SoCs in New Context Look beyond PPA

SoCs in New Context Look beyond PPA
by Pawan Fangaria on 03-21-2015 at 7:00 am

If we look back in the last century, performance and area were two main criteria for semiconductor chip design. All design tools and flows were concentrated towards optimizing those two aspects. As a result, density of chips started increasing and power became a critical factor. Now, Power, Performance and Area (PPA) are looked… Read More


How Imagination tested the PowerVR Series6XT

How Imagination tested the PowerVR Series6XT
by Don Dingee on 01-23-2015 at 10:00 pm

We have been hearing for some time about the Synopsys HAPS-70 and how they have co-created the hardware and software architecture for FPGA-based prototyping with their customers. Now, we see details published by Synopsys on how they collaborated with Imagination on the design of the PowerVR Series6XT GPU.

The first thing to come… Read More


‘Tis the season for 4K UHD and HEVC

‘Tis the season for 4K UHD and HEVC
by Don Dingee on 11-26-2014 at 4:00 pm

4K UHD TVs were all dressed up at CES 2014 with no content to show. The good news for the 2014 holiday season is the industry has converged on one set of standards for display, interfacing, and encoding, so consumers should not be left marooned in an instant replay of the 3DTV hype-crash cycle. It may be a bit longer before everyone can… Read More


GPU Benchmarks? Try to See the Complete Picture…

GPU Benchmarks? Try to See the Complete Picture…
by Eric Esteve on 10-15-2014 at 3:29 am

We all know benchmarks, but do we really understand benchmark results? Benchmark users should always look beyond the simple score when making in-depth technical analysis and request to see all the facts. There are many graphics benchmarks to choose from but let’s name today these three below:

3DMark Ice Stormfrom Futuremark… Read More


Atmel Licenses Mali and Security from ARM

Atmel Licenses Mali and Security from ARM
by Paul McLellan on 07-24-2014 at 7:01 am

Atmel (and ARM) announced yesterday that Atmel has licensed a portfolio of ARM IP for devices that require video, image and display capabilities. This portfolio includes Cortex-A7 (a 32-bit core), Mali-V500 (a video accelerator), Mali-DP500 (a display processor) and TrustZone technology (security technology). These can… Read More


Xilinx’s UltraScale vs Arria 10 – Non dolet, Paete

Xilinx’s UltraScale vs Arria 10 – Non dolet, Paete
by Luke Miller on 03-18-2014 at 9:30 pm

The DSP48E2 (I do not come up with these names… Could have named it a multiplier thingy) in the Xilinx 20nm UltraScale family (I do not come up with these names… Could of named it Virtex-8, or Luke-8) is simply amazing. Today was good, as I began playing with UltraScale tools and seeing how the DSP checks out. I also encourage you to check… Read More


ASTC and the new midrange ARM Mali-T720 GPU

ASTC and the new midrange ARM Mali-T720 GPU
by Don Dingee on 02-11-2014 at 3:00 pm

When we last visited texture compression technology for OpenGL ES on mobile GPUs, we mentioned Squish image quality results in passing, but weren’t able to explore a key technology at the top of the results. With today’s introduction of the ARM Mali-T720 GPU IP, let’s look at the texture compression technology inside: Adaptive… Read More


Imagination’s New GPU Cores

Imagination’s New GPU Cores
by Paul McLellan on 01-06-2014 at 9:00 am

This morning Imagination announced their latest GPU cores, including the world’s smallest fully-featured OpenGL ES3.0/OpenCL GPU core. More on that below. And it is the Internet…and graphics…so cats. Graphically rendered cats.

The first core is a a high end core new generation PowerVR Series6XT architecture… Read More


How Do You Do Computational Photography at HD Video Rates?

How Do You Do Computational Photography at HD Video Rates?
by Paul McLellan on 09-18-2013 at 2:22 pm

Increasingly, a GPU is misnamed as a “graphics” processing unit. They are really specialized architecture highly parallel compute engines. You can use these compute engines for graphics, of course, but people are inventive and find ways of using GPUs for other tasks that can take advantage of the highly parallel… Read More


Imagination Has More Stuff Than You…Imagine

Imagination Has More Stuff Than You…Imagine
by Paul McLellan on 08-29-2013 at 1:04 pm

Imagination seems to be well known for a couple of things. Firstly, everyone knows that it is the graphics processor used in the iPhone and the iPad and lots of other phones. And they know that Imagination acquired MIPS at the start of this year.

But what people don’t seem to really appreciate is just what a huge portfolio of IP… Read More