DENSO licenses Imagination’s newest MIPS CPU and PowerVR GPU to drive enhanced in-vehicle electronic processing

Imagination Technologies (IMG.L) announces it is stepping up its collaboration with DENSO around development of enhanced processing technologies for future in-vehicle systems. DENSO has licensed the MIPS I6500 CPU and PowerVR Series8XT GT8525 GPU from Imagination to create a test chip to exploit the capabilities of technologies such as hardware multi-threading and virtualization for automotive electronic systems including advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving.

Next-generation in-vehicle electronic systems are increasingly complex, and require high-performance yet highly efficient heterogeneous processing. The MIPS I6500 CPU provides a high-performance, highly efficient backbone for these many-core designs, scaling to 64 heterogeneous clusters of multi-threaded multi-core MIPS CPUs, and providing an efficient platform for interfacing with other hardware accelerators in a system.

The PowerVR GT8525, based on Imagination’s new Furian GPU architecture, is designed to enable a new generation of consumer devices, including automotive systems, to deliver high-resolution, immersive graphics content and data computation for sustained time periods within mobile power budgets. Both processors implement hardware virtualization technology, which is a foundation for increased reliability and security in complex SoCs.

Hideki Sugimoto, General Manager, Semiconductor IP Department, Basic Electronic Technology Unit, DENSO, says, “We’re excited to work closely with Imagination as we explore the highly differentiated technologies built in to its MIPS and PowerVR processors which we believe can have a significant positive impact on the performance, efficiency, and reliability of next-generation in-vehicle electronics. We are undertaking this project with the goal of accelerating industry innovation around enhanced processing for automotive systems.”

Jim Nicholas, EVP MIPS Processor IP, Imagination, says, “DENSO is a highly innovative automotive supplier investing in technologies – from the semiconductor to the system level – which will enable it to provide leading-edge products with advanced efficiencies. This agreement is a testament to Imagination’s vision of future processing architectures for AI – heterogeneous, high performance, highly efficient, and secure.”

Mark Dickinson, EVP PowerVR GPU IP, Imagination, says, “We are delighted to collaborate with one of the leading automotive technology suppliers in DENSO. This underlines the position of the PowerVR Series8XT GPUs as the graphics and compute processor of choice for automotive applications. The PowerVR Furian architecture provides the required performance and advanced features – such as hardware virtualisation – in a constrained power envelope that other GPUs cannot match.”

DENSO has been developing technologies and products to help create a society free from traffic accidents. Based on these technologies, DENSO will continue to contribute to building a safe and secure automotive society for all people around the world, not just for drivers and pedestrians.