Imagination @ MWC 2012

IMG released this excellent update today from MWC Barcelona.
The statement shows the increasing penetration of SGX 544, with Renesas new MP5232 using it, and ST-E with LU8540, U8540 (moving into NovaThor) and A9540 cores (Nova). Of note, the NovaThor series previously used Mali graphics from ARM.
Yesterday Intel announced the Intel Atom Z2580 for high-end (SGX 544 again) and for the low-end Z2000 (SGX 540).
Meanwhile, OMAP 5 (SGX 544 also) has been impressing everyone with real-world tests in which the Tegra 3(quad-core) was given a 'thrashing'.
We have GDC and the IMS, together with an almost certain iPad 3 announcement coming up in the next 3 weeks.

MWC, Barcelona, Spain:  Imagination Technologies Group plc (LSE: IMG, “Imagination”, “the Group”), a leading multimedia and communications technologies company, announces that the first two cores of its new PowerVR Series6 ‘Rogue’ family, G6200 and G6400, are now available and deliver the highest performance for all markets.
Single and multiprocessor PowerVR Series5 SGX GPU solutions empower the most important devices in the latest generation of mobile SoCs being shown at MWC 2012 in Barcelona (IMG’;s stand is at Hall 1, stand 1D45).

Hossein Yassaie, CEO, Imagination says: “As smartphones become the highest volume segment in the phone market, we are driving mobile and embedded graphics performance to reach across the full range of smart mobile consumer devices, from mass market to high end in an era of ubiquitous mobile multimedia.

“Last year at MWC we said that ‘clock for clock PowerVR SGX, which has been shipping in significant volume for several years, outperforms competitive solutions, many of which have yet to ship in any volume.’ That statement remains unchanged a year later. Indeed as SGX MP opens up a wider performance gap in today’s devices PowerVR Series6 is already set to widen that gap even further to unrivalled GFLOPS per mm2 and per mW for all APIs.

“PowerVR has established itself as the developer’s de facto standard across smartphones, tablets, mobile computing and games consoles, attracting an extensive community of adopters and powering iconic and much-loved products. Our partners are now delivering the most comprehensive range of solutions, from low end to high end, that truly can enable any phone or tablet device to have PowerVR, the leading GPU technology.”

Key PowerVR enabled SoC (system on chip) devices at the show include*:

·       Intel Medfield Z2460 incorporating PowerVR SGX GPU and PowerVR VXE and VXD VPU technology.

·       MediaTek MT6575 incorporating PowerVR SGX GPU technology

·       Renesas Mobile MP5232 LTE Triple-Mode Platform incorporating PowerVR SGX544 GPU technology

·       ST-Ericsson LU8540, U8540 and A9540 incorporating PowerVR™ SGX544 GPU technology

·       Texas Instruments Incorporated’s OMAP™ 5 platform, which incorporates dual SGX 544MP GPUs  (Hall 8, #8A84)

Numerous phones and tablets containing Imagination’s technologies are on display across the show.

Says Jeffrey Ju, General Manager of the Smartphone Business Unit at MediaTek: "Following the ongoing success of MT6573, which has opened up exciting opportunities for mass market, high volume smartphone GPU adoption, we are thrilled to have PowerVR graphics acceleration in the new MT6575, and to working with Imagination as a strategic partner going forward."

Says Shinichi Yoshioka, chief operating officer at Renesas Mobile: “Renesas Mobile’s long term partnership with Imagination has led to many firsts in mobile graphics. This year’s MWC will see us both showcasing the ultra-fast and exciting graphics performance of Renesas Mobile triple mode platforms featuring advanced single and multiprocessor PowerVR GPUs. This powerful combination allows us to stay ahead of the pack to deliver compelling use cases and console-like graphics to the emerging worldwide LTE market.”

Teppo Hemia, head of smartphone and tablet platform business and architecture group at ST-Ericsson says: “By using the powerful Imagination PowerVR GPU in our new NovaThor L8450 platform, we will be able to deliver amazing graphics performance at low power consumption. For the NovaThor L8450, we selected the Imagination PowerVR GPU since it delivers the performance we need to meet our customers’ requirements for next generation mobile devices.”

