Imagination Technologies has followed up its 10th gen IMG PowerVR A-Series GPUs with the new 7nm IMG B-Series GPUs which are claimed to deliver up to 30 per cent greater efficiency. The 2020 version of "the GPU of everything," naturally still caters for a wide range of use cases with 33 SKUs in the BXE, BXM, BXT, and the new BXS families - addressing markets such as mobile (premium to entry-level), consumer, IoT, microcontrollers, DTV and automotive. The range offers up to 6TFLOPs of performance in 25 per cent smaller packages, with up to 2.5x higher fill rate than competing IP cores.
While the IMG A-Series GPUs made a significant leap over previous generations, the B-Series evolves to deliver what is claimed to be the highest performance per mm for any GPU IP available. This is largely down to IMG's application of multi-core technology.
IMG asserts that a significant factor behind the gains in this generation comes from the B-Series' new multi-core architecture. Yes, the top-end A-Series 5XT GPUs were multicore, but the new processors are set up in a fundamentally different way, featuring what IMG calls a 'decentralised multi-core' design. This means cores can run either independently or combined to collaborate on the same task. Thus you will find that the IMG B-Series GPUs come in configurations of between 1 and four cores for double, triple or quadruple performance, without needing to radically redesign layouts. This makes it easy for customers to scale designs.
Advances delivered by the IMG B-Series GPUs aren't all to do with the core GPU, IMG has boosted the appeal of these GPUs with other features. A new image compression technology, IMGIC features throughout the range, which builds on IMG PVRIC4 with four modes of compression for flexibility between IQ and bandwidth.
New with the IMG B-Series GPUs is the BXS family - these are ISO 26262-capable GPUs designed for fast performance and reliability in automotive applications. See above for an overview of the BXS family, and below for an overview of all four families in the IMG B-Series.
- IMG BXE: Driving beautiful high-resolution displays – From 1 up to 16 pixels per clock (PPC) BXE scales from 720p to 8K with a range of GPUs specifically designed for UI rendering and entry-level gaming. BXE offers up to 25% area saving compared to previous generation cores and up to 2.5x the fill rate density compared to the competition.
- IMG BXM: Incredible graphics experiences – A range of high-efficiency performance cores providing an optimal balance of fill rate and compute in a compact silicon area for mid-range mobile gaming and complex UI solutions for DTV and other markets.
- IMG BXT: Unprecedented performance – Offering incredibly high performance for real-world applications, scaling from the device in your hand to the data centre. The flagship B-Series GPU is a four-core part generating 6.0 TFLOPs of performance, 192 Gigapixels per second and 24 TOPS for AI, delivering the industry’s highest performance per mm2.
- IMG BXS: The future of automotive GPUs – The BXS family are ISO 26262-capable GPUs, making them the most advanced automotive GPU IP cores ever created. Available as a complete range from entry to premium, delivering solutions for next-generation HMI, UI display, infotainment, digital cockpit, surround view, through to multi-teraflop compute-focused configurations for autonomy and ADAS.
The IMG B-Series is available today with high-end solutions using the cores, and wielding ray tracing, expected to launch in the second half of 2021.
