IMG Board recommends Canyon Bridge 182p/share offer

IMG have confirmed an offer from Canyon Bridge (Chinese state-owned) for 182p per share for PowerVR/Ensigma and a separate sale of MIPS to Tallwood VC for $65m cash (to be used to pay off debts):

Imagination Technologies Group plc (LSE: IMG, “Imagination”, “the Group”), a leading multimedia, processor and communications technology company, has agreed to sell its worldwide MIPS CPU business (“MIPS”), including all MIPS Intellectual Property (“IP”) and patents, to Tallwood MIPS Inc, a company indirectly owned by Tallwood VC of Palo Alto, CA (“Tallwood”) for a total consideration of $65m in cash. Tallwood is a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm with years of experience in the semiconductor industry.
As separately announced today, Imagination has also reached an agreement on the terms of a recommended offer for the Group at 182p per Imagination ordinary share. The sale of MIPS is on a cash and debt free basis and subject to customary adjustments. $40m of the proceeds are payable in cash at completion and $25m in cash six months after completion. The sale is conditional on shareholder approval (if required under Rule 21.1 of the Takeover Code) and on the completion of the corporate reorganisation to separate MIPS from the remainder of the Group. Completion of the sale is expected to occur in October 2017.
Following completion of the transaction, cash proceeds will be used to reduce the Group’s debt, with the balance applied for general corporate purposes. Andrew Heath, Chief Executive of Imagination, said: “This transaction, which is separate to the offer for Imagination by Canyon Bridge, will ensure MIPS remains an independent licensing business. “MIPS has gained notable momentum over the last year or so having secured a number of design wins, and made good progress towards profitability.

“This significant progress, allied to Tallwood’s investments in the semiconductor industry, will provide increased customer choice and new job opportunities based on the continued growth of the MIPS business.”


END

There is the small matter of the on-going Apple/PowerVR IP dispute, so we will have to wait and see what happens over the coming months.

Power VR Series 9

Wasn't expecting this , as we await the outcome of the bidding process, but for now looks like business as usual ,judging by this announcement and the hiring page at imgtec.

LONDON, UK – 21st September, 2017 – Imagination Technologies (IMG.L) announces a new generation of PowerVR GPUs that raises the bar on graphics and compute in cost-sensitive devices, letting SoC vendors achieve a significant boost in performance with no impact on silicon area versus previous generation GPUs.

With the new PowerVR Series9XE and Series9XM GPUs, SoC vendors and OEMs can minimize costs and power consumption while ensuring the best possible user experience for gaming and GUI in devices such as smartphones, automotive infotainment, set-top boxes and TVs.

Consumers today want exciting graphical applications and technologies in their devices, but they also often want those devices at the lowest possible cost. The new PowerVR GPUs deliver compelling graphical capabilities for even constrained price points, giving SoC developers a flexible family of GPUs that provides the right level of performance for products to stand out at any price point.

Series9XE GPUs continue and extend the fillrate/mm2 leadership of last year’s PowerVR 8XE series of GPUs to deliver the best possible real world user experience for GUI, HMI (human machine interface) and casual gaming on cost-efficient products including DTVs, set-top boxes, streaming sticks/dongles, automotive infotainment and cluster electronics, and entry-level mobile and tablet devices. The range has been extended with a new eight pixel/clock (8PPC) core which is ideal for GUI focused applications requiring support for 4K60.

Series9XM GPUs, with increased compute density (GFLOPS/mm2), represent the industry’s best graphics cores for compute and gaming on devices such as premium gaming set-top boxes, mid-range smartphones and tablets, and automotive infotainment systems, with the ability to scale to 4K and beyond.

Both new families also benefit from improvements in the memory subsystem, reducing bandwidth by as much as 25% over previous generations to ensure the increased processing power can be fully exploited. Other new features common to the 9XE and 9XM families include a new MMU, allowing a greater address range and standard support for 10-bit YUV across the range, without impacting area.

