Imagination Technologies Licenses Forte's CellMath IP and Tools

Software Used for Design, Support of POWERVR Graphics Cores

SAN JOSE, CALIF. --  November 2, 2010 -- Imagination Technologies of Hertfordshire, United Kingdom, signed an agreement to extend the license of Forte Design Systems’ software for the continued design and support of its advanced, current-generation POWERVR graphics intellectual property (IP) cores.

Imagination uses Forte’s CellMath Optimizer to help enable its licensing partners to optimize silicon efficiency and performance in their target process technology.  As part of this latest agreement, Imagination will manage all distribution and support of the Forte tools for all its licensees.

“Forte’s CellMath tools and IP are a small but significant part of our POWERVR SGX and VGX IP deliverables,” says Martin Ashton, vice president of engineering for POWERVR visual IP cores at Imagination.  “The change in licensing and responsibilities will enable us to provide a better IP delivery and support service as part of our commitment to provide a one-stop total solution for SoC IP for our customers.”

“Imagination Technologies has proven that high-quality design IP is an essential part of SoC design,” adds Sean Dart, president and chief executive officer of Forte Design Systems.  “Its leading-edge graphics processors and well-deserving reputation makes us proud to have our tools as a component of its design flow.”

Forte’s CellMath Designer™ datapath synthesis and CellMath IP software enables designers working at the register transfer level (RTL) to reduce area, improve performance and lower power consumption. 

The CellMath Floating Point IP library contains highly optimized floating point architectures that can be configured for the needed bit widths or rounding modes.  Floating point implementations can be configured with IEEE precision or with reduced precision for graphics or other applications where smaller, faster implementations are required.  Available functions include adders, multipliers, dividers, square root, dot-product, reciprocal square root, exponential and logarithm.  The library also contains multi-function parts that can produce any of these floating point functions using shared resources to reduce the combined area. 

About Imagination Technologies

Imagination Technologies Group plc (LSE: IMG) –– a global leader in multimedia and communication technologies –– creates and licenses market-leading processor cores for graphics, video, multi-threaded embedded processing/DSP and multi-standard communications applications.  These silicon intellectual property (IP) solutions for systems-on-chip (SoC) are complemented by platform level IP and services, a strong array of software tools and drivers and extensive developer and middleware ecosystems.  Target markets include mobile phone, handheld multimedia, home consumer entertainment, mobile and low-power computing, and in-car electronics.  Its licensees include many of the leading semiconductor and consumer electronics companies.  Imagination has corporate headquarters in the United Kingdom, with sales and R&D offices worldwide.  See: www.imgtec.com.

About Forte Design Systems

Forte Design Systems is a leading provider of software products that enable design at a higher level of abstraction and improve design results.  Its innovative synthesis technologies and intellectual property offerings allow design teams creating complex electronic chips and systems to reduce their overall design and verification time.  More than half of the top 20 worldwide semiconductor companies use Forte’s products in production today for ASIC, SoC and FPGA design.  Forte is headquartered in San Jose, Calif., with additional offices in England, Japan, Korea and the United States.  For more information, visit www.ForteDS.com.