Hitachi SH-Mobile and Imagination Technologies PowerVR® MBX Lite Provide Leading Solution for Mobile Phone 3D Graphic Applications

Solution Provides Cutting Edge Features, Short Time To Market For Phone Vendors

18 February 2003 - LONDON, UK - Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE:6501, NYSE:HIT) one of the world's leading global electronics companies and Imagination Technologies (LSE:IMG), a leader in system on-chip (SoC) Intellectual Property (IP), today announced that they have signed a new licensing agreement that will see Hitachi integrating Imagination’s PowerVR MBX Lite graphics core alongside Hitachi’s SH-Mobile (SuperH Mobile Application Processor) series targeting advanced mobile handsets.

The SH-Mobile processor is a high-performance 32-bit application processor core that allows high speed processing of multimedia applications for 2.5G and 3G mobile phone systems. PowerVR MBX Lite is a very compact and efficient 2D and 3D graphics-processing core for the handheld market, which enables the migration of modern content to mainstream mobile devices while minimising power-consumption and memory requirements.

Imagination and Hitachi have already established a strategic, multi-use licensing agreement for the integration of PowerVR® graphics and video cores alongside Hitachi’s SuperH family of RISC microprocessors to target a broad range of consumer entertainment and information devices. This relationship has resulted in content and application developers being highly familiar with the SuperH and PowerVR cores.

Next-generation mobile phone systems are witnessing higher multifunctionality with a variety of applications installed, such as games, advanced user interfaces and video clips. By using the two technologies Hitachi can develop high speed and low power consumption application processors with embedded Graphic Processor Unit (GPU) technology suitable for advanced mobile graphics applications.

The SH-Mobile works alongside the baseband LSI (Large Scale Integration) of the mobile phone and handles dedicated processing of multimedia applications such as audio and moving pictures. Up until now application processing has been executed on the baseband LSI processor but by using SH-Mobile it is possible to achieve high speed processing of applications without increasing processing load on the baseband LSI. 

This allows applications to be developed independently of the communication processing of the baseband LSI, enabling multimedia applications to be developed and introduced to the market much quicker.

PowerVR MBX Lite’s redundancy elimination results in very low power consumption and minimises external memory bandwidth, critical in SoC systems, and enabling the use of a single memory interface for both CPU and graphics. The scalability of PowerVR's 3D technology, its redundancy elimination, availability of standard graphics APIs on standard operating systems and its extensive content library make it an ideal technology to target this market alongside SH-Mobile.

About Hitachi 
Hitachi, Ltd., headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is a leading global electronics company, with approximately 320,000 employees worldwide. Fiscal 2001(ended March 31, 2002) consolidated sales totalled 7,994 billion yen ($60.1 billion). The company offers a wide range of systems, products and services in market sectors, including information systems, electronic devices, power and industrial systems, consumer products, materials and financial services. See: global.hitachi.com.

About Imagination Technologies 
Imagination Technologies Group plc is an international IP licensing company that develops, licenses and supplies market-leading graphics/video cores, real-time DSP-enabled multi-threaded processors, communication and broadcast technologies for the consumer entertainment and PC markets. It supplies both licensable IP (Intellectual Property) and related advanced development tools to leading semiconductor and consumer electronics companies worldwide. Imagination Technologies Group plc has its corporate headquarters in the United Kingdom and is publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange (FTSE:IMG).