to allow the masses to squeeze in to the hall.
Format of the day will be as per usual (dull, boring, interesting, sleepy, mind numbing, drunken, fabulous).
We're about to go with GS going over the running order.
HY's on the bench, looking confident and ready to rock. Ian Pearson as sanguine as ever, the others looking calm. The pressure obviously not got to them yet, but we'll see how the FD goes after some recent collywobbles.
HY's up
IMG
Friday, 14 September 2012
AGM Day est arrivée !
The gathering of the Clans has commenced ! Currently in attendance myself, sweenoid, prim, Ronak, brooky, Blueflame, Pete Frost.
Loins are being girded ready for action.
Loins are being girded ready for action.
Thursday, 13 September 2012
Interim Management Statement
After the annual excitement of the new iPhone event last night, Imagination announced a solid IMS this morning:
Imagination Technologies Group plc ('Imagination', LSE: IMG), a leading multimedia, communications and embedded processor technology company, is today issuing its Interim Management Statement for the period from 1 May 2012 to 12 September 2012.
Trading update
Following the strong performance in the last financial year, the momentum in the business has continued.
Following the strong performance in the last financial year, the momentum in the business has continued.
Our partners’ product launches in the second half of the last financial year, together with shipments starting for a number of customers for the first time this year, have both contributed to strong growth in unit shipment volumes. The volume growth has been driven across the expected key segments, including: mobile phone, computing/tablets, mobile multimedia/gaming and home consumer. The royalty revenue growth has continued to be strong, in line with expectations. As expected, the strong unit volume growth has steadily extended to the lower-end of the smart phone market resulting in a small downward movement in the average royalty rate.
Licensing activity remains steady but is subject to the usual uncertainty over timing, particularly given the continuing macro-economic volatility.
Pure continues to see steady growth in its international markets and small improvement in its UK business, although the tight economic environment remains a factor. Strategic product developments have been on-going in the year with several key product launches planned for the run-up to Christmas.
We continue to invest in key areas of technology both organically and through targeted acquisition activity. As part of the latter, in June we made a small acquisition of the IP, assets and employees of Nethra Imaging Inc. (Gross Assets £0.4m at end June), which further enhances our capability in the area of camera/video IP.
Technology update
PowerVR GPUs – The PowerVR graphics processor (GPU) family continues to lead the market in technological capability, roadmap strength and ecosystem and remains by far the most adopted and shipped technology of its kind. Many designs across PowerVR Series5 and 5XT and the new generation Series6 family are at different stages of delivery with increasing numbers of Series5XT-based devices entering production and contributing to volume ramp-up. The Series6 IP core family expanded to four members, with others in the pipeline. Several partner prototype devices using Series6 are now at first silicon and are functioning well, with software driver and applications development significantly advanced. The development of Caustic’s complementary ray tracing technology is on track and will, in due course, further strengthen our graphics offering and add to our competitive position.
PowerVR GPUs – The PowerVR graphics processor (GPU) family continues to lead the market in technological capability, roadmap strength and ecosystem and remains by far the most adopted and shipped technology of its kind. Many designs across PowerVR Series5 and 5XT and the new generation Series6 family are at different stages of delivery with increasing numbers of Series5XT-based devices entering production and contributing to volume ramp-up. The Series6 IP core family expanded to four members, with others in the pipeline. Several partner prototype devices using Series6 are now at first silicon and are functioning well, with software driver and applications development significantly advanced. The development of Caustic’s complementary ray tracing technology is on track and will, in due course, further strengthen our graphics offering and add to our competitive position.
PowerVR VPUs – Our PowerVR video decode and encode processor (VPU) families, which support the latest and emerging formats, continue to see strong volume growth. We are seeing a growing industry trend in favour of licensing rather than internal development, particularly as the next generation of advanced video standards are coming to market. In keeping with our strategy of providing leading-edge and market-driving technologies to our customers we recently launched the new PowerVR Series4 video processors offering increased performance and precision as well as supporting the emerging ultra HD resolution displays of 4Kx2K pixels. These technologies are seen as essential for future generations of smart TV products which require very high quality and/or the capability to display full HD at the same time as related information such as social network interactive pages.
