring
- Stretch (independently on x and y axis)
- Source and/or destination color keying
- Format conversions on the fly
- 3D Perspective Correct Projections
TEXTURE WRAPPING
- Clamp
- Border (single color)
- Repeat
- Mirror
PATH TRANSFORMATIONS
- 3x3 matrix transformations
TEXT RENDERING SUPPORTS
- Bitmap antialiased (A1 / A2 / A4 / A8)
- Vector fonts – offline conversion from .TTF
- Font Kerning
- Unicode (UTF8)
- Text Alignment:
  - Top/Bottom/Middle/Even
  - Left/Right/Middle/Even
- COLOR FORMATS
  - 32-bit RGBA8888 / BGRA8888 / ABGR8888
  - 24-bit RGB
  - 16-bit RGBA5551 / RGB565
  - 8-bit ?8/ L8 / RGB332
  - 4-bit A4/L4
  - 2-bit A2/L2
  - 1-bit A1/L1
  - YUV Read Only
  - TSC™
- COMPRESSION SCHEMES (Optional)
  - TSC™4 (4 bits per pixel)
  - TSC™6 / TSC™ 6a (6 bits per pixel w/o alpha)
- BLENDING SUPPORT
  - Fully Programmable Alpha blending modes (source and destination)
  - Source/Destination color keying
  - Porter-Duff Blending
- ANTI-ALIASING
  - 8x MSAA per edge

Block Diagram

Applications

Small to Mid-Sized Displays (1,5" - 10")
Wearables: Smart-/Fitness -/Health watches, Eyewear
Mobility: e-Bike / Scooter
Home Appliances-/ Control -/ Entertainment: Fridge, Washing Machine, Thermostat, Audio, Video
Industrial: PoS / PoI Terminals

Deliverables

SystemVerilog RTL
- GUI configurator for the configuration of NEMA®|
pico VG parameters
- OS drivers
- Graphics API software libraries
- Software Development Kit
- Platform Verification Suite
  - System integration tests
  - Regression suite
  - Scripts for: Synthesis, Static code analysis (Lint) - clock domain crossing (CDC), Logic Equivalence Check (LEC)

Technical Specifications

Foundry, Node

synthesizable RTL

Maturity

silicon proven

Availability

now

Request Info