Imagination Technologies unveils Imagination DXS GPU, its latest automotive GPU IP for in-vehicle intelligence and interaction. DXS is a scalable and flexible GPU IP designed to process graphics and compute workloads in cockpit, infotainment and advanced driver assistance systems. It introduces new innovations in distributed safety, eliminating the overhead of achieving ASIL-B functional safety on Imagination processors. It has already been licensed for use in the automotive market.
The Imagination DXS GPU supports the graphics and compute requirements of an entire vehicle line-up with single core configurations starting at 0.25 TFLOPS and scaling up to 1.5 TFLOPS – 50% higher peak performance than Imagination’s previous generation automotive GPU IP. Imagination’s unique multi-core technology allows for two, three and four core configurations, while the low bandwidth bus between cores and support for isolation suits the use of IMG DXS in chiplets. It adopts relevant features introduced into the PowerVR architecture in D-Series, such as Pipelined Data Masters and 2D Dual-Rate Texturing, to boost performance efficiency by 20% over previous generations of automotive GPU IP and ensure that it outperforms competitive cores on real world benchmarks.
“Imagination is a leading provider of GPU IP into automotive,” says Anshel Sag, Principal Analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. “The demand for pixel processing in cars has grown enormously over the last decade, with digital cockpits, dashboard wide displays and rear entertainment screens offering smartphone-like visual experiences. Imagination’s combination of great performance for 3D graphics, flexible multitasking and a robust approach to safety has seen its popularity explode.”
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DXS is optimised for the compute workloads needed for next generation vehicle intelligence, such as computer vision and data processing. By combining the raw performance of DXS with an additional FP16 pipeline and a set of new compute libraries and AI toolkits, users can achieve up to ten times higher performance for compute workloads compared to previous generations.
“The GPU is no longer just used for graphics in cars,” says James Chapman, Chief Product Officer at Imagination. “The long-term nature of designing hardware in the era of the software-defined vehicles is making hardware designers choose flexible and programmable processors that can handle the AI workloads of today as well as adapt to whatever the future brings. Today, our automotive GPUs are as much in demand for their compute abilities as for their rendering.”
The first Imagination processor to feature “Distributed Safety Mechanisms”
All functions that a vehicle performs are graded based on potential risk according to the ISO 26262 Automotive Safety Integrity Level (ASIL). Automotive manufacturers and their suppliers must ensure that components involved in that function meet the necessary standards for fault detection and handling, with ASIL-A having the least stringent requirements and ASIL-D the most comprehensive.
Its new “Distributed Safety Mechanisms” solution means DXS achieves ASIL-B functional safety at a fraction of the Performance, Power or Area (PPA) overhead of the two main existing methods: dual-core lockstep, which increases silicon area by 100%, and workload repetition, which halves processor performance for safety workloads.
SOURCE: Businesswire