Ensigma RPUs – Our Ensigma programmable radio processing unit (RPU) family supporting both multi-standard broadcast receivers and Wi-Fi/BT connectivity is becoming increasingly relevant to mainstream markets and has been designed into a growing number of chips and products. Ensigma RPUs support worldwide TV and radio reception as well as important connectivity standards such as Wi-Fi, all running on the same silicon engine in software. This technology is increasingly essential for delivery of cloud and broadcast content to home and also within the enterprise. Already we have partner devices in volume shipment using this technology for digital radio and Wi-Fi connectivity and we expect several new partner devices targeting multi-standard/global TV markets to begin shipment during the current financial year.
Meta CPUs – the Meta family of embedded processors offers state-of-the-art general-processing combined with multi-threading, demanding real-time and signal-processing capabilities. These capabilities are ideal for highly integrated, feature-rich and cost effective systems. Many of our IP cores integrate Meta processing cores already. Over 50% of the total annual volumes of our IP shipments deploy Meta technology and we expect this trend to continue upwards. The growth of open source operating systems such as Android and other Linux implementations, the trend towards heterogeneous systems/standards, and the inevitable growth of internet connectivity across the majority of devices, will further drive deployment of Meta processors in applications in embedded systems and processors in a variety of markets.
HelloSoft V.VoIP - our HelloSoft family of video and voice over IP (V.VoIP) products, including platform agnostic SDKs, continues to get stronger and more comprehensive, resulting in a number of important engagements for these technologies with both operators and mobile phone OEMs. This is in part driven by the arrival of 4G/Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks which require VoIP over LTE (VoLTE) an area where HelloSoft products are uniquely strong. HelloSoft V.VoIP technology has now been adopted by a number of key network operators for both enterprise and consumer segments with a number of handset design-wins also secured.
Caustic Professional – Technology development and initial customer delivery are making good progress with the first ray-tracing test chip demonstrated and positively received at SIGGRAPH in August 2012.
Pure update
Despite the current slow-down in consumer spending, Pure continues to effectively showcase and help to drive key strategic connectivity technologies. We expect to see a financial improvement in this division over the medium term, driven by international markets and new product opportunities.
Despite the current slow-down in consumer spending, Pure continues to effectively showcase and help to drive key strategic connectivity technologies. We expect to see a financial improvement in this division over the medium term, driven by international markets and new product opportunities.
Outlook
The continuing macro-economic volatility creates caution among our customers. Despite this the licensing pipeline remains robust, although there is the usual uncertainty over the timing of deal closures.
The continuing macro-economic volatility creates caution among our customers. Despite this the licensing pipeline remains robust, although there is the usual uncertainty over the timing of deal closures.
We expect further product launches from our customers, including a number of our significant design wins reaching production, which will continue to drive strong growth in royalty volumes and revenue.
As a result the Board remains confident that the Group is on track for continued progress.
Hossein Yassaie, Imagination’s Chief Executive said:
"Our ‘smart’ technologies are being adopted more widely across both new and existing partners, creating a wider base for continued momentum in future volume growth which maintains our stated goal of around 1bn annual unit shipments by 2016 as a realistic objective."
"Our ‘smart’ technologies are being adopted more widely across both new and existing partners, creating a wider base for continued momentum in future volume growth which maintains our stated goal of around 1bn annual unit shipments by 2016 as a realistic objective."
END
At this stage it is not clear whether the iPhone 5 contains SGX 543MP2 or MP4, but Apple are stating 2x graphics improvement over iPhone 4S. The new iPod Touch was also announced and contains an A5 chip (SGX 543MP2) .
The IMS shows progress across all the important divisions with strong royalty volume & revenue growth a key feature. There is a small reduction in ASP due to the royalty mix - in my view this is mainly due to the strong Mediatek ramp at present.
AGM is tomorrow (many of us will be there) so we hope to be 'liveblogging '.
