Vivante GC7000 GPU IP Core with Geometry and Tessellation Shaders Brings 4K Ultra HD Gaming to Any Screen

LAS VEGAS, Jan. 7, 2014 -- International CES (#CES2014) – Vivante Corporation today announced the release of its next generation GC7000 series graphics IP cores based on Vega technology enhanced with next generation geometry and tessellation shaders. The advances will bring breakthrough performance, quality, and photo-realistic 4K rendering to any mobile or TV screen, boosting the 3D experience in games, apps, and GPU accelerated web browsers. GC7000 series GPU cores are immediately ready for system on chip (SoC) silicon integration and testing and come packaged with Vivante's unified software stack that is backwards compatible with existing drivers, board support packages, and Android™/Chrome™ applications.

"Vivante Vega GPUs have raised the bar for performance value all within the world's smallest footprint," said Wei-jin Dai, President and CEO of Vivante. "Now we are doing the same for 4K. Devices at accessible price points can deliver smooth, high resolution media to any screen."

The GC7000 architecture is Vivante's fourth generation ScalarMorphic™ design that builds on the successful GC2000/GC4000 that has been built from the ground up for mobility and supports OpenGL ES 3.0, OpenGL, OpenCL 1.1, Renderscript, and DirectX. The GC7000 will take advantage of new innovations in GPU/GPGPU multi-core processing to allow simultaneous, coherent and distributed graphics, vision, and compute contexts to run in parallel. Each core can function independently or in groups with instant, on-demand, task-specific load-balancing of GPU resources monitored in real-time to maximize performance and minimize context switch overhead. The addition of geometry and tessellation shaders cuts internal and off-chip bandwidth to reduce power, thermal envelopes, and memory footprint.

Games place the highest demands on any system. With the Vega-based CG7000 series unified processing core, 3D games will run smoothly with crisp, ultra HD resolution content combined with advanced graphics features like physics rendering and ray tracing.

"The ideal consumer experience is cohesive from device to device," said Dr. Jon Peddie, industry analyst at Jon Peddie and Associates. "The richer the content, the more demands are placed on the GPU, CPU, Video processing cores in addition to the power source. Technology advances like the tessellation and shader integration provided by Vivante's GC7000 series, allow for creative SoC design to directly address app to display demands in a variety of form factors."

Smaller- Faster-Cooler benefits of the GC7000 series include:

• Smallest Licensable GPU Cores with Geometry and Tessellation Shaders: The IP package integrates the most advanced 3D features that shift industry dynamics to allow mass market silicon to have the equivalent robust features as high end application processors. Die area of the GC7000 is reduced by 20% over previous generation mass market cores and includes the new evolution of shader technologies.
• Faster Graphics Performance: 2X performance gain and better dynamic utilization of shaders speeds up rendering performance, quality, and effects to scale up to 4K gaming content at 60 FPS. 4K resolution has 4X the pixels versus 1080p and GC7000 ensures your device can keep up with the game.
• Cooler Cores: GPU thermals and system power is reduced 30% and bandwidth is reduced by 50% through innovate bandwidth modulation using Vivante frame buffer (vFB) and pixel compression, Khronos ASTC, geometry/tessellation shader rendering, and Android optimized intelligent composition (Regionizer).
• Configurable Single/Dual/Quad/Eight/Sixteen GPU Configurations: ScalarMorphic cores range from highly silicon optimized single GPU solutions to performance optimized multi-GPU solutions, all with best in class performance and available hardware support for security, OS virtualization, and scaling.
• Hardware and Software Integration Simplified: Single unified software stack supports all Vega GPU cores and existing software platforms to create a seamless transition to the latest technologies. GC7000 hardware is even more modular to allow faster integration with easier place-and-route design and reduced wire congestion.
• System Friendly Architecture: GC7000 is designed for hybrid and heterogeneous computing systems supporting OpenCL and HSA using AMBA® ACE-Lite™ (CPU – GPU cache coherency) and the latest Stream Interface. Other additions include a common pixel compression fabric that allows GC7000 to create a streamlined pixel processing pipeline across the ISP, CPU, DSP, memory, and display processor.

For more information on Vivante Vega products, please visit http://www.vivantecorp.com/technology/3d.html or blog.vivantecorp.com.

About Vivante Corporation
Smaller – Faster – Cooler: Vivante Corporation, a leader in multi-core GPU, OpenCL™, CPC Composition Engine and Vector Graphics 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.