Vivante Joins Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) Foundation to Transform Next Generation Mobile and Embedded Hybrid Compute Platforms

Vivante GC cores unleash new compute and graphics capabilities to accelerate platform performance in computer vision, sensor fusion, gesture, image processing, AR, and 3D/GPGPU

SUNNYVALE, Calif. – Aug. 20, 2012 – Vivante Corporation, a world-wide leader in graphics and GPU Compute technologies for handheld, consumer, and embedded devices, today announced it has joined the Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) Foundation to push forward innovations in mobile and embedded GPU computing. The goal of HSA is to create a single architecture specification and standard application programming interface (API) that developers can easily adopt to optimize distributed workloads across the GPU and CPU, for the best performance and power efficiency.

Vivante products targeting hybrid platforms and designed to work directly with the CPU through a unified memory system will use ACE-Lite™ cache coherency or a native stream interface. The Vivante HSA design will be built on a unified software and hardware package that provides a single architecture spanning multiple operating systems and platforms. Vivante HSA software will be backwards compatibility with all existing compute-enabled products and built around HSA APIs and tools that complement our existing support of OpenCL™, Google Renderscript™, and Microsoft® DirectCompute™. By simplifying the lives of application developers targeting heterogeneous architectures, programmers can create breakthrough use cases that take advantage of the new paradigm shift to hybrid computing. Real world applications that are already being accelerated by Vivante cores include computer vision, image processing, augmented reality, sensor fusion, and motion processing.

“We welcome Vivante to the HSA Foundation as a valued member of our consortium of technology leaders driving the next generation of heterogeneous computing platforms,” said Phil Rogers, HSA Foundation President and AMD Corporate Fellow. “Vivante’s products and technologies will enhance HSA and help expand its footprint into a wide range of markets, bringing new capabilities of hybrid systems to Vivante’s customers.”

“Vivante is excited to join HSA Foundation as a technology contributor defining the next era of innovation built on heterogeneous computing,” said Wei-Jin Dai, President and CEO of Vivante. “We are already one of the industry leaders in mobile and embedded GPU and Compute technologies – currently the only company with mass market GPU IP that pass OpenCL 1.1 conformance and the only company that has partners shipping OpenGL ES 3.0 silicon. We look forward to collaborating with the consortium to define the next generation architecture for smartphones, tablets, TV/STB, embedded, networking, cloud computing, and automotive.”

About the HSA Foundation

The HSA (Heterogeneous System Architecture) Foundation is a not-for-profit consortium for SoC IP vendors, OEMs, academia, SoC vendors, OSVs and ISVs whose goal is to make it easy to program for parallel computing. HSA members are building a heterogeneous compute ecosystem, rooted in industry standards, for combining scalar processing on the CPU with parallel processing on the GPU while enabling high bandwidth access to memory and high application performance at low power consumption. HSA defines interfaces for parallel computation utilizing CPU, GPU and other programmable and fixed function devices, and support for a diverse set of high-level programing languages, thereby creating the next foundation in general purpose computing. Please go to www.hsafoundation.com for more information.

About Vivante Corporation

Vivante Corporation, a leader in multi-core GPU, OpenCL™, and 2D Composition IP solutions, provides the highest performance and lowest power characteristics across a range of Khronos™ Group API conformant standards based on the ScalarMorphic™ architecture. Vivante GPUs are integrated into customer silicon solutions in mass market products including smartphones, tablets, HDTVs, consumer electronics and embedded devices, running thousands of graphics applications across multiple operating systems and software platforms. Vivante is a privately held company headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, with additional R&D centers in Shanghai and Chengdu. For more information, visit http://www.vivantecorp.com.