Friday, 7 September 2012
KINDLE FIRE HD UNVEILED, BIG WIN FOR OMAP
Yesterday evening Jeff Bezos (Amazon Inc CEO) unveiled the new line of Kindle Fire HD tablets:
http://reviews.cnet.com/kindle-fire-hd/
The analysts (and tech sites) had talked themselves into believing Tegra 3 had this 'in the bag'. Instead, Bezos revealed the 8.9" versions had OMAP 4470 (with Power VR SGX 544MP) inside. The 7" version is thought to use the OMAP 4460 (Power VR SGX 540). Bezos went out of way to state the advantages of OMAP 4470 over Tegra 3, it's even in the product description on www.amazon.com:
'A rich HD display requires a powerful processor to drive it. The TI OMAP4470 processor in the Kindle Fire HD 8.9" has 40% more memory bandwidth than Tegra 3, enabling faster web browser JavaScript performance. And Kindle Fire HD 8.9" has an Imagination SGX544 3D graphics core that can process over 12 billion floating-point operations per second, so even graphically intensive games run smoothly and render stunning scenery. We also tuned the graphics pipeline and touch handling software to eliminate delays between when you touch the screen and when the application responds. This means the home screen scrolls more smoothly, videos start playing faster, and games respond nearly instantaneously.'
This comes as welcome relief for the OMAP divison (one of IMG's oldest and most trusted partners), which has had tough times of late, with intense competition from Qualcomm, Samsung LSI, Broadcom and Mediatek of course.
It's also a great win for IMG and helps maintain the very high market share for tablets. Next week we have the Apple iPhone 5 announcement (12th), followed 2 days later by the AGM in Kings Langley. The IMS will also be out quite soon,should be pretty upbeat with all this great news.
http://reviews.cnet.com/kindle-fire-hd/
The analysts (and tech sites) had talked themselves into believing Tegra 3 had this 'in the bag'. Instead, Bezos revealed the 8.9" versions had OMAP 4470 (with Power VR SGX 544MP) inside. The 7" version is thought to use the OMAP 4460 (Power VR SGX 540). Bezos went out of way to state the advantages of OMAP 4470 over Tegra 3, it's even in the product description on www.amazon.com:
'A rich HD display requires a powerful processor to drive it. The TI OMAP4470 processor in the Kindle Fire HD 8.9" has 40% more memory bandwidth than Tegra 3, enabling faster web browser JavaScript performance. And Kindle Fire HD 8.9" has an Imagination SGX544 3D graphics core that can process over 12 billion floating-point operations per second, so even graphically intensive games run smoothly and render stunning scenery. We also tuned the graphics pipeline and touch handling software to eliminate delays between when you touch the screen and when the application responds. This means the home screen scrolls more smoothly, videos start playing faster, and games respond nearly instantaneously.'
This comes as welcome relief for the OMAP divison (one of IMG's oldest and most trusted partners), which has had tough times of late, with intense competition from Qualcomm, Samsung LSI, Broadcom and Mediatek of course.
It's also a great win for IMG and helps maintain the very high market share for tablets. Next week we have the Apple iPhone 5 announcement (12th), followed 2 days later by the AGM in Kings Langley. The IMS will also be out quite soon,should be pretty upbeat with all this great news.
Monday, 13 August 2012
Mediatek update
There have been a few developments over at key IMG partner Mediatek which are noteworthy:
Firstly, a few weeks ago MTK announced it was raising its full-year forecast for smartphone chip shipments to 95m units (from 75m units). Shipments in the current quarter are now expected to be approx. 30m (21m in last quarter). This is due to increased demand from China for MT6575 and MT6577 (both IMG'd).
This has an immediate positive impact on IMG's H1, and I would not be surprised to see the total H1 IMG royalty volume in the region of 200m chips.
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2012/08/01/2003539124
Secondly, the Mediatek mobile chipset roadmap has been leaked and reveals 2 new cores both featuring the PowerVR SGX544. Full details here:
http://www.gizmochina.com/2012/07/26/mediatek-quad-core-chipset-roadmap-leaked-out-on-the-net/
Finally ,it was good to see MTK break into the top 5 for apps processor vendors, no surprise there:
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4391817/MediaTek-cracks-top-5-in-smartphone-apps-CPU-sales
Firstly, a few weeks ago MTK announced it was raising its full-year forecast for smartphone chip shipments to 95m units (from 75m units). Shipments in the current quarter are now expected to be approx. 30m (21m in last quarter). This is due to increased demand from China for MT6575 and MT6577 (both IMG'd).
This has an immediate positive impact on IMG's H1, and I would not be surprised to see the total H1 IMG royalty volume in the region of 200m chips.