Chris Longstaff, senior director of product and technology marketing, PowerVR, at Imagination says: “PowerVR has broken the constraints of typical ‘low cost’ GPUs to deliver a level of flexibility unprecedented in this category. Our previous XE series of GPUs already hit the sweet spot for power, performance and area in cost-sensitive applications, driving a number of customers to move to PowerVR from competitor GPUs. The new GPUs will continue that trend, as we continue to push performance density and flexibility to new levels. 9XE and 9XM GPUs represent the industry’s only logical choice for companies looking to deliver the best possible user experience at the lowest cost for their specific mix of requirements.”

Jon Peddie, president, JPR Research, says: “With its new range of PowerVR GPUs, Imagination is offering what we think is the widest range of operating points to balance fillrate, GFLOPS, power and cost for dozens of specific applications. The continued focus on the performance and fillrate efficiency will enable this year’s devices to offer a meaningful boost in performance like never before, the consumers are going to be thrilled.”

PowerVR Series9XE and Series9XM GPUs – a wide range of flexible configurations 9XE and 9XM GPUs represent the continuing evolution of the PowerVR Rogue architecture to provide the smallest silicon footprint and power profile. Imagination is initially rolling out several IP cores in each family, offering multiple ALU and texture performance balance points, coupled to single and multi-cluster designs. The highly scalable architecture enables easy, efficient generation of new IP cores to meet specific customer and market demands, with increases in area met by corresponding increases in fillrate and/or compute performance.

Highlights:

• The best performance/mm2

o    9XE GPUs provide improved gaming performance while maintaining the same fillrate density compared to the previous generation

o    9XM GPUs use several new and enhanced architectural elements to achieve up to 70% better performance density than the competition*, and up to 50% better than the previous 8XEP generation

• Bandwidth savings of up to 25% over the previous generation GPUs through architectural enhancements including parameter compression and tile grouping
• Memory system improvements: 36-bit addressing for improved system integration, improved burst sizes for efficient memory accesses, and enhanced compression capabilities
• Extremely low power consumption with Imagination’s proven Tile Based Deferred Rendering (TBDR) technology
• Support for hardware virtualization and Imagination’s OmniShield™ multi-domain security, enabling customers to build systems in which applications and operating systems can run independently and reliably on the same platform
• Support for Khronos graphics APIs including OpenGL ES 3.2, and Vulkan 1.0; and advanced compute and vision APIs such as RenderScript, OpenVX™ 1.1 and OpenCL® 1.2 EP**
• Optional support for PVRIC3, the latest PowerVR lossless image compression technology for optimal system integration efficiency.

The new GPUs are being licensed and evaluated by multiple customers for TVs, set-top boxes, mid-range mobile devices, ultra-low cost phones/tablets, and automotive applications.

Ideal for use with the new PowerVR 2NX Neural Network Accelerator (NNA) Imagination’s new PowerVR Series2NX neural network accelerator (NNA) lets companies building SoCs for mobile, surveillance, automotive and consumer systems achieve high-performance computation of neural networks at very low power consumption in minimal silicon area. In devices such as mobile phones where a GPU is mandated, companies can use a 9XE/9XM GPU to manage the classic vision processing algorithms and offload the neural net processing to the PowerVR 2NX NNA. Because of the performance density of the PowerVR NNA and the GPUs, companies can implement this combination in the same silicon footprint as a competing standalone GPU.

Software and tools support Imagination provides developers with free access to the cross-platform PowerVR SDK, designed to support all aspects of 3D graphics application development; as well as tools and utilities that ease development of 3D graphics and GPU compute applications. Developers can join the PowerVR Insider community, download the SDK for free and interact through developer forums at http://community.imgtec.com/developers/powervr/.

Physical Design Optimization Kits (DOKs) will be available, offering customers the flexibility to optimize for power, performance and area (PPA). Imagination DOKs are comprised of optimized reference design flows, tuned libraries from partners, characterization data and documentation.