Remi El-Ouazzane, vice president and general manager, OMAP platform business unit, TI says: “TI has been a long-standing partner of Imagination Technologies, yielding a relationship we take very seriously as we collaborate on future mobile processor-driven graphic applications. The company has developed a highly-differentiated GPU architecture that’s gaining incredible momentum within the applications ecosystem. The PowerVR cores leverage unified shading, deferred rendering and more—setting these GPUs ahead of the pack. Inside the OMAP 5 platform, TI is pushing the powerful dual core SGX544MP to its limits. We’re pairing it with our smart multicore architecture to establish a new graphic-driven experience guaranteed to make everyone sit up and take notice.”

Eight of Imagination’s partners, including ST-Ericsson, Texas Instruments, Renesas Electronics and MediaTek are also already committed to developing SoCs utilizing Imagination’s PowerVR Series6 Rogue architecture, the first cores of which, PowerVR G6200 and G6400 are now announced.

Renesas launches MP5232 LTE integrated platform

Another Power VR'd platform for high volume smartphone and tablet markets, this time from long-term partner Renesas. The diagram shows PowerVR SGX graphics and the description is of industry-leading graphics, so SGX543MP seems likely. The past week has revealed in more detail how IMG will dominate the low-mid high volume levels and not just high-end markets:

http://renesasmobile.com/news-events/news/news-20120215-LTE-Triple-Mode-Platform-Optimised-For-Full-Featured-High-Volume-Smartphones.html

TOKYO, Japan, February 15th, 2012— Renesas Electronics Corporation (TSE: 6723) and its subsidiary, Renesas Mobile Corporation, a leading supplier of advanced cellular semiconductor solutions and platforms, today announced the availability of the MP5232, the first single-chip, high-performance, scalable smartphone platform optimised to address the US$150-300 range device market. The MP5232 platform is designed to enable OEMs to accelerate the creation and delivery of high volume LTE/HSPA+ capable smartphones, tablets and mobile Internet devices the industry requires to deliver the full potential of LTE.
The MP5232 platform sets a new benchmark in terms of levels of integration and performance for fully featured high-volume LTE devices. At its heart, the Renesas Mobile modem, deployed in over two billion devices to date, delivers the industry’s highest throughput and low power multi-mode FDD and TDD-LTE Category 4 capabilities. Combined with a state-of-the-art application processor the platform delivers a no-compromise user experience with multi-core computing power, industry-leading graphics, video and imaging capabilities. The platform also includes advanced RF transceivers, power management and audio solutions. This highly integrated smartphone platform is delivered fully tested and certified to enable customers to bring new generations of fully-featured LTE/HSPA+ smartphones to market in as little as six to nine months.
“We are seeing a number of US$600+ LTE super phone devices being launched in the market, but the industry needs a wider penetration of LTE devices for the business case for LTE to pay off,” commented Jean-Marie Rolland, CTO and Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Renesas Mobile Corporation. “The MP5232 platform represents a new category of mobile platform optimised to increase the number of fully-featured, LTE high volume smartphones in the market. By integrating high performing, proven technologies the platform offers a low risk path for device manufacturers to create high volume, premium capability LTE multi-mode products for multiple market segments quickly and effectively, without having to make any compromises in terms of features or user experience.”
"The whole mobile industry is undoubtedly committed to LTE as the technology of choice for 4G services. However, it becomes increasingly challenging adding LTE to an already packed mobile devices that are required to support different legacy modes and bands,” said Malik Saadi, Principal Analyst, Informa Telecoms and Media. “In order to achieve global economies, vendors are keen to offer LTE multiband and multimode devices capable of roaming across different networks and regions, without compromising price, user experience, form factor, or power consumption.”
Renesas Mobile has brought its extensive consumer electronics industry expertise to the development of the platform, ensuring that the MP5232 benefits from the latest process technologies, methodologies and multimedia capabilities. The resulting platform is smarter by design with the lowest possible platform cost compared to current generation chipsets and an extremely high level of integration. In addition, the platform benefits from a unique modem architecture designed to consume the lowest possible power. Scalability and flexibility are baked in, allowing OEMs to create devices that address multiple price points and segments with minimal development time and maximum hardware and software reuse. Certified and proven technologies ensure that development, certification and maintenance costs are reduced.
Based on the Renesas Mobile’s state-of-the-art application processor technology, the MP5232 platform delivers a no-compromise user experience with 1.5GHz dual-core computing power, industry-leading graphics, video and imaging capabilities. The platform supports differentiating features including multi-camera and multi-display support, full HD 1080p multi-format video encoding/decoding, stereoscopic 3D (S3D) video and advanced graphics to deliver a console-like gaming experiences and engaging user interfaces.
Renesas Mobile consulting and support services leverage the company’s extensive system and production expertise to provide assistance at all stages of implementation, from design through to production. This support significantly reduces not only development time, but also production tuning and test time.