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2012/08/01/2003539124
Secondly, the Mediatek mobile chipset roadmap has been leaked and reveals 2 new cores both featuring the PowerVR SGX544. Full details here:
http://www.gizmochina.com/2012/07/26/mediatek-quad-core-chipset-roadmap-leaked-out-on-the-net/
Finally ,it was good to see MTK break into the top 5 for apps processor vendors, no surprise there:
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4391817/MediaTek-cracks-top-5-in-smartphone-apps-CPU-sales
Wednesday, 25 July 2012
Apple Q3
Apple announced Q3 last night:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/745271-apple-s-ceo-discusses-f3q12-results-earnings-call-transcript?part=single
For IMG, the relevant numbers are:
iPhone 26m sold
iPad 17m sold
iPod Touch - approx 3.5-4m sold
Apple TV 1.3m sold
Giving a total in region of 48m IMG'd devices for the quarter. The comparable figure this time last year was 33m, so pretty healthy advance there for IMG.
Last year, the volume figure for iOS devices in Apple's Q4 was little changed from Q3, due to October release of iPhone 4S, so there is little to suggest things will be different this time round unless there is an earlier release of iPhone 5 (or other rumoured devices). IMG's H2 will be huge due to iPhone 5 roll-out and anything else Apple have up their sleeve.
The big difference this time for IMG's H1 though is the Mediatek ramp, at 15-20m per quarter. There is also greater breadth of new SoCs being released (eg. SiS, Sigma, Realtek) in H1.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/745271-apple-s-ceo-discusses-f3q12-results-earnings-call-transcript?part=single
For IMG, the relevant numbers are:
iPhone 26m sold
iPad 17m sold
iPod Touch - approx 3.5-4m sold
Apple TV 1.3m sold
Giving a total in region of 48m IMG'd devices for the quarter. The comparable figure this time last year was 33m, so pretty healthy advance there for IMG.
Last year, the volume figure for iOS devices in Apple's Q4 was little changed from Q3, due to October release of iPhone 4S, so there is little to suggest things will be different this time round unless there is an earlier release of iPhone 5 (or other rumoured devices). IMG's H2 will be huge due to iPhone 5 roll-out and anything else Apple have up their sleeve.
The big difference this time for IMG's H1 though is the Mediatek ramp, at 15-20m per quarter. There is also greater breadth of new SoCs being released (eg. SiS, Sigma, Realtek) in H1.
Wednesday, 18 July 2012
Intel Q2
Intel reported Q2 last night, just a few IMG-related bits in the CC:
'We are also tracking more than 20 Windows 8 Tablet designs based on our low power and low cost Clover Trail Atom SoC in addition to a number of core based tablets'
'In the smartphone space, we saw the launch of Medfield-based phones from Lenovo, Lava and Orange to great reviews. These launches further established Intel in the market building on the wide presence we have in baseband.'
'Specifically, to your question, no, it's not predicated on doing more sales in either tablets or in smartphones, but don’t take from that, those aren’t important segments. We think we are on a path to have a lot of products in the market, we’re wining design wins, which really is the momentum that builds into 2013'
'As Intel based tablets are shipping both on Windows 8 and Android, we expect to be able to participate in that fast growing market, but I don’t think those numbers are going to be material this year. I think that just because of the start on, the timing of the start is going to be a slower ramp'
Full transcript: http://seekingalpha.com/article/727571-intel-s-ceo-discusses-q2-2012-results-earnings-call-transcript
Next week should be more interesting with Texas Instruments Q2 on Monday 23rd and then Apple Q3 on Tuesday 24th - iPhone shipments for the quarter are expected to remain at over 30m, whilst iPad should see a ramp up to over 20m.
'We are also tracking more than 20 Windows 8 Tablet designs based on our low power and low cost Clover Trail Atom SoC in addition to a number of core based tablets'
'In the smartphone space, we saw the launch of Medfield-based phones from Lenovo, Lava and Orange to great reviews. These launches further established Intel in the market building on the wide presence we have in baseband.'