Availability Series9XE GPU IP cores are available for licensing now in configurations including:

• 1 PPC with 16 F32 FLOPS/clock(GE9000)
• 2 PPC with 16 F32 FLOPS/clock (GE9100)
• 4 PPC with 32 F32 FLOPS/clock (GE9210)
• 8 PPC with 64 F32 FLOPS/clock (GE9420)

Series9XM GPU IP cores are available for licensing now in configurations including:

• 4 PPC with 64 FP32 FLOPS/clock (GM9220)
• 4 PPC with 128 FP32 FLOPS/clock (GM9240)

IMG FY results

A decent set of results and statement from IMG, overshadowed by the Apple shenanigans, shame.

https://imagination-technologies-cloudfront-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/presentations/IMG-FY-results-2017.pdf

FY17 financial performance

·      Group revenue from continuing operations up 19% to £145.2m (2016: £121.6m)

§ Licensing revenue up by 82% to £33.9m (2016: £18.6m)

§ Royalty revenue up 8% to £111.1m (2016: £102.7m)

·      Adjusted operating profit* for continuing operations up by approximately three times to £29.2m (2016: £10.5m)

·      Reported operating profit from continuing operations £7.8m (2016: loss £26.8m)

·      Adjusted loss per share 0.9p (2016: loss 9.2p); reported loss per share was 10.1p (2016: loss 29.8p)

·      Cash generated by operations was £11.0m - despite £13.7m outflow from loss making discontinued businesses

·      Net debt at year-end was £28.4m (30 April 2016: £33.0m and 31 October 2016: £40.8m)

 Operational highlights

·      Restructuring completed as planned

·      Refreshed strategy - focus on IP solutions with potential for real scale - being successfully implemented

·      Continue to see good demand for licenses in all three businesses - PowerVR, MIPS and Ensigma

·      Substantial improvement in trading performance in all three units  

·      Compelling products in FY18 roadmap - bodes well for competitiveness for each business unit

·      Number of successful launches by PowerVR

Apple and current situation

·      Apple Inc.'s ("Apple") unsubstantiated assertions that it had designed Imagination out and that royalties would cease in 2018 or early 2019, announced by the Group on 3 April 2017

·      Dispute with Apple continues - no progress made. Options being reviewed

·      MIPS and Ensigma marketed for sale (4 May 2017) to concentrate resources on PowerVR and strengthen the balance sheet; the sale process is progressing well

 Formal Sale Process

·      Following interest in the entire Group, decided to initiate a formal sale process on 22 June 2017

·      Preliminary discussions continue with potential bidders

Peter Hill, Chairman, commented:

"The management team have done a tremendous job over the last year, turning the business around, returning it to profitability and with a clear strategy for growth.  It is therefore highly regrettable that this progress has been so severely impacted by the stance taken by Apple."

Andrew Heath, Chief Executive, said:

"Last year was exceptionally challenging but operationally we delivered a strong set of results.  Our restructuring programme was implemented as planned and our focus on our core IP businesses resulted in notable progress across all three of our businesses.

"We improved our financial performance across the business. We returned the business to profitability and saw good cash generation despite the outflow from the now discontinued businesses.

"However, Apple's unsubstantiated assertions and the resultant dispute have forced us to change our course, despite the clear progress we have been making.

"Initially we elected to sell the now much stronger MIPS and Ensigma businesses in order to strengthen our balance sheet and concentrate our resources on PowerVR. Additionally, we have received interest from a number of parties for the whole Group - reflecting the real quality and strategic value of our businesses and the associated IP. We therefore initiated a Formal Sale Process, which is on-going."

  

Enquiries
Imagination Technologies Group plc	Tel: 01923 260 511
Andrew Heath, Chief Executive Officer
Guy Millward, Chief Financial Officer
Instinctif Partners	Tel: 020 7457 2020
Adrian Duffield/Kay Larsen/Chantal Woolcock

* Adjusted profit is used by management to measure the performance of the business year on year by excluding non-recurring items (items which typically do not occur every year), items relating to acquisitions and investments, non-cash based share incentive charges, and amortization of intangible assets acquired from acquisitions. The reconciliation from reported results to adjusted results is set out in note 2.

