PowerVR GPU and NNA available on SiFive platform

Imagination Technologies joins SiFive’s DesignShare Ecosystem, Enabling RISC-V users to access industry-leading IP

London, UK; and San Mateo, California; 13th May 2019 – Imagination Technologies announces that it has joined SiFive’s DesignShare ecosystem, giving system designers easy access to its industry-leading PowerVR GPU and neural network accelerator (NNA) IP cores. The PowerVR GPU will be the first fully-featured GPU supporting the Vulkan® applications programming interface (API) available via the DesignShare ecosystem.

DesignShare reduces the upfront costs of acquiring IP for System-on-Chip (SoC) prototyping. Imagination’s PowerVR Series8XE GPU and PowerVR Series3NX NNA IP will be available for customers to use in their DesignShare SoCs, with the expectation of further Imagination IP being made available in the future to meet market demand. PowerVR’s integrated GPU and NNA software stack will enable customers to achieve the very best performance and flexibility. The PowerVR software has been designed to work with all processor architectures, including the rapidly-growing, open-standard RISC-V that is at the heart of the SiFive DesignShare ecosystem.

Neal Forse, senior director of product management, PowerVR, Imagination, says: “Joining SiFive’s DesignShare ecosystem was an easy decision for Imagination. We understand the challenges customers can face when it comes to designing new SoCs and welcome the innovative approach created by SiFive to address these challenges. By joining DesignShare, we will help customers overcome barriers and ultimately enable them get to market quicker with pioneering products.”

DesignShare provides efficient and pre-integrated IP solutions that make SoC prototyping more accessible to companies and teams of all sizes.

Mohit Gupta, vice president, SoC IP solutions, strategy and business development, SiFive; says: “We’re delighted to welcome Imagination into the DesignShare movement. Imagination is renowned for its industry-leading GPU IP and award-winning NNA IP. PowerVR’s support of APIs such as Vulkan, OpenCL™, Android NNAPI, and SYCL will deliver new opportunities for customer growth for the ecosystem. Together, we hope to inspire customers to challenge the norm and develop groundbreaking custom silicon. We’re excited to see the creativity that our collaboration inspires.”

The PowerVR GPU and NNA IP is available now through the DesignShare program. For more information, contact info@imagination.com or sales@sifive.com.

Imagination is co-hosting and delivering a keynote presentation at the SiFive Tech Symposium in Cambridge on Monday 13th May. For information, please visit https://sifivetechsymposium.com/agenda-cambridge/

SiFive is the first fabless provider of customized semiconductors based on the free and open RISC-V instruction set architecture. Founded by RISC-V inventors Andrew Waterman, Yunsup Lee and Krste Asanovic, SiFive democratizes access to custom silicon by helping system designers reduce time-to-market and realize cost savings with customized RISC-V based semiconductors. SiFive is located in Silicon Valley and has venture backing from Sutter Hill Ventures, Spark Capital and Osage University Partners. For more information, visit www.sifive.com.

About Imagination Technologies

Imagination is a global technology leader whose products touch the lives of billions of people across the globe. The company’s range of silicon IP (intellectual property) includes key processing blocks needed to create the SoCs (Systems on Chips) that power all mobile, consumer and embedded electronics. Its unique multimedia, vision & AI, and connectivity technologies enable its customers to get to market quickly with complete and differentiated SoC platforms. Imagination’s licensees include many of the world’s leading semiconductor manufacturers, innovative start-ups and OEMs/ODMs who are creating the world’s most iconic products. See www.imgtec.com.