'Specifically, to your question, no, it's not predicated on doing more sales in either tablets or in smartphones, but don’t take from that, those aren’t important segments. We think we are on a path to have a lot of products in the market, we’re wining design wins, which really is the momentum that builds into 2013'
'As Intel based tablets are shipping both on Windows 8 and Android, we expect to be able to participate in that fast growing market, but I don’t think those numbers are going to be material this year. I think that just because of the start on, the timing of the start is going to be a slower ramp'
Full transcript: http://seekingalpha.com/article/727571-intel-s-ceo-discusses-q2-2012-results-earnings-call-transcript
Next week should be more interesting with Texas Instruments Q2 on Monday 23rd and then Apple Q3 on Tuesday 24th - iPhone shipments for the quarter are expected to remain at over 30m, whilst iPad should see a ramp up to over 20m.
Wednesday, 27 June 2012
Mediatek announces MT6577 platform for sub-$200 smartphones
Great news from IMG's partner today with the availability of MT6577, an integrated platform (apps processor+3G/HSPA modem) running Android 4.0, featuring Power VR SGX 531.
There is no doubt this platform will take large market share in China (from Qualcomm mainly) and result in Mediatek becoming the 2nd largest volume partner for Imagination (Apple no.1 of course).
This comes just a few days after the Mediatek takeover of MStar (another IMG partner) was announced, something which has the potential to accelerate IMG's move to becoming no.1 graphics IP supplier in the DTV SoC market (instead of Mali) over the coming 12-18 months.
Full PR:
HSINCHU, Taiwan, June 27, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- MediaTek Inc., a leading fabless semiconductor company for wireless communications and digital multimedia solutions, today announced the availability of the MT6577, a dual-core platform developed specifically for sub-$200 smartphones, the fastest growing segment of the global smartphone market. The MediaTek MT6577 features a dual 1GHz Cortex(TM)-A9 application processor from ARM, a PowerVR(TM) Series5 SGX GPU (graphics processing unit) from Imagination Technologies, MediaTek's proven 3G/HSPA modem, and runs the latest Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich" operating system. By integrating a dual-core application processor architecture widely deployed in the majority of today's premium smartphones, the MT6577 boosts application and browser performance by up to 40% compared to single-core platforms, bringing unprecedented levels of user experience to mid- and entry-level smartphones.
"MediaTek's existing HSPA smartphone platforms - the MT6573 and MT6575 - have been extremely well-received by customers and consumers worldwide, and are currently shipping with major international brands such as Lenovo, TCL/Alcatel, and other top tier Chinese OEMs," said Ching-Jiang Hsieh, President of MediaTek. "The MT6577 adds the next level of performance and enhanced user experience to the MediaTek smartphone family, delivering enhanced user interactivity, mobile connectivity and rich multi-media experience previously only available on high-end devices. Consumers everywhere will now benefit from the affordable, high-performance devices enabled by the MT6577. MediaTek is proud to be in the vanguard of companies enabling the democratization of smartphones."
"Dual-core processors account for over 20% of current smartphone processor shipments, with these devices being mostly in the premium segment and addressed by standalone application processors. MediaTek's new MT6577, with integrated dual-core processors and 3G/HSPA modem is well suited to bringing similar user experiences to the fast-growing mid and entry smartphone segment which is forecast to grow from under 200 Mu in 2012 to over 500 Mu in 2016," said Stuart Robinson, Director, Handset Component Technologies service at Strategy Analytics.
The MT6577 is designed to deliver rich multimedia experiences, with an 8MP camera, support for up to high-definition 1080p video playback and the ability to support high-resolution displays up to HD720 (1280x720) resolution. The platform also pre-integrates MediaTek's leading 4-in-1 connectivity combo that provides support for dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi, BT4.0, GPS and FM. The MT6577 is pin-to-pin compatible with the previously released MT6575, allowing handset manufacturers to easily produce multiple tiers of devices leveraging a single PCBA hardware development effort.
The MT6577 dual-core platform is currently being incorporated into smartphone devices by MediaTek's leading global customers, and the first smartphone models based on this new chipset are expected to ship commercially in Q3 2012.
Wednesday, 20 June 2012
Imagination announces superb results
Yesterday, Imagination announced an excellent set of full year results. Highlights below:
Imagination Technologies Group plc (LSE: IMG, “Imagination”, “the Group”), a leading multimedia, communications and embedded processor technology company, today announces results for the year to 30 April 2012.