Chief Executive's Review

Introduction

FY17 has been another notably challenging year for the business, characterised by significant restructuring, the implementation of a refreshed strategy and a dispute with our largest customer, Apple.

We executed the restructuring programme that was announced early in 2016, to plan and returned the business to profitability and positive cashflow. The £27.5m of cost savings, identified in 2016, was delivered in full, with non-core activities either sold or discontinued.

We also announced and started the implementation of our revised strategy to build IP solutions of real scale with customers, across a wide range of markets, where we can provide leading, differentiated offerings and build defendable positions; delivering long-term value to shareholders in the process. Over the past year we have focused investment in our core IP businesses: PowerVR, MIPS and Ensigma.

This strategy has resonated well with customers. Investment has been increased in PowerVR with the addition of around 50 more engineers to address market opportunities. The launch of the mid-range PowerVR Series XE GPU has been the most successful launch to date in terms of the number of new design wins with multiple customers. The launch of the new Furian GPU architecture and the high-end Series 8XT cores also cements PowerVR's technology leadership.

Both MIPS and Ensigma made good progress towards profitability, with MIPS now almost breakeven. Ensigma produced a strong performance in license sales and MIPS continued to increase its presence in the automotive market, with a number of deals, as well as continued design wins in LTE modems.

This good work has been overtaken by events following Apple informing us that they expected that the chips in their products launched at some point in 2018 or early 2019 would not require them to pay Imagination royalties. So far Apple has not shared any information to enable us to verify their statement. Imagination has invoked a contractual dispute resolution procedure under the license agreement. Imagination does not accept Apple's position and reserves all of its rights.

The potential impact on revenues if Apple does not pay us royalties on its new products has led the board to consider sale options. In May 2017 we announced that we were looking to sell both our MIPS and Ensigma businesses, to strengthen our balance sheet and concentrate our resources on PowerVR.

Following interest received in both MIPS and Ensigma, and subsequently the whole Group, the Board announced in June the initiation of a formal sale process for the Group and that the company was engaged in preliminary discussions with potential bidders.

Imagination has made excellent progress in executing the restructuring programme and refreshed strategy; returning the business to profitability in the process over the past fourteen months. It is regrettable that, after much hard work and on the verge of realising our strategy for the business, that we are now in a position where we have initiated a sale of the Group. We believe that in the face of the dispute with Apple, this is the best way to deliver value to our shareholders and ensure Imagination can to continue to grow and succeed in the future.

Performance in FY17

We successfully executed the restructuring programme that was announced early last year, on-time and in line with our expectations. The main areas impacted were non-core activities and central overheads including marketing and property. The core IP engineering activities have been protected.

To enable the required level of investment in our core businesses, we divested or closed non-core, cash-consuming business lines. The Pure radio business, as well as Hellosoft, was sold in 2016. IMGWorks, the SoC design business, was sold in May 2017, with the FlowRadio transaction completing in June this calendar year. The remaining elements of IMGSystems were discontinued. In total over 500 employees (almost a third of the total) have left the Group since the restructuring was announced. The majority of these people continue in their roles under new ownership at Pure International, Meeami Technologies, 7digital and Sondrel. 

Following the detailed operating review in the first half of 2016, the Group continued to reinforce and invest in its three core businesses; graphics and multimedia (PowerVR), general purpose processing (MIPS) and connectivity (Ensigma). This strategy has resonated well with customers and investors alike.

PowerVR

PowerVR has focused on consolidating its market position and retaining technology leadership.  In 2017 we launched new offerings in the mid-range XE family and in the high-end with the debut of our new Furian architecture and Series 8XT GPU cores, which represents a significant advance in the PowerVR architecture. We expect these technologies to further enable mass market untethered AR/VR devices and new classes of mobile devices such as convertibles, creating future growth opportunity for PowerVR.

The Group's Series 8XE has been a notably successful product launch, both with existing and new PowerVR customers. Its competitiveness in the mobile segment was proven with a multi-year subscription deal for series 8XE with Spreadtrum, a major Chinese fabless semi. Consequently, we are very confident in gaining significant share in the mid-tier mobile market through this and the successful design wins already achieved with MediaTek.

