Imagination Technologies Technology Overview 2010

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Leaders in Semiconductor IP


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Inside ImaginationImagination is one of the most successful design IP companies in the world. Our customers

include the worlds leading semiconductor companies, leading specialist fabless chip

companies, and famous consumer electronics brands.

In an age of profound technological change, where everything is becoming increasingly

connected, digital and converged, we specialize in the technologies that touch everyone:multimedia and communications.

By delivering the broadest range of proven, intellectual property (IP) cores, each of them

outstanding in its abilities to accelerate a wide range of industry standards at the lowest

power and smallest silicon area, our technology has won its place in some of the worlds best

selling and most iconic consumer electronics products.

Our success is built on creating technologies for new and changing markets. Because

we tackle difcult areas of chip design, and focus on providing complete IP solutions, ourtechnologies are in demand by leading manufacturers and have increasingly become a keypart of our partners long-term product roadmaps.

Our technology is ideally suited to the four markets, or four screens that dene the modern

consumer electronics experience: home, PC, mobile and in-car. These four screens dene

the primary gateways to consumers so it is increasingly essential for consumer electronics

companies and applications developers to retain consumers when they move from one

screen to another.

PURE, our consumer products division, showcases our technologies and helps us to driveemerging markets, all while creating award-winning products which are increasingly loved

and respected by consumers worldwide.

Imagination believes in quietly making big things happen. Today there are over 350 million

people using our technologies who may not know our name, but whose need for innovation,entertainment and connectivity is enabled by Imagination.


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FoundationsImagination Technologies Group plc is an international leader in the creation and licensing

of multimedia and communications technology for use in semiconductors and in the

development and manufacture of advanced digital radio and connected consumer audio

visual products.

We create new technologies in the form of licensable hardware and software IP which formthe basis of the market-leading solutions we deliver to customers. These we license to leading

semiconductor companies who manufacture and sell chips with our technology inside.

The Group consists of two divisions:

Technology creates market-leading semiconductor cores for adding graphics, video

and audio acceleration, display enhancement, embedded processing and multi-

standard communications and connectivity technologies into chip designs. This is

complemented by extensive software and tools, as well as dynamic developer supportprogrammes and ecosystems.

PURE develops market-leading and innovative consumer products. It consistentlydelivers products with an acclaimed mix of high performance and ease of use which

not only dominate in PUREs target markets but also showcase the capabilities of

Imaginations technologies and stimulate new and emerging markets. PURE is the

creator and manufacturer of the worlds most popular digital radios and internet-

connected audio devices.

Everything we do is underpinned by our fundamental belief that for any market of sufciently

high volume the most successful solution will be a single SoC.

Imagination today has a highly skilled workforce of over 650 people from more than 25different nationalities, of which over 80% are qualied engineers. We recruit the very best

engineers from around the world from many disciplines including systems architecture,hardware, software, SoC methodology, verication and apps design.

Headquarters R&D Sales

UK Technology Technology

UK and India UK, Japan, Korea,

Taiwan and USA

PURE PURE

UK, India and China UK, Australia, France,

Germany, Ireland and USA

Imagination worldwide


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Our sales teams and local management are strategically located in the key regional marketswe serve to ensure that customers always have access to someone who speaks their

language in their time zone.

Our divisions now have operations in twelve countries. Our headquarters are in Kings Langley,

near London, UK, with technology R&D centres in Chepstow and Leeds in the UK and Pune,India. We keep close to our technology customers and partners worldwide, with sales ofces

in Japan, the USA , Europe, Korea and Taiwan. PURE has sales ofces in Australia, Ireland, the

USA , France and Germany and operations and R&D in China.

Imagination continues to deliver on a strategy of innovation and diversication that has

created a globally recognized technology company, based in the heart of England.

We have achieved this thanks to the close participation of our partners and millions ofconsumers around the world, many of whom are unaware of how their lives are being

enriched by Imagination.

Business ModelsOur Technology business is based on IP licensing with up-front license fees plus royalties when

silicon devices which use our technologies are shipped.

IP licensing makes sound commercial sense for semiconductor companies, who are freed

from the punitive cost of developing all their required technology in-house, enabling them to

concentrate on the competencies at the heart of their businesses such as SoC integration,range development, supply chain logistics, support, application platform development and

of course their own unique IP.

Because our IP is designed to be high performance with very low power requirements

and small silicon area (so it is low cost to manufacture) it is enabling the most advanced

multimedia and communications technologies to reach every consumer.PURE is not only a sales and innovation leader in key new markets but also helps us to betterunderstand the needs of the market, pathnd in new areas, develop new technologies, and

directly engage with consumers.

InnovationImaginations ideas and technologies enable the latest chips and consumer electronics

devices to deliver advanced multimedia and communication features.

More than this, we create the unexpected: disruptive technologies which expand markets

and excite users.

Our solutions are scalable, programmable and multi-standard so they can be used across a

wide range of applications and markets.

Increasingly consumer electronics (CE) devices have to deliver the internet, PC capabilities,TV, music, navigation and more in one platform. We think of it as four screens TV, PC, mobile

and in-car each increasingly capable of being connected to the cloud, an abstract

internet server space from which common business and entertainment applications are

accessed via web browsers or connected devices.


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Imagination is a key part of a cycle which drives the constant innovation that fuels theelectronics and semiconductor industry.

It is our role to create technologies which enable better delivery of the features that

consumers want now, and new features which will enrich the consumer experience in the

future. Our IP is amongst the very best and this has won us many of the worlds leadingsemiconductor companies as partners.

The chips our partners create with our technologies inside innovate in their integration of

features and the ability to deliver comprehensive application platforms. Those chips are used

by the worlds best known CE companies. These companies are amongst the biggest and

best known brands in the world.

The most innovative CE companies are also choosing to engage directly with us, therebygetting ever closer to the technologies from Imagination which will be strategically important

to their next generations of products. With each new product, users expect better content

and implementation of current features, lower power consumption and cost, and new

features and capabilities too. The demand for products to constantly improve in these areascreates the demand for ever more advanced and efcient IP. This is what drives our business.

Many CE companies now focus on delivering complete application platforms which includeApp Stores or connected services. A consistent hardware and software platform makes itpossible to guarantee a wide user base to third-party applications developers. Imaginations

IP offerings are fundamental building blocks in many of the most innovative and extensive

platforms, addressing the key needs of application platform developers by delivering class-

leading compatible technologies which are also scalable to allow the platforms to evolve

and grow in performance and across market segments.

Semiconductor Partners

Equipment

Manufacturers

IncludingTechnology

Consumers The technology cycle


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PartnersEach of our major IP families is the result of hundreds of man years of experience and effort,

resulting in innovations and capabilities that attract partners of the very highest quality. We

have four main types of partner: IP core licensees, who are our main customers; industry

partners, who include the alliances and organizations which help set the pace for technologychange; technology partners, representing the most innovative and successful technology

businesses; and OEM and ODM consumer electronics manufacturers, including some of the

worlds most recognized brands.

Our business is not built on achieving the highest number of partners, but rather working

closely with the very best in the industry and in step with their long-term strategies. Our

engagements are designed to be strategic and deep.

Our lead partners innovate in their focus markets, help dene our longer term IP roadmap

and ensure that our technologies remain at the forefront. We typically engage with one ormore lead partners while still in the process of rening the specication of new IP. This enables

us to align our IP with the leading edge of technology development, as well as providing

lead partners with the opportunity to get to market with our latest technologies in the shortest

possible time. After thse initial engagements the IP is more widely licensed.

We also foster new business by providing access to our IP for start-up and niche companiesthrough a range of exible and innovative commercial arrangements.

Imagination has a dynamic industry presence, working alongside many industry bodies andother leading technology organizations. Our involvement in standards and research groups is

helping to specify the products of tomorrow, and to make sure that key open standards are

in line with our technology offerings.

More and more software developers are engaging with us to benet from our expertise and

industry contacts. They frequently use our software development kits (SDKs) and tools and

many ship our tools as part of their own offerings.


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EcosystemsThe success of our technologies naturally gives rise to ecosystems of companies working with

us to create software or hardware using our IP, or creating devices with our IP inside.

Our ecosystem programmes provide our licensees and partners with everything they need to

ensure success and rapid time to market.

For example, our graphics-focused POWERVR Insiderprogramme is the leading 3D ecosystem

in the mobile and embedded markets, with over 20,000 members (as at September 2010),including many leading application developers, which enables us to showcase apps

demonstrating the best use of our technology.

We help our licensees and key partners meet and communicate with developers, middleware

providers and third-party support teams and provide extensive co-marketing opportunities for

product manufacturers, content developers and semiconductor companies.

As use of our technologies grows and our licensees increasingly combine more than one

of our IP offerings we are rapidly expanding our ecosystems and strategic partnership

programmes making them ever more valuable, comprehensive and rewarding.


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Why choose Imagination?

1 PerformanceOur technologies are designed to be the best in their class, delivering industry-leading

performance at lowest power consumption and system overhead. By combining unique

innovations, multi-standard capability, multi-threading and multicore approaches, the

technology we offer does the job better than anything else on the market.

2 ProvenWe reduce our partners exposure to risk. Our IP is proven in volume shipments and numerous

successful products. By choosing Imagination, our partners know that their designs will work

correctly in volume production.

3 Low PowerBy delivering fundamentally power-efcient architectures which provide the best

performance at the lowest power we enable longer battery life in mobile devices, as well as

eco-friendly, fan-free, mains powered products.

4 RoadmapsOur complete roadmaps and scalable architectures mean customers can use the IP

from low to high end devices, over multiple products and markets for maximum return oninvestment. Our roadmaps complement each other, which makes it easy for our partners to

combine our IP and create fully featured SoCs.

5 SolutionsWe think about SoC-based solutions rst and foremost so that our IP is easy to integrate.

We have strong ecosystem programmes with members who create everything from endproducts to middleware and applications.


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TechnologiesOur unique, patented technologies are embodied in our POWERVR, ENSIGMA and METAfamilies, which, whether delivered individually or as platform IP, deliver exible solutions to

some of the most difcult challenges of modern semiconductors.

We focus on supporting open standards, and making our IP achieve an optimum

combination of programmability and highly optimized hardware engines. This ensures weachieve uncompromised performance while supporting exibility and a wider and growing

range of open standards.

We also concentrate on delivering the highest performance and most comprehensive

features sets at the lowest possible power for any given silicon area.

POWERVR graphics uses a unique tile-based, deferred rendering (TBDR), shader-based

architecture which allows a very small die size to deliver higher performance and higher

image quality at lower power consumption than all competing technologies.

As computing becomes more and more visual, graphics are fundamental to the user

experience. The evolution of user interfaces, games, navigation and location based servicesis progressing in tandem with improvements in graphics technology, many of which are

being driven by Imagination.

All of our graphics cores use TBDR architectures to enable low-power and high-performance

for 2D, 3D and general purpose (GP-GPU) processing in either single core or scalable multi-

processor (MP) solutions.

All popular APIs are supported including OpenGL, OpenGL ES, OpenVG, OpenCL and

DirectX on every major embedded, mobile and destop OS including, Linux, Android,Symbian, Nucleus, WinCE /Windows Mobile and Windows 7/Vista/XP.

POWERVR video technology builds on the underlying architectural philosophies of POWERVR

graphics using the lowest power and memory by only processing what is absolutely necessary.

The proliferation of new ways of delivering video content means that systems need to beable to cope more exibly with differing and evolving video standards. Our video technology

is an exceptional balance of hardcoded and programmable elements which combine todeliver the most efcient multi-standard and multi-stream video decoders and encoders.

All VXD and VXE cores fully accelerate decode and encode of all the major standardsincluding H.264 (High, Mid, Base proles), MPEG-2, MPEG-4, VC -1 and AVS , as well as providing

support for other popular standards such as Sorenson Spark, Real, VP6/8, and more.

POWERVR display technology delivers an unrivalled range of display enhancement

technologies for any media to high-resolution displays. Imagination has an unrivalled range of

display enhancement technologies for HDTV. From skin tone and blue/black stretch engines

to state-of-the-art interlace-to-progressive scan conversion technologies; from frame rateconversion to TV output capabilities POWERVR display technologies have it covered.

Partners SoC Imaginations IP can deliver all thekey functions of modern SoCs


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Our POWERVR I2P IP cores achieve exceptional de-interlace performance up to full HDresolutions, while using innovative new algorithms to deliver the highest performance in far

smaller silicon area than traditional solutions. Our latest POWERVR FRC IP cores enable highly

intelligent up-sampling of up to HD resolution content from 24fps to 100/120 up to 200/240fps,offering excellent dejudder and motion deblur characteristics.

ENSIGMA UCC solves the problem of proliferating broadcast and connectivity standards

by supporting them all on a single highly programmable engine. The technology features aunique balance of programmability and hardware congurability, yet occupies equivalent or

less silicon area compared to hard-wired, single-standard hardware demodulation solutions.

Imaginations ENSIGMA UCCP IP platforms are an exceptional range of low-power solutions

enabling the reception of a wide range of analogue and digital TV, mobile TV, and digitaland analogue radio broadcast standards, as well as Wi-Fi and other connectivity standards,

on a single device.

UCC delivers multi-standard demodulation support for a uniquely diverse set of standardsincluding the 802.11a/b/g family of Wi-Fi standards, class-leading support for digital TV (ATSC8VSB, Nordig Unied 2.0 DVB-T, 13-seg ISDB-T), mobile TV (DVB-H, T-DMB, 1-seg ISDB-T), digital

radio reception (ISDB-Tmm, ISDB-Tsb, DAB, DAB+, DMB-R) and FM with RDS.

META builds on Imaginations strength in hardware multi-threading to deliver all the benets

of multi-processor solutions but using less silicon resource and development complexity thanconventional multi-processor approaches. Its unied architecture delivers powerful digital

signal processing (DSP) and general-purpose processing while the multi-threading hides

memory latency in SoC solutions, enabling it to deliver up to three times the performance of

similar conventional CPUs.

Hardware multi-threading is a key technology for Imagination. Most of our IP cores use this

approach to extract the maximum possible processor performance from every clock cycle.META processors run a wide range of operating systems, including full Linux, both single

processor and Symmetric Multi-Processor (SMP), and our own MeOS real-time operatingsystem (RTOS). SMP Linux enables the benets of multi-processing and hardware multi-

threading to be brought together under a familiar Linux environment, enabling softwareengineers to take advantage of many of the benets of hardware multi-threading without

having to write any special code.

CODESCAPE is our comprehensive suite of development tools, which supports the advanced

and unique features of Imaginations IP cores. CODESCAPE streamlines programming,

debugging and application optimization at all stages of SoC development to reduce time-

to-market and ensure the best power consumption and system use.

CODESCAPE already supports heterogeneous multi-processor SoCs making it a unique debug

environment that works on all of the SoC not just parts. We are continuing to expand thetoolchain across all of our IP families.


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Some of the operating

systems supported by

Imagination

MarketsWhile our technologies can be found in a wide variety of different product form factors,the markets we are engaged in can be broadly classied into ve categories: mobile

phone multimedia, handheld multimedia, home consumer, mobile computing and

in-car electronics.

Mobile Phone MultimediaSmartphones are driving growth in the mobile phone multimedia market. It is increasingly

perceived that graphics and video make a phone smart especially as displays on suchdevices move towards high-denition (HD).

POWERVR leads the market for 3D graphics acceleration in mobile phones, while our videocores are increasingly deployed and we see many opportunities for our connectivity solutions.

We have seen the rise of Apps stores create demand for consistent hardware platforms,

a trend which helps make our technology successful in this segment.

The past year has seen a proliferation of new operating systems. Imagination has the

highest level of support for all the key operating systems and APIs. No other IP vendor has

broader support.

Handheld MultimediaIn the broader handheld multimedia market, which includes personal media players (PMP),

digital cameras and mobile TV, there is growing demand for innovative new form factors and

feature sets as media-rich apps become a way of life.

With our class-leading technologies, handheld multimedia products can achieve exceptional

multimedia functionality with long battery life. Our technologies are uniquely positioned toenable the new generation of media players with graphics-rich applications, HD videoencode and decode, digital broadcast reception, connectivity and advanced, intuitive user

interfaces as elegant as the products themselves.

Home ConsumerThis segment, including digital TV (DTV), set-top box (STB), digital radio and connectedaudio, covers the wide range of media platforms we enjoy in our living rooms, bedrooms

and kitchens.

The DTV and STB market is moving at great speed towards internet connectivity and the

increased use of graphically advanced user-interfaces (UI), widgets and smartphone-

like features.

Our multi-standard receiver and connectivity technologies, complemented by our signicantstrengths in HD multimedia (video, audio and graphics) enable us to provide unrivalled

platform solutions in these markets.

Mobile ComputingThis segment contains many different device types: mobile internet devices (MID), netbooks,

smartbooks, tablets, slates and laptops amongst them. Yet fundamentally the market is all

about the delivery of desktop-level computing in ultra-low-power highly mobile form factors.

Dening a new segment in consumer computing, tablets are set to become a major new

market segment and our technologies are ideal for this new device type which combines

the low power requirements of the mobile segment and the performance requirements

of computing.


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In-car ElectronicsIn-dash navigation, portable navigation devices (PND), in-car entertainment and electronicdashboards represent signicant opportunities for our technologies.

In-car we are seeing dashboards moving rapidly towards electronic displays which unify

instruments and deliver wider options for customization. As navigation, driver information

and media playback become more essential to the latest car designs our relationships in this

market are expanding rapidly.

POWERVR graphics is a key technology for taking navigation, entertainment and dashboardgraphics to the next level in factory tted, and after-market as well as in stand-alone PNDs.

The low power capabilities of our technologies are a key differentiator in the segment, as it is

vital to prevent in-dash heat build-up for reasons of safety and reliability.

The converged broadcast and connectivity capabilities of our UCCP platforms are also

proving attractive within the automotive market.

Emerging MarketsBeyond these core markets we are increasingly nding new demands for our technology.

From healthcare to security to smart power. An ever-broadening array of new and emerging

marketsare now focusing their product evolution on the media-rich and connected

capabilities enabled by Imagination.

Vision

Industry Trends

In order to be cost effective, complex SoCs must integrate a wide range of capabilitieswhich can be programmed or congured to allow them to be used in many functional and

geographic markets. This has made single chip integration increasingly key to chip-makers

strategies; integration which can be enabled by our SoC IP. Technology integration trends

mean that many semiconductor companies are choosing not to design every block in their

SoCs from the ground up. Increasingly these companies are concentrating internal efforts onthe areas in which they excel and licensing key technologies in the form of IP from industry

leaders such as Imagination.

ConnectivityA growing trend is for ubiquitous connectivity in all forms of consumer electronics. Our

research suggests that more than 70% of all consumer electronics products, including TVs,radios, cameras and printers will need to be connected to the internet by 2013. Our IP is

ideally suited to deliver everything needed to drive this key industry trend for example,we have introduced a new Connected Processorconcept specically targetting this

requirement.

SoftwareThe ratio of software to hardware engineers in the electronics industry is now balanced

more in favour of software engineers than hardware. Indeed this is even higher in OEMs

and steadily climbing across the industry. Our software, typically ranging from drivers for key

application programming interfaces (APIs) over multiple operating systems, to application-level reference code, tutorial examples and much more is a key part of our offering and a

major differentiator.

Software investment and legacy support increasingly matter to semiconductor companies,

who look for long-term roadmap solutions that dont require frequent changes in

fundamental hardware architecture. Additionally some of our software offerings havebecome so fundamental to new product categories that they can now be licensed ontheir own as well as part of new hardware IP.


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PlatformsOur ability to combine our technologies into platforms which directly and efciently provide

solutions to our customers key requirements is key to Imagination's philosophy.

Compared to our competitors we place more focus on systems solutions, which we can

deliver to manufacturers, enabling them the shortest time from device development to

volume sales.

As system-on-chip (SoC) devices become more heterogeneous, that is, made from very

distinct and specialized processors, rather than homogeneous CPU-centric architectures, ourdomain specic processors for graphics, display, video, audio, DSP/RISC, communications

and connectivity are becoming more widely licensed, both individually and as highly

complementary building blocks of complete SoCs.

Imagination's vision of SoCs combines a multi-threaded central processing unit (CPU) to run

operating systems and signal processing (like audio), a graphics processing unit (GPU) to run

graphics and complex parallel tasks, a video processing unit (VPU) for video and display, anda radio processing unit (RPU) to run communications and connectivity tasks. With the addition

of memory and input/output (I/O) these blocks can be used to create SoCs to power almost

every modern consumer device.

GreenEnergy efciency is now a key factor in any product design. Low power consumption is

essential, whether mobile, mains-powered or in-car. Not only do consumers demand sound

environmental technologies and low-cost approaches to power use but also new formfactors such as net tops or at-screen TVs need low power technologies without noisy fans,

heavy transformers and ungainly shapes.

Because we design all our IP for low power operation, our technologies are outstanding at

delivering both low active and standby power draw on mains-powered devices.

FutureOur business is not just about our ability to deliver proven and well-supported IP. It is

fundamentally driven by our capability to create a roadmap of future technologies, withthe support and increasing involvement of our partners, which accurately anticipates the

requirements of tomorrows consumers.

We work by continually identifying markets which are either emerging, or about to undergosignicant changes, and creating exceptional technology to exploit those opportunities.

Our partnerships with the worlds most innovative semiconductor companies and OEMs,

when combined with our compelling IP roadmaps, will continue to enable us, alongside our

partners, to lead the future of electronics.

Audiou o

SoC Platform

DisplayDisplay

Customers Internal IP IMGworks Customized IPThirdParty IP

POWERVRDisplay

-

Frame rateonversion

Noise reduction

etc.

POWERVRGraphics

POWERVRVideo

OpenGL, OpenGL ES,

OpenVG, DirectX, etc.

MPEG1/2/4, H264

VC1, etc.

META

Signal Processing

General Processing

Audio

Real Time

MeOS, Nucleus

Linux, Android

Audio, SW Stacks

etc.

ENSIGMACommunications

Radio, TV,

Mobile TV, Wi-Fi

Bluetooth, etc.

Our IP provides the key building blocks for

modern consumer electronics devices


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Imagination Technologies, the Imagination Technologies logo, POWERVR, META, ENSIGMA, CODESCAPE and PURE Digital are trademarks or registered

trademarks of Imagination Technologies Ltd. All other logos, products, trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective manufacturers.

Copyright 2010 Imagination Technologies Limited, an Imagination Technologies Group plc company. October 2010


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UK Headquarters

t: +44 1923 260511

USA

t: +1 858 674 6644

Japan

t: +81 3 5795 4648

Korea

t: +82 31 715 0184

Taiwan

t: +886 2 87514709

China

t: +86 755 26824240

Find out more about Imagination at:

Technology

[email protected]

PURE

www.pure.com

Corporate

www.imgtec.com/corporate

Documents

Imagination Technologies Technology Overview 2010