Feeling the power
Imagination is split into its technology IP division, which does business along similar lines to ARM in so much as it licenses its IP to chip makers, rather than designing chips of its own, and its PURE digital radio division, which does make the end products.
King-Smith heads up the marketing for the former and we commenced our interview by asking how closely aligned Imagination's fortunes are with those of Intel. "Intel is certainly one of our key customers and has been a very important licensee to us, both for graphics and video technologies, and they're applying that in quite a wide range of projects." he said.
"Two of those are already in the public domain: Atom and the CE 3100 set-top box chips. Our Power VR SGX graphics and VXD video decode are currently shipping in all the Intel Atom Z series."
What King-Smith was referring to is the GMA 500 graphics core that's found in the US15L/W system controller hubs (chipsets) that are used with the Atom Z series. These feature Power VR cores licensed from Imagination and claim to offer a full HD experience.
