Imagination's PowerVR Series6 GPU enables GPU leadership in Allwinner UltraOcta A80 processor

MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS, Barcelona, Spain – 25 February, 2014 – Imagination Technologies (IMG.L) reports that Allwinner Technology, a worldwide leader in mobile application processor design, today unveiled its next-generation UltraOcta A80 processor, which Allwinner claims is the world’s first octa-core heterogeneous SoC design to include a PowerVR Series6 GPU. Allwinner says their UltraOcta processor is designed to bring premium performance devices to consumers at lower price points, opening new market spaces and driving value innovation opportunities across tablets, OTT media players, notebook PCs, all-in-ones, and even smart TVs.

Mike Zhang, CEO, Allwinner Technology, says: “We’re excited to announce this latest leading-edge SoC resulting from our close collaboration with Imagination. For the past year, our worldwide customer base has grown significantly, enabling us to deliver high-quality products at extremely affordable prices. Thanks to industry-leading features including its advanced PowerVR Series6 64-core GPU, the UltraOcta A80 gives OEMs the highest performance, most power-efficient and cost-effective solution for a range of devices.”

Sir Hossein Yassaie, CEO, Imagination Technologies, says: “Our long-standing strategic relationship with Allwinner has resulted in a series of amazing products that offer high performance and low power consumption for highly affordable devices. The graphics and GPU compute capabilities of the newly-announced Allwinner UltraOcta A80 processor are truly impressive, thanks to our unique PowerVR sixth generation TBDR architecture. The choice of a fully-featured PowerVR G6230 GPU enables them to deliver a truly outstanding platform for Android and other operating systems.”

In its booth, number 6E30, at Mobile World Congress, Imagination will feature all of Allwinner’s latest PowerVR based chipsets, including the A80, A31 and A31S. Mobile World Congress is being held February 24-28 in Barcelona, Spain.

Leading edge graphics and GPU compute performanceKeeping power consumption to a minimum has been a key focus for Allwinner's new UltraOcta A80. With CoolFlex™, Allwinner claims its UltraOcta enables maximum performance for applications while keeping overall power consumption low.

The PowerVR G6230 GPU from Imagination Technologies sits at the heart of the SoC. Advanced 3D gaming, high-resolution graphical UIs, and web browsing at lightning-fast speeds are a breeze on UltraOcta A80 platforms, thanks to its dual-cluster, 64 core PowerVR Series6 GPU.

The G6230 graphics core incorporates PVR3C, a comprehensive portfolio of compression technologies designed to work together to deliver exceptional SoC performance while achieving significant power savings. PVR3C includes:

• PVRTC and PVRTC2 (texture compression): currently the most widely deployed texture compression formats in the market
• PVRIC (lossless image compression): delivers dramatically improved throughput, reduced bandwidth, conserved power and improved system performance
• PVRGC (lossless geometry compression): reduces overall bandwidth usage and related system costs as the geometry complexity, especially in today’s gaming environments, continues to increase

All PowerVR Series6 Rogue GPUs focus on delivering the most efficient graphics and compute engine and offers a series of key advantages over competing solutions, including:

• 64 FP32 ALU cores: The PowerVR Series6 Rogue cores include Unified Scalable Clusters (or USCs); each cluster contains 16 pipelines and each pipeline has 2 FP32 ALUs. The PowerVR G6230 GPU is a dual-cluster design that has a total of 64 FP32 ALU cores, offering superior processing power and improved precision for better image quality in console-quality games. Additionally, the PowerVR G6230 GPU includes a number of FP16 cores which provide additional low-power performance for a range of graphics applications, including fast blending for HDR rendering in games and UIs.

• Scalar processing: Scalar processing achieves the highest utilization of ALUs and eases graphics programming. Whereas vector arithmetic units occupy more silicon than a scalar unit and might not be fully used if code is not operating on vectors, scalar ALUs handle algorithms written with scalar ops (R), vec2 ops (RG), vec3 (RGB) or a full vec4 (RGBA) with the same efficiency. In addition, scalar instructions decrease the complexity of the instruction set, requiring less chip area for the instruction decoder.

• Unified architecture: The superior efficiency of Rogue GPUs is derived from its advanced tiling-based deferred architecture (TBDR) combined with a unified shader approach to the programmable elements of the GPU. The combination of these two characteristics provides phenomenal latency tolerance; along with automatic load balancing, this allows the PowerVR G6230 GPU to process geometry, fragment and compute tasks with equal ease.

• Leading API support: Application developers can take advantage of the significant parallel processing power in PowerVR G6230 GPU for both graphics and GPU compute tasks. Thanks to the powerful Rogue architecture on which PowerVR G6230 is based on, the Allwinner A80 processor is able to support all major mobile and desktop APIs, including OpenGL ES Next/3.0/2.0, OpenGL 3.x, DirectX 9_3/10, OpenCL and Renderscript.

About AllwinnerAllwinner Technology is a leading fabless design company dedicated to smart application processor SoCs and smart analog ICs. Its product line includes multi-core application processors for smart devices and smart power management ICs used by brands worldwide.

With its focus on cutting edge UHD video processing, high performance multi-core CPU/GPU integration, and ultra-low power consumption, Allwinner Technology is a mainstream solution provider for the global tablet, internet TV, smart home device, automotive in-dash device, smart power management, and mobile connected device markets. Allwinner Technology is headquartered in Zhuhai, China.

About Imagination Technologies

Imagination is a global technology leader whose products touch the lives of billions of people throughout the world. The company’s broad range of silicon IP (intellectual property) includes the key multimedia, communications and general purpose processors needed to create the SoCs (Systems on Chips) that power all mobile, consumer, automotive, enterprise, infrastructure, IoT and embedded electronics. These are complemented by its unique software and cloud IP and system solution focus, enabling its licensees and partners get to market quickly by creating and leveraging highly differentiated SoC platforms. Imagination’s licensees include many of the world’s leading semiconductor manufacturers, network operators and OEMs/ODMs who are creating some of the world’s most iconic and disruptive products. See: www.imgtec.com.