Financial highlights
- Group revenue up 30% to £127.5m (2011: £98.0m)
- Technology revenues increased 41% to £98.2m (2011: £69.8m)
- Royalty revenue up 55% to £63.8m (2011: £41.3m)
- Licensing revenues up 21% to £34.4m (2011: £28.5m)
- Pure revenues of £29.3m (2011: £28.3m)
- Strong overseas growth (36% of revenues now international) offsetting tough UK retail environment
- Technology revenues increased 41% to £98.2m (2011: £69.8m)
- Adjusted pre-tax profit* up 53% to £36.8m (2011: £24.0m)
- Reported pre-tax profit up 74% to £28.5m (2011: £16.4m)
- Adjusted earnings per share* up 39% to 11.0p (2011: 7.9p**)
- Reported earnings per share 7.9p (2011: 7.7p)
- Cash balance increased to £66.3m (2011: £49.4m)
* The reconciliation from reported results to adjusted results is set out in Note 3.
** Using normalised tax rate of 26%
** Using normalised tax rate of 26%
Business highlights
Technology business
Royalties and design wins
- Partner chips shipped up 33% to 325m units (2011: 245m), substantial acceleration in H2 to 202m units (H2 2011: 138m)
- Significant volume shipments in mobile phone, tablets/mobile computing, PMP (personal media players), game consoles, TV/STB (Set-Top Box), digital radio and automotive markets
- Strong growth in chip design wins with 136 active partner chips (2011: 115); 60 in production (2011: 48)
- Average royalty rate maintained due to enhancing mix of IP, despite significant volume ramp-up and strong lower-end handset growth
Licensing
- Maintained strong licensing activities across all of our IP
- Several new partners added including Actions Semiconductor, Allwinner, Compound Photonics, HiSilicon, Huawei, Ingenic, MStar, Qualcomm, Ricoh, Rockchip, ZTE
- Many new and extended agreements with existing partners including CSR, Frontier Silicon, Intel, MediaTek, Realtek, Renesas, Samsung, Sigma, Sony, ST, ST-Ericsson, Sunplus, Toumaz
- Significant new partner engagements and license closure in China
- 30 important customers involving 49 silicon IP core licenses - almost 50% up over the last year
- Addressing all markets - mobile phone, tablets/mobile computing, TV/STB, PMP/Camera, in-car navigation/dashboard and industrial/enterprise equipment
- Including graphics, video, display, broadcast/connectivity and processor silicon IP cores, as well as V.VoIP technologies
- Continued active pipeline of prospects across all IP families
Pure business
- Continued softness in UK revenues offset by momentum in overseas growth
- Ongoing DAB adoption worldwide and growing demand for Pure's connected audio
- Continued strategic development and pathfinding role
- Focus on development of technologies for digital broadcast, connected devices and Cloud solutions
- Key recent new products launched
- New Pure wireless streaming products including new flagship Sensia and first Airplay enabled product
- Second generation Highway in-car digital radio and audio adapter launched with Halfords & OEM agreement with Alpine
- Cloud-based on-demand music service launched in the UK with other services and regions adding soon
Hossein Yassaie, Chief Executive, commented:
“We have maintained our momentum and seen another strong year of financial and strategic progress which has fundamentally strengthened our overall position. The excellent growth in licensing partnerships, which expanded across all our IP families, and significant volume ramp-up resulted in a material jump in full-year revenues and profits.
“Our ‘smart’ technologies are being adopted more widely across new and existing partners, creating a solid base for continued momentum in future volume growth making our stated goal of around 1bn annual unit shipment by 2016 a realistic objective.
“Despite the current slow-down in consumer spending, Pure continues to effectively showcase and help to drive key strategic connectivity technologies. We expect to also see a financial improvement in this division over the medium term, driven by international markets and new product opportunities.
“Despite the global economic environment, over 1 million devices are now being shipped with our IP daily. We remain very confident of our continued good progress, given the growing demand across our IP families, the growth in design wins across a widening range of end user markets and the momentum in our partners’ chip volume.”
“Despite the global economic environment, over 1 million devices are now being shipped with our IP daily. We remain very confident of our continued good progress, given the growing demand across our IP families, the growth in design wins across a widening range of end user markets and the momentum in our partners’ chip volume.”
