Imagination releases new PowerVR mobile GPUs and its first Neural Network Accelerator

Even though Apple decided to part ways with Imagination and develop its own graphics chip for the new iPhone 8/X, the British company does not seem to be too affected by this setback. Imagination has just announced a new line of PowerVR mobile GPUs and its first Neural Network Accelerator (NNA).

The PowerVR Series 9XE GPUs are aimed at casual gaming platforms like entry-level mobile and tablet devices, as well as cost-effective products that include DTVs, set-top boxes, streaming sticks/dongles, automotive infotainment and cluster electronics. These feature the new eight pixel/clock (8PPC) core extends the support for resolutions up to 4K@60 fps.

The more advance PowerVR Series 9XM are designed to deliver the best gaming and compute performance on devices such as premium gaming set-top boxes, mid-range smartphones and tablets, and automotive infotainment systems.

The main improvements brought by the new GPUs include bandwidth savings, an extended memory system, extremely low power consumption, support for hardware virtualization, Khronos/Open GL ES/Vulkan integration, and lossless image compression.

Imagination’s 2NX Neural Network Accelerator facilitates hardware-accelerated tasks to mobile devices, home entertainment and automotive or security systems. Such tasks include image recognition, eye-tracking, predictive text enhancement, and photography enhancements. Apple’s A11 Bionic and Huawei’s Kirin 970 SoCs already provide similar features, but the Imagination NNA has the advantage of being a dedicated hardware solution that consumes less power.

Imagination announced that all the new chips are now available for OEM licensing.

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