We have also seen strong traction for 8XE in the DTV/STB market with design wins at strategically important customers including Realtek, Marvell, Mstar, and Sigma. Further automotive business was secured with long-term customers Renesas and TI. 

With the launch of the new high-end Furian architecture and a refreshed Series 8XT offering, we fully expect to retain our technology leadership in low power, high performance graphics. The market leader continues to use PowerVR GPU technology in their latest products and we have a good pipeline of opportunities which, if successfully closed, will help close the shortfall in royalties that might be created by the loss in Apple revenues.. A new device has begun shipping from MediaTek in 2017, the Helio X30, using a Series 7XT core, which is being used in a range of devices from phones to Chromebooks.

PowerVR continues to retain a large share of the automotive infotainment market and this position is pulling PowerVR into ADAS applications. Denso of Japan is a recent licensee for 8XT. Opportunities also exist to grow our position in the emerging AR/VR market; as well as exploiting investments made in vision products. We have a roadmap in smart vision and expect these new offerings will further drive the PowerVR licensing pipeline. In particular we are seeing significant interest in our latest vision hardware accelerated (VHA) offering.

Our ray tracing technology is of interest in the gaming market and PowerVR is continuing to develop its ecosystem with notable games publishers and middleware/engine providers

MIPS

The MIPS business has been focused on the embedded processor market, in particular those market segments where we have strong positions today and where we can exploit our differentiation capabilities to build long-term, defendable positions into the future. We continue to enjoy design wins in our traditional markets such as networking, routers and DTV/STB.  MIPS has seen continued support from long term customers at Qualcomm, Broadcom and Cavium.

Beyond this good progress is also being made in new markets, as the Group targets its differentiated technology, particularly multi-threading and hardware virtualization, in meeting customers' needs.

The strength of MIPS's differentiated technology has been demonstrated through a number of important design wins over the past year. In the autonomous systems market, Mobileye selected the MIPS I6500 for its latest EyeQ5 product and Denso also became a licensee for next-generation, in-vehicle electronic systems. We are building on our success in automotive with the launch of a new MIPS core, I6500-F, which includes support for FuSa (Functional Safety) features, which is in high demand in this and broader AI segments.

MIPS also saw strong performance in Asia, with design wins with both current and new customers in China including Beken, Synochip, Loongson, and Actions and continued support from key customers such as ALi, Novatek and MediaTek in Taiwan. MediaTek is a key customer for MIPS I-class in the LTE modern segment and expects to begin mass production of devices with MIPS based modems during this summer. We have also seen strong licensing in Russia with a new deal with MRI. The success of our I-class cores proves our case that MIPS' fundamental differentiations, such as multi-threading and virtualization, are in demand in several markets.

Security is becoming an ever-increasing priority for customers. Our recent partnership with Barco Silex on Trusted Element technology and our security offering for Root of Trust systems and Omnishield gives us a very competitive security solution.

MIPS has an exciting refreshed product line and roadmap, which will allow it to better differentiate its offering in the market as well as prove competitive to customers.

Ensigma

Ensigma is now focused on IP licensing for connectivity, offering a broader range of complete end-to-end solutions for customers, which differentiates it in the market. The growth of IoT applications drove strong licensing growth in 2017, which enabled Ensigma to more than double revenue over the previous year. Significant license deals included a large American multinational semiconductor company and we also saw strong growth in the Wi-Fi market in China with a number of important design wins.

The Ensigma product roadmap is particularly focused on high performance, low power applications that are well matched to the requirements of large numbers of connected devices. Our superiority in low power wireless has been confirmed with tests on customer silicon showing that we are 2x better in power efficiency than competitors.

Apple Dispute

Apple informed us at the end of March that it will no longer use the Group's intellectual property in its new products in 15 months to two years' time, and as such Imagination will not be eligible for royalty payments under the current license and royalty agreement.