END
Full report is here:
Analyst meeting presentation slides are here:
Audio broadcast (you have to register) is here (seems to work better on Safari and iPad 2/iPhone 4S imo)
Some of the bear analysts came up with a new angle of attack: over-reliance on one customer (ie. Apple), as if being the sole supplier to iOS devices (for many years to come) is a bad thing.
Jen-Hsun , Warren East, and Paul Jacobs would give their right arm for the iOS graphics slot (imho).
The bull analysts have updated their estimates and I will update the Broker estimates in due course (there's quite a few !) .
There was special emphasis on IMG's success in the A/V/TV markets and as I said in earlier posts, IMG will soon (12-24 months imo) overhaul Mali's no.1 position in the DTV market - especially when the Apple HDTV arrives.
Congratulations to HY and his brilliant team at IMG (TKS, Susi, John Metcalfe, Dave McBrien and the hundreds of top-notch engineers) on these results. Next stop...half a billion units.
Friday, 15 June 2012
Imagination announces 2 new Power VR Series 6 Rogue cores
With just a few days to go before the Final Results, IMG made a number of announcements today. Of particular interest was this one:
Imagination also recently announced further collaboration with TSMC:
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20120615PR204.html
Imagination Technologies, a leading multimedia technologies company, announces the latest IP cores in its ground-breaking PowerVR Series6 GPU core family.
The PowerVR G6230 and G6430 GPU IP cores are the latest in a growing family of PowerVR Series6 GPU cores and deliver high compute efficiency while minimising power and bandwidth requirements.
Following on from the G6200 and G6400 cores, the PowerVR G6230 and G6430 offer two further design points in the Series6 family, which now includes two ‘two-cluster’ and two ‘four-cluster’ IP cores.
PowerVR G6200 and G6400 are designed to deliver the best performance at the smallest area possible for two and four cluster architectures respectively, while the PowerVR G6230 and G6430 ‘go all out’, adding incremental extra area for maximum performance whilst minimising power consumption.
All ‘Rogue’ architecture cores deliver a power / performance ratio unmatched by competitor solutions, without compromising on feature set.
Says Tony King-Smith, VP marketing, Imagination: “With the four cores announced so far PowerVR Series6 can target a wide range of markets and requirements. PowerVR Series6 has already set a new benchmark for high performance, ultra-low power GPU cores. With G6200, G6230, G6400 and G6430 we deliver power, performance and area that fits the wide range of differentiated designs our licensing partners want to create.”
PowerVR Series6 is based on the highly scalable ‘Rogue’ architecture and further cores will be announced to deliver the widest range of performance for licensing partners seeking to deploy the industry’s leading graphics IP solution with the optimal intersection of product differentiation and the shortest time to market.
Inside Rogue
Based on a scalable number of compute clusters, the PowerVR Rogue architecture is designed to target the requirements of a growing range of demanding markets from mobile to the highest performance embedded graphics including smartphones, tablets, PC, console, automotive and TV. Using these arrays of programmable computing elements PowerVR G62xx and G64xx deliver high compute power efficiency while minimising power and bandwidth requirements. The PowerVR G62xx and G64xx, have two and four compute clusters respectively.
PowerVR Series6 GPU cores are designed to offer computing performance exceeding 100GFLOPS (gigaFLOPS) and reaching the TFLOPS (teraFLOPS) range enabling high-level graphics performance from mobile through to high-end compute and graphics solutions. Rogue cores are specified to ensure the fill rates required for the latest smartphones, tablets and TVs, as well as the multiple screen support demanded by the automotive industry.
Rogue meets requirements for compute APIs including OpenCL 1.x and Renderscript Compute, delivering an optimal balance of performance versus power consumption for mobile and embedded devices. All members of the Series6 family are designed to support all features of the latest graphics APIs including the next generation of the OpenGL ES API*, OpenGL 3.x/4.x, and DirectX10 with certain family members extending their capabilities to full WHQL-compliant DirectX11.1 functionality.
The PowerVR Series6 family delivers a significant portfolio of new technologies and features, including: advanced scalable compute cluster architecture; high efficiency compression technology including lossless image and parameter compression and the widely respected PVRTC2™ texture compression; an enhanced scheduling architecture; dedicated housekeeping processor based on Imagination’s Meta technology; and a new generation Tile Based Deferred Rendering architecture. These features combine to produce a highly latency tolerant architecture that consumes the lowest memory bandwidth in the industry while delivering the best performance per mm2 and per mW.
END
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20120615PR204.html
GPU IP vendor Imagination Technologies has announced a collaboration with TSMC to ensure that licensees of all of Imagination's IP cores can optimize speed, area and power consumption on TSMC's most-advanced 28nm and below processes.
Imagination is already a member of TSMC's Soft-IP Alliance program. The IP licensor said the announcement is made as part of its closer relationship with the foundry partner.
Imagination's IP core families in this collaboration include PowerVR graphics, PowerVR video and display, Ensigma communications, and Meta processors. Meta is a 32-bit hardware multi-threaded processor architecture.
"Many of our licensees rely on TSMC to provide them with leading edge low power, high performance silicon foundry capabilities. This strengthening of our relationship with TSMC reflects our determination to deliver the best possible SoC solutions on the latest silicon processes for our SoC IP licensing partners," said Tony King-Smith, VP marketing, Imagination. "We believe this initiative will ensure that Imagination's licensees to continue to push the boundaries of what is possible for future generations of advanced SoCs."
In addition, Imagination noted that the firm has grown its licensee portfolio in Taiwan. Through the support of its Taiwan-based partners including MediaTek, MStar, Realtek, Sunplus and SiS, Imagination is able to reach the local OEM and ODM companies in China, the GPU IP licensor said.
For instance, many China-based OEMs have developed MediaTek-based phones. MediaTek has licensed Imagination's PowerVR Series6 for its smartphone processors.
In China, Imagination has expanded its local licensee base to include HiSilicon, Ingenic and Rockchip, the IP vendor revealed. Imagination is also partnering with well-known chip suppliers such as TI, whose processors adopted by China's OEMs including Lenovo and Huawei.
And to respond to its growing business in Asia, Imagination has moved to increase its local engineering and sales support, China and Taiwan, the UK-based IP supplier noted.
END
ARM recently had an analyst investor day, during which they gave the impression (imo) that they were winning the battle for GPU in the China/Taiwan territory. A quick look at some of the names in the above article would suggest otherwise.
Mediatek re-iterated its estimate of smartphone chips at the AGM earlier of 75m for the full-year and these are IMG'd, so it is quickly becoming our no.2 chip shipper (after Apple of course). It should not be too long before the IMG'd TV chips from market leaders Mediatek and MStar (currently Mali) also start shipping.
So things are looking great for IMG in China/Taiwan with much more to come. We should get more information on 19th June in the Full Year statement from IMG and the presentation slides.
Thursday, 3 May 2012
Imagination scores huge win at HiSilicon
Imagination today announced a hugely significant win at HiSilicon. This is very exciting news for several reasons:
1. HiSilicon is essentially the chip arm of Huawei (spun off in 2004), the large Chinese OEM with global ambitions and plenty of financial muscle to back it up. HiSilicon made news at MWC (Barcelona) with its K3V2 quad-core processor with '16 core GPU' (turned out to be Vivante designed). Clearly, they didn't want to settle for Vivante (or any other cheap solution eg.Mali) and wisely,went for the best.
2. The license is for multiple IP across the PowerVR range (ie. it's a biggie), including graphics, video and display cores.
3. HiSilicon becomes the 9th PowerVR Rogue licensee (5 named, 4 not confirmed). The top companies are keen to secure the best future graphics technologies and ecosystems.
The PR:
Imagination Technologies Group plc (LSE: IMG; "Imagination"), a leader in System-on-Chip Intellectual Property ("SoC IP"), has signed a license agreement with HiSilicon Technologies Co., Ltd. ("HiSilicon") covering multiple PowerVR multimedia IP cores from Imagination, including graphics, video and display technologies. Under the license agreement HiSilicon has licensed a member of the PowerVR Series6 'Rogue' GPU graphics family.
HiSilicon will deploy Imagination’s technology in SoCs targeting the mobile and consumer markets.
Under the terms of its licensing arrangements, Imagination receives licence fees and royalty revenues on SoCs incorporating Imagination's IP.
END
Separately the CEO Hossein Yassaie has been featured in a number of press interviews lately, and here is the latest one:
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-2138580/CITY-INTERVIEW-The-quiet-Iranian-smart-phones.html#ixzz1tmt9fq5f
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