Availability

Samples of the MP5232 platform are available Q1 2012 to lead OEM’s in the form of reference designs together with supporting documentation, software and hardware. Pricing is available on request.
END

Mediatek launches MT6575 Android Platform

With just over 2 weeks to go until Mobile World Congress 2012, Mediatek today announced the MT6575 platform for entry to mid-level smartphones. The target here is Qualcomm's MSM7227A platform which currently reigns in the Chinese market.
It became clear last year that Mediatek would become a significant source of royalty volume for IMG (see earlier posts) - looks like circa. 50m royalty volume for this calendar year. Hopefully Mediatek will also come out with an Android tablet platform based on IMG soon.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/mediatek-launches-mt6575-android-platform-2012-02-13

HSINCHU, Taiwan, Feb. 13, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- MediaTek Inc., a leading fabless semiconductor company for wireless communications and digital multimedia solutions, today announced the availability of the MT6575, its 3rd generation platform for entry to mid-level Android smartphones. The MT6575 platform offers a 1GHz ARM® Cortex(TM)-A9 processor, a proven 3G/HSPA modem and runs the latest "Ice-Cream Sandwich" Android 4.0 release.

"We expect significant growth in entry and mid-level smartphones, with wholesale prices under US$190, over the coming years. We forecast that this segment will almost triple in size from 191 million shipments in 2012 to 551 million by 2016. At that time, we also expect approximately 75% of those entry and mid-level smartphones to ship to emerging markets," said Neil Mawston, Executive Director, Global Wireless Practice, at Strategy Analytics. The MediaTek MT6575 platform is ideally suited to cater to a wide range of smartphone devices that target this growing segment in multiple markets around the world.

"Leveraging the energy-efficient, high-performance Cortex(TM)-A9 processor in Android smartphone applications is an extremely compelling proposition and a great proof point for the scalability of the ARM architecture. During 2011 the Cortex(TM)-A9 processor has powered many of the most up-to-date and highest performance smartphones. The proliferation of Cortex-A Series processors into lower cost, mainstream mobile devices will deliver a significant uplift in the user experience," said Laurence Bryant, Director of Mobile, ARM.

For mid-range smartphones, the MT6575 platform supports 720p high-definition video playback and recording with an 8MP camera and qHD (960x540) high-resolution displays via a PowerVRTM SGX Series5 GPU (graphics processing unit) from Imagination Technologies. In industry-standard benchmark testing, the MT6575 offered over 35% improvement for browser applications and over 20% improvement in graphics capabilities for gaming when compared to competitors' best offerings in these segments.

Additionally, the MT6575 platform provides built-in support for advanced features such as integrated capabilities to drive 3D displays and proprietary algorithms for mobile display picture processing. In sum, the MT6575 provides DTV-grade picture quality on a smartphone by leveraging MediaTek's proven technology as a world-leading DTV platform provider.

The MT6575 platform also supports entry-level smartphones with smaller display sizes, lower resolution, less memory and reduced multimedia requirements.

In addition, the MT6575 boasts the world's lowest power consumption and most comprehensive integration of hot swap dual-SIM capability compatible with the Android platform. With the MT6575 dual-SIM solution, consumers will no longer have to worry about dropped calls while active data transfer is happening on either SIM card, and will experience automatic resumption of data exchange once calls on the other SIM card have ended, in addition, with the hot swap feature enabled, the SIM card can be inserted without switching off the mobile.

The 3G/HSPA modem integrated in the MT6575 platform has been qualified at major 3G operators world-wide.

The MT6575, delivered in 40nm CMOS technology, builds on the proven track record of the 2nd generation MT6573 platform -- i.e., the platform that powers the Lenovo A60, China Unicom's top selling handset in the sub-RMB 1000 (approx. US$160) smartphone category.

"We are very excited by the prospects of the MT6575 platform. It combines MediaTek's innovative chipset technology with our proven reference design and complete software solution model. We believe this platform is ideally suited to enable our customers to address entry to mid-level smartphone cost and performance needs on a global basis -- today and tomorrow," said Ching-Jiang Hsieh, President of MediaTek.

The MT6575 is currently being incorporated into the latest smartphone offerings by many of MediaTek's leading customers and the first smartphone models based on this new platform will hit the market in the first quarter of 2012.