Apple has used Imagination's technology and intellectual property for many years.  It has formed the basis of Graphics Processor Units ("GPUs") in Apple's phones, tablets, iPods, TVs and watches. Apple has asserted that it has been working on a separate, independent graphics design in order to control its products and will be reducing its future reliance on Imagination's technology. Apple has not presented any evidence to substantiate its assertion that it will no longer require our technology, without violating our patents, intellectual property and confidential information. This evidence has been requested of Apple, but they have declined to provide it.

We believe that it would be extremely challenging to design a brand new GPU architecture from basics without infringing our intellectual property rights, accordingly we have not accepted Apple's assertions. We initiated the dispute resolution procedure under the license agreement with a view to reaching an agreement through a more structured process.

To be clear Apple made an unsubstantiated claim, which obliged us to inform the markets, leading to a significant decrease in our share price.  The claim has led us to invoke a contractual dispute resolution procedure and has created significant uncertainty with respect to our business, including our employees. We do not believe this to be acceptable business practice nor in line with Apple's own ethics statements regarding suppliers. 

At the time of writing this report, we remain in dispute. Imagination has reserved all its rights in respect of Apple's unauthorised use of Imagination's confidential information and Imagination's intellectual property rights.

Customers and colleagues

Imagination has great technology that is very meaningful and relevant to many customers. We are grateful to them for their support through the changes we are going through. We are also fortunate to have very capable people across our engineering and business staff. The company has them to thank for the continued development and delivery of our strategy and roadmap during what have been very disruptive conditions.

In a complex, geographically diverse and fast moving business it is critical that we retain and attract the skills and capabilities needed in sufficient numbers to deliver our objectives and maintain an entrepreneurial and dynamic culture. We have done this by continuing to provide an exciting place to work, investing in leading and disruptive technology, supported by a revised, competitive compensation and benefits strategy. A new internal communications programme has also increased the frequency and quality of communications with our staff and further improved engagement.

I want to publically thank colleagues for the support they have shown to the business and given to me personally over the past year. The swift return to profitability in the business has been helped by the engagement and support we enjoy with our people, and which they carry forward in their interactions with our customers every day.

Outlook

 Imagination continues to see good demand for licenses in all three of our core businesses. There are exciting developments and compelling products in our FY18 roadmaps which bodes well for the competitiveness of each of the business units going forward. 

 The Group continues to see good demand for licensing for its IP and expects to see further progress in license revenue in FY18, subject to uncertainty caused by the initiation of the formal sale process. Royalty unit shipments are expected to benefit from recent design wins. We fully expect to receive royalties from our largest customer over the next year.

 I am confident that with the right investment our businesses and people will continue to flourish.

 Andrew Heath

Chief Executive

IMG for sale

The inevitable outcome, pretty much from the moment Heath &Co took over:

Imagination Technologies Group plc (LSE: IMG, “Imagination”, “the Group”) announces that over the last few weeks it has received interest from a number of parties for a potential acquisition of the whole Group. The Board of Imagination has therefore decided to initiate a formal sale process for the Group and is engaged in preliminary discussions with potential bidders.

The sale process for the MIPS and Ensigma operations, which commenced on 4 May 2017, is progressing well and indicative proposals have been received for both businesses.

Further to the announcement on 4 May 2017, Imagination remains in dispute with Apple Inc.

Imagination has agreed with the UK Takeover Panel (the “Panel”) that any such discussions with third parties may be conducted within the formal sale process framework set out in Note 2 on Rule 2.6 of the Takeover Code (the “Code”). The Panel has granted a dispensation from the requirements of Rules 2.4(a), 2.4(b) and 2.6(a) of the Code such that any interested party will not be required to be publicly identified as a result of this announcement (subject to Note 3 to Rule 2.2 of the Code) and will not be subject to the 28 day deadline referred to in Rule 2.6(a), for so long as it is participating in the formal sale process.

There can be no certainty that any offer will be made for Imagination, nor that any transaction will be executed, nor as to terms of any such offer or transaction.

