Re-imagining Imagination Technologies

By Kevin Krewell, EETimes (March 3, 2024)

Imagination Technologies can trace its roots back to 1985 and has always been based in the United Kingdom (UK). The company has had its share of challenges over the years and is in the process of rebooting with a new management team, but continues to be primarily a graphics IP company with its PowerVR GPU. The key to Imagination’s rebirth is a new management team that Canyon Bridge Capital Partners, a private equity fund that owns the company, has brought in. The company recruited new members from several companies, including Arm, Broadcom, Cadence, CSR, Graphcore, Intel, Microsoft, Nokie, Qualcomm and Samsung, mostly from Imagination’s home country, the UK.

Its GPU is a natural fit with RISC-V CPUs. The Arm Mali graphics core is the only other readily available and capable IP available for 3D graphics (graphics IP is available from Verisilicon as its Vivante GPU, but its limited to 2.5D). It’s not likely that a RISC-V designer will feel comfortable working with an Arm GPU for their design, making Imagination the next logical solution. To that end, Imagination wanted to offer a complete SoC solution by adding its own RISC-V CPU IP cores to go with its GPUs.

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