Vivante Unveils Area-Optimized GPU

SUNNYVALE, CA /PRNewswire/ -- Vivante Corp. announced an area-optimized version of its GC series OpenGL 2.0 ES GPU cores for wearable and other Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Featuring the "industry's tiniest GPU core," less than 1 mm2, the GC 400 gives MCU/MPU silicon vendors a simple plug-in solution and complete IoT software stack that easily adds full-featured smartphone graphics capabilities to any product line.

Microchip, one of the leaders in MCU/MPU solutions and an important player in IoT, recently said, "during the past few years, the evolution in user interface technology was very rapid from touch keys to touchless interface driven by the consumer market, but it also happened in every type of application and market. The user interface is now a key product differentiator."

IoT solutions ranging from home automation, security, and appliances to medical electronics and monitoring systems/sensors will require a GPU to create compelling user interface (UI) and establish product differentiation. Vivante's IoT GC400 core allows end products to be beautifully crafted and visually intelligent, all while providing a seamless user experience across devices.

"According to Cisco's IBSG group, they predict "there will be 25 billion devices connected to the Internet by 2015 and 50 billion by 2020," said Wei-Jin Dai, Vivante President and CEO. "This huge number of interconnected smart devices represents an enormous opportunity for the GPU to make the impersonal device personable and offer a great user experience from the TV to the smartphone through to the breadth of IoT devices with screens of any size."

As cited in a recent article by Bloomberg Technology, "Android is becoming the standard operating system for the "Internet of Things"—Silicon Valley's voguish term for the expanding interconnectedness of smart devices, ranging from sensors in your shoe to jet engine monitors...Every screen variant, mobile chip, and sensor known to man has been tuned to work with Android." Google's Android has all the qualities, next-generation features, and roadmap needed to support the vast amount of Web interconnected products imaginable. A key element with Android in IoT is the visual centric nature of the OS that requires a tiny, full-featured graphics processor to drive the device screen.

About Vivante IoT GPU Products
Optimized for Google Android, Windows Embedded, and other operating systems, Vivante's IoT product portfolio includes performance-leading technologies in 3D graphics, CPC composition processors, vector graphics, and optional GPGPU cores. Vivante IoT cores leverage a unified driver architecture compatible with industry-standard application programming interfaces like OpenGL ES 2.0, desktop OpenGL, OpenCL, OpenVG, Microsoft DirectX(R) 11, WebGL, Google Renderscript/FilterScript Compute, and other standard APIs.

Robust features built into the GC 400 IoT GPU include:

  • "World's smallest licensable OpenGL ES 2.0 GPU core" at less than 1 mm2 total silicon area (TSMC 28 nm HPM process technology)
  • Supports up to 720 p @ 60 FPS, with high-quality 32-bit color formats
  • Supports all major IoT operating systems, APIs, and middleware
  • Accelerated composition processing for butter smooth UIs
  • Ultra-low power consumption to conserve battery power on the go
  • Tiny software driver footprint for DDR-constrained and DDR-less configurations
  • Real-time sensor fusion processing to reduce bandwidth and increase device intelligence
  • Industrial temperature support for –40°C to 85°C

To learn more about Vivante's IoT technology visit the company's Web site or contact [email protected].

About Vivante
Smaller, Faster, Cooler: Vivante Corp., a leader in multi-core GPU, OpenCL, CPC composition engine, and vector graphics IP solutions, provides the "highest performance and lowest power characteristics across a range of Khronos Group API conformant standards, based on the ScalarMorphic architecture. Vivante GPUs are integrated into customer silicon solutions in mass-market products, including smartphones, tablets, HDTVs, consumer electronics, and embedded devices, running thousands of graphics applications across multiple operating systems and software platforms. Vivante is a privately held company headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA, with additional R&D centers in Shanghai and Chengdu.

Trademarks
Vivante and the Vivante logo are trademarks of Vivante. All other product or service names are the property of their respective owners.