Parties interested in participating in the formal sale process will be required to enter into a confidentiality agreement with the Company on reasonable terms satisfactory to the board of Imagination before being permitted to participate in the process and to receive information. Interested parties should note Rule 21.2 of the Code, which prohibits any form of inducement fee or other offer related arrangement, and that Imagination has not requested any dispensation from this prohibition under Note 2 of Rule 21.2 at this stage.

Interested parties are invited to contact Rothschild (contact details below), who are assisting with the formal sale process and with the sale process for MIPS and Ensigma. Further announcements regarding timings for the formal sale process will be made when appropriate.

As a consequence of this announcement an “Offer Period” has commenced in respect of Imagination in accordance with the rules of the Code and the dealing disclosure requirements below will apply.

This announcement contains inside information.

A further announcement will be made as and when appropriate.

IMG announces first Series 8XT core

LONDON, UK – 10th May, 2017 – Imagination Technologies (IMG.L) announces the first GPU IP core based on its new PowerVR Furian architecture, the Series8XT GT8525. Furian is designed to enable a new generation of consumer devices to deliver high-resolution, immersive graphics content and data computation for sustained time periods within mobile power budgets. The two-cluster GT8525 offers class-leading performance, power and area, as well as unique features for customers designing SoCs for products such as high-end smartphones and tablets, mid-range dedicated VR and AR devices and mid- to high-end automotive infotainment and ADAS systems.

Says Chris Longstaff, senior director of product and technology marketing, PowerVR at Imagination: “The new GT8525 is the first of a range of Series8XT GPUs designed around our highly efficient and scalable Furian architecture. This IP core delivers on the market requirements for a number of high-volume applications. It continues and strengthens the performance/mW leadership position of the PowerVR XT family, whilst supporting a very rich set of features.”

Says Jon Peddie, president, JPR Research: “Imagination has an extremely strong track record at the high end of the mobile market, and the Furian architecture extends that technology leadership. With the GT8525, Imagination is delivering a new performance point for off-the-shelf mobile GPUs, while continuing to provide great power efficiency, in large part due to techniques like Tile Based Deferred Rendering (TBDR).”

Says Tatiana Solokhina, CTO, RnD Center ELVEES: “As a provider of SoCs for a wide range of global video analytics applications, we require a GPU that offers the best compute performance in a power constrained footprint. The new PowerVR Furian 8XT family from Imagination provides us an industry-leading GPU with new ALU for increased performance density and efficiency. In addition, support for standard compute APIs such as OpenVX enables easy implementation of real world vision processing applications.”

Addressing the needs of next generation applications

The Furian architecture is designed for the evolved graphics and compute needs of next-generation consumer devices:

• Smartphones: the GT8525 addresses the need for continuous improvements in sustained performance for gaming in constrained power footprints, including for mobile VR uses. It also allows new mobile use cases requiring greater compute availability, such as the use of neural networks (including CNNs) for object identification.
• Automotive: with dramatically increased compute efficiency and built-in hardware virtualization, the GT8525 addresses the increasing trend toward combining infotainment with electronic dash and some ADAS functionality on the same SoC. OEMs can enable isolation of concurrent functions and services to ensure greater safety and security while saving on valuable silicon area.
• AR/VR: the GT8525 provides the high resolution and high sustained frame rate graphics required for a great user experience on standalone AR/VR headsets. The GT8525 includes hardware and software specifically designed for minimizing the critical motion-to-photon latency. With devices based on the GT8525, OEMs can offer higher performance graphics and compute in an area efficient manner. Developers can leverage the power of the OpenVX* API on PowerVR for rapid application development.

PowerVR Series8XT GT8525 by the numbers

The Furian architecture is designed for enhanced performance, with power efficiency, setting it apart from competing solutions in performance per mW. Compared to the Series7XT GT7200 GPU, the GT8525 achieves:

• More than 50% fps improvement on the industry-standard Manhattan benchmark test, one of the de-facto benchmarks for mobile and other applications, and 80% TRex
• More than 50% improvement in fps for the Antutu benchmark – another key benchmark
• 2x PPC throughput (8 pixels/clock compared with 4 for GT7200), allowing for higher resolutions, and additional performance for previously fill rate limited use cases
• 50% more GFLOPs, and more accessible GFLOPs, enabling easier exploitation of the cores full potential for graphics and compute

The Furian difference

The Furian architecture at the heart of the GT8525 features improvements in performance density, GPU efficiency, and system efficiency which lead to lower power and a better user experience for next-generation applications. It incorporates many of the compelling features on which PowerVR has built its technology leadership, including Imagination’s Tile Based Deferred Rendering (TBDR), which has been proven over multiple generations of PowerVR GPUs to provide the most highly efficient embedded graphics.

Furian also features a new 32-wide ALU cluster design for increased performance density and efficiency. A new instruction set architecture (ISA) in the primary and secondary ALU pipelines enables improved utilization of resources and thus efficiency, and multi-threading optimizations allow efficient and very flexible access to on-chip local compute memory. Furian is designed to address the increasing compute requirements across multiple applications and market segments with efficient use of compute APIs including OpenCL® 2.0, Vulkan® 1.0 and OpenVX 1.1*.

Availability

The GT8525 has already been delivered to lead customers; it is available for licensing now. Contact info@imgtec.com for more information.

MIPS and Ensigma to be offloaded

The somewhat inevitable consequence of the Apple decision.

Imagination Technologies Group plc (LSE: IMG, “Imagination”, “the Group”), a leading multimedia, processor and communications technology company, publishes a trading update for the year to 30 April 2017, has commenced a dispute resolution procedure with Apple Inc. (“Apple”) and announces that it intends to sell its MIPS and Ensigma businesses.

Trading update

The Group finished the financial year strongly with the results expected to be in line with the Board’s expectations, reflecting the positive effects of the restructuring implemented during the last 15 months as well as a focus on Imagination’s new priorities.

Dispute resolution procedure

As announced on 3 April 2017, the Group is in discussions with Apple regarding its commercial relationship.

Imagination has been unable to make satisfactory progress with Apple to date regarding alternative commercial arrangements for the current licence and royalty agreement.

Imagination has therefore commenced the dispute resolution procedure under the licence agreement with a view to reaching an agreement through a more structured process.

Imagination has reserved all its rights in respect of Apple’s unauthorised use of Imagination’s confidential information and Imagination’s intellectual property rights.

Operational update and proposed disposal of MIPS and Ensigma

Since 3 April 2017, the Board has reviewed the composition of the business.

While the Group has continued to invest in its MIPS and Ensigma businesses, it has now decided to actively market these businesses for sale, concentrate its resources on PowerVR, and strengthen Imagination’s balance sheet.

MIPS is focused on the embedded processor markets, where it has a strong position, and completed a number of deals with major customers during the last financial year. It has continued to see design wins in networking, routers and DTV/STB and has made good progress in the mobile LTE modem and industrial IoT markets.

MIPS also has a growing position in automotive through its relationship with Mobileye and is collaborating with a number of OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers.

Ensigma offers leading, comprehensive IP licensing for connectivity in mobile computing, unmanned systems and IoT, with low power capability. Revenues more than doubled in H1 FY17 driven by strong licencing activity. This momentum has been maintained.

MIPS and Ensigma have complementary capabilities in low power, connected devices providing end to end customer solutions with a strong security solution.

PowerVR

Imagination’s market leading PowerVR business continues to address attractive growth markets.

The Group has recently launched its new PowerVR offerings in both the high-end XT and mid-range XE families, representing significant competitive advances in the PowerVR architecture.

With continued investment, the Group considers PowerVR to be well placed in mobile, automotive, digital TV/set top boxes and the rapidly emerging AR/VR market and having the potential to exploit investments for artificial intelligence in the medium-term. Imagination will continue to make the appropriate investments in the PowerVR business.

The Group expects to publish its year end results the week commencing 3 July 2017.

This announcement contains inside information.

There will be a conference call for analysts and investors at 8